Our far-flung staff

Heather Sealy Lineberry, ASU Art Museum’s senior curator and associate director, spent part of last week in Washington, D.C., participating in a national museum panel at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. She and the other panelists were there to give advice on the Holocaust Museum’s exhibition State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, which is part of a 10-year initiative on the topic of propaganda.

Heather writes:

“…the powerful exhibition explores how Hitler and the Nazis utilized propaganda to seize power and implement their radical and horrifying policies in Germany and beyond. The Nazis utilized the latest technologies and techniques and permeated all levels of society with bold and positive-seeming posters, monumental and historicist paintings and sculpture, radio, film, classroom materials revising German history or, most shocking of all, children’s games. The exhibition clearly shows that their frighteningly quick rise to power — within a decade — was fueled by Hitler’s deep understanding and use of propaganda.

“The Holocaust Museum plans to travel the exhibition nationally in 2013 and called the invitational meeting to seek advice on reconfiguring the exhibition to appear in various spaces and how to stimulate broader discussion about propaganda, representation and hate speech in our communities.

“It was a truly inspiring day of sharing with other museum professionals from the Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Field Museum in Chicago, The Wolfsonian and Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, among others. It’s a pretty rare occasion when we can come together across disciplines to share our experiences and thoughts on how our museums, exhibitions and programs can be powerful spaces for sharing and addressing challenging, tough topics. I have already chatted with possible venues for the exhibition in Phoenix. It would be a great opportunity for us to explore the issues raised by this history. In the words of Adolf Hitler, ‘Propaganda is a truly terrible weapon in the hands of an expert.’ “