Hutton Honors College

"Art and Taboo": An after-hours program at the IU Art Museum.

This is a small-group program and requires participants to sign up in advance. Participants must be IU undergraduates and must sign up using the established procedures. For complete sign-up procedures, see http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eiubhonor/hdextra/signup.php.

During World War II, the Nazis confiscated more than 20,000 works of modern art that Hitler considered degenerate and unacceptable. In 1937, Adolf Zieglar, the president of the Reich Culture Chamber, stated, "Our patience with all those who have not been able to fall in line is at an end. . . . What you are seeing here are the crippled products of madness, impertinence, and lack of talent. . . . I would need several freight trains to clear our galleries of this rubbish. . . . This will happen soon." The "degenerate" art removed from galleries included works by Pablo Picasso, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Max Ernst, and Emil Nolde.

Throughout history, art has stirred controversy, and pieces have been forbidden from production or display. Artists in Afghanistan under Taliban rule were forbidden to depict lifelike figures, including humans and animals; and in 2001 the colossal Bamiyan Buddhas, more than 1500 years old, were destroyed. Also in 2001 but closer to home, Daria Fand's depiction of a nude woman on a crucifix was banned from an "Art of Women" exhibition in Honolulu. The ACLU fought the ban, and the painting was reinstated in the exhibit a year later.

The IU Art Museum has in its collections pieces that have crossed boundaries and entered the world of taboo-including one of the paintings banned by Hitler. Join Ed Maxedon, IU Art Museum education curator, for a tour and a discussion of the forbidden and the controversial. Find out what pieces in the museum stirred debate, who created the controversy, and who prevailed.