A portion of the museum's general operating funds for this fiscal year has been provided through grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a Federal agency that fosters innovation, leadership and a lifetime of learning, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

Williams College Museum of Art to Host
“Staging the Third Reich: A Symposium on Art as Politics”
Thursday, October 3-Saturday, October 5, at the Williams College Museum of Art

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) will host “Staging the Third Reich: A Symposium on Art as Politics” from Thursday, October 3 through Saturday, October 5, in conjunction with the exhibition Prelude to a Nightmare: Art, Politics, and Hitler’s Early Years in Vienna 1906-1913. During the symposium, leading scholars and writers will offer their insights into the central importance of the arts and stagecraft to Hitler and the artistic impulses at work in the Third Reich. As Peter Viereck observed in Metapolitics, the aesthetic ambitions of Hitler and the Nazi party elite were “originally far deeper than their political ambitions and were integral parts of their personalities.”

Celebrated author Brigitte Hamann, whose book Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship inspired the exhibition, will deliver the keynote address Thursday, October 3, at 7 p.m. Hitler’s Vienna is the acclaimed book that traces the artistic and political influences that Hitler experienced while living in Vienna as a young man. Hamann’s address will take place in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall in the Bernhard Music Center, Williams College.

On Friday, October 4 at 2 p.m., three influential scholars in the field of history and cultural studies will each present papers based on recent research into the topic of staging the Third Reich. Manuela Hoelterhoff will present “Hitler’s Summer Seasons.” Hoelterhoff is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer whose forthcoming book, also called Hitler’s Summer Seasons, examines Hitler’s devotion to opera. Jonathan Petropoulos will present “Kunst über Alles? The Importance of Art for Understanding Adolf Hitler.” Petropoulos is the John Croul Chair in European History, Claremont McKenna College, and the author of Art as Politics in the Third Reich and The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. James E. Young will deliver a talk titled “The Choreography of Nazi Power and the Aesthetics of Redemption.” Young is Professor and Chair, Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust and At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture. Following these presentations, Deborah Rothschild, curator of Prelude to a Nightmare, will moderate an open discussion among the participants. The presentations will take place in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall in the Bernhard Music Center, Williams College. A reception will follow at 5 p.m. at the museum.

To complete the program, on Saturday, October 5, German author Peter Roos will perform, for the first time in English, a chapter from his book Loving Hitler: A Novel of Sickness. “Eva Braun and Me” offers a provocative fictional rumination about the life of Hitler’s mistress. Roos “resurrects” Eva Braun as an eighty-year-old woman who somehow escaped death. While she has experienced all of the facets of postwar life, she can never disassociate herself from the Führer, “for he was her youth and her love.” This performance will begin at 8 p.m. in Goodrich Hall, Williams College.

All symposium events are free and open to the public. Advanced registration is not required, although seating for all events is limited. WCMA’s exhibition Prelude to a Nightmare continues through October 27, 2002.

The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

Contact: Jonathan Cannon, Public Relations Coordinator
413.597.3178; WCMA@williams.edu