Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art

The Mirroring Evil art exhibit consisted of 19 works by 13 artists and was on display in a Jewish Museum in New York in March 2002. It "sought to expand debates and dialogues about how museums represent the Holocaust" rather than focusing on mourning the disaster(Greenberg,105). The exhibit did successfully open dialogues, but mainly negative ones. The exhibit recieved bad reviews from the viewing public because it was timed only a year after the Twin Towers mass murders and innapropriately shown in a reverent Jewish Museum.

The art shown was impersonal and shocking. It did not focus on stories about those who were killed during the Holocaust. Instead, it was an intellectual exploration of the Nazi perspective. For example, some pieces made parallels between materialism and fascism. There were many graphic images shown as well. The installation did not provide solace for traumatized Twin Towers survivors or Holocaust survivors. It was also not appropriate for children to view.

"How can a museum offer hope? How can a museum be a moral force? How can a museum contribute effectively to societal change?" (Greenberg, 117) I think a museum should be a place to explore truths of history, whether that is hopeful or not. By remembering and understanding past mistakes, we can keep from repeating them and therefore have hope for a better future. In this generation, there are fewer people who lived during the Holocaust, so it is important to remember the brutality of the event. There is an old saying that 'those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.'

The artists of the Mirroring Evil exhibit failed to address the historical importance of the Holocaust, instead deferring to shock tactics and loose metaphors about American materialism that were difficult to understand. Imagery of legos and glitsy phones seemed to mock or desensitize the viewer rather than reveal truth. I think the exhibit would have been more effective if the artists had literally placed rotting corpses in the middle of the exhibit floor to help viewers get a reality check about the Holocaust. Perhaps the Mirroring Evil exhibit would have been more effective if it were presented in an art museum as an experimental installation instead of in a history museum. The art displayed was inneffective because of its location, presentation, and timing.

Reesa Greenberg, "Mirroring Evil, Evil Mirrored: Timing, Trauma, and Temporary Exhibitions" (eLearning)