A new and challenging perspective on Nazi exhibition design

In one of the most comprehensive analyses ever written on the subject, Michael Tymkiw reassesses the relationship between Nazi exhibition design and modernism. While National Socialist exhibitions are widely understood as platforms for attacking modern art, they also served as sites of surprising formal experimentation among artists, architects, and others, who often drew upon and reconfigured the practices and principles of modernism when designing exhibition spaces and the objects within. In this book, Tymkiw reveals that a central motivation behind such experimentation was the interest in provoking what he calls "engaged spectatorship"-attempts to elicit experiences among exhibition-goers that would pique their desire to become involved in wider processes of social and political change.

For historians of art, architecture, performance, and other forms of visual culture, Nazi Exhibition Design and Modernism unravels long-held assumptions, particularly concerning the ideological stakes of participation.

About the Author

Michael Tymkiw is lecturer in art history at the University of Essex.

Reviews

"Michael Tymkiw's book Nazi Exhibition Design and Modernism makes an important contribution to the rapidly growing body of literature on exhibition design in which narratives of modern art are turned to the spaces where audiences encountered what was often cutting-edge material. The contents of the displays in this study, however, complicate our expectations of modernism and of the National-Socialist-era visual culture that art and architectural historians long preferred to overlook. This disregard allowed scholars to peer past uncomfortable linkages between the heroic modernist period that preceded these years and the postwar return to legitimacy that followed. By looking closely at this difficult subject, Tymkiw finds moments of formal invention, as well as bold, even shocking, exhibition spaces that expressed a deeply reactionary cultural climate that we often associate with banal canvases and repetitive, monolithic structures."-Andres Mario Zervigon, Rutgers University

"In his nuanced examination of Nazi exhibition design, Michael Tymkiw persuasively challenges the myth that modernism was inherently anti-fascist. Through a rigorous examination of often forgotten displays, he demonstrates that multiple strands of Weimar modernism provided effective propaganda strategies that were in turn adopted by both postwar German states."-Kathleen James-Chakraborty, University College Dublin

"This book is an excellent example of contemporary study not only of German culture under National Socialism but of European totalitarianism of the interwar era."-H-Net Reviews

"Nazi Exhibition Design and Modernism is well written, richly illustrated and readable. Tymkiw's focus on engaged spectatorship nicely complicates notions of passivity and activity while simultaneously blurring the boundaries between producers and consumers of visual culture."-European History Quarterly

"Nazi Exhibition Design and Modernism breaks with standard ways of writing about art and politics in the Third Reich (such the art-as-propaganda approach, the fascist aesthetic approach, the modernist subversion approach). It puts an end to the lazy kind of thinking that, whether in the name of ideology critique or theories of totalitarianism, pays little attention to the actual forms and techniques buttressing Nazi visual culture."-Modernism/Modernity

"Tymkiw demonstrates that exhibitions are optimal vehicles for expanding our understanding of modernism because of their overt connection between form and ideology and, in turn, provides a model for extending the discussion to other visual disciplines and time periods."-German Studies Review

"The overall argument therefore not only represents a significant intervention into ideologically tinged Cold War historiographies, but is also a masterclass in disentangling form from ideology. "-Monatshefte

"Nazi Exhibition Design and Modernism proves the disturbing entanglements between far-right ideology and innovative exhibition design, thus making the book a key contribution not only to the field of fascism, but also to curatorial and museum studies."-Journal of Curatorial Studies

"His text is clear, efficient, elegant, effectively documenting an underexamined realm. And therefore chilling."-Leonardo Reviews

"Tymkiw displays his expertise with perceptive analysis of exhibition design practices: his attention extends to the way a visitor's physical and perceptual movement is structured from one exhibit to the next, to the effect of viewing angles and size proportion on physical bodies, and to the myriad relationships among disparate artifacts and visual materials within an individual exhibition. "-Monatshefte

"Tymkiw reveals the diversity of forms assumed by exhibition strategies under National Socialism, which were by no means limited to the return to monumentality and to traditional media but deployed through highly diverse spaces, actors, publics and conceptions of the spectator." -Transbordeur

"His sweeping exploration of innovative Nazi exhibition design offers a raft of new evidence of the centrality of exhibition design as a propagandistic medium. In its deep dive into the past, the book should also give us pause as we look to our own present and the sophistication with which right-wing groups and totalitarian regimes now arm themselves with today's enthralling visual media." -Journal of Design History

Book Information
ISBN 9781517900571
Author Michael Tymkiw
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint University of Minnesota Press
Publisher University of Minnesota Press
Dimensions(mm) 254mm * 178mm * 38mm