What does architecture have to do with fascism?
Plus, some final bows.
Hello. Since the last time we spoke, I have:
Read Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au, a melodic and introspective novella, and Tell by Jonathan Buckley, a first-person novella that wasn’t exactly what I anticipated, but enjoyed regardless.
Got a preview of two new works that the Miami City Ballet will premiere this spring via the Guggenheim’s Works & Process series: a contemporary ballet by Pam Tanowitz and a new full-length Carmen by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. Ochoa’s Carmen is particularly intriguing. The Belgian-Colombian choreographer is particularly known for her contemporary takes on story ballets—a choreographic project that many choreographers have struggled to get right. She’s created multiple ballets inspired by the life of Frida Kahlo and most recently debuted a ballet inspired by the life of Coco Chanel; while one reviewer said it lacked “heart and soul,” it is still worth noting that Ochoa is a choreographer who appears impressively capable at capturing nuance in a notably figurative art form. Her ballet accurately portrays Chanel as an antisemite and Nazi sympathizer, and the Atlanta Ballet partnered with the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum to provide educational resources about antisemitism when it put on the ballet’s North American premiere in 2024. Ochoa’s Carmen uses a reimagined version of Bizet’s operatic score—sans vocals—and so far, seems to be highly imaginative; among Ochoa’s artistic interpretations in the ballet is a mythological figure of fate, who she described yesterday as “half-skeleton—I mean a third skeleton, a third bull, and a third raven.” You can see part of the costume here. One to watch!
Now, the news.
It has been a long week in the United States and the first of many long weeks yet to come. As has been widely reported, President Trump sent out a flurry of executive orders—many with exceptionally dangerous consequences. I’d like to call your attention to one that may seem more innocuous. An order focused on “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture” demands that federal public buildings “respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.” Trump enacted a similar order during his first term, but President Biden repealed it before it had a real impact.
The supposed aim of this order—to make sure that federal buildings follow the same Neoclassical style as, say, the Capitol, the White House, and the Lincoln Memorial—may seem harmless at its face value, but this push for tradition is a classic part of a fascist playbook. As such, the American Institute of Architects, a membership organization of more than 100,000 architects and design professionals, released a statement condemning the executive order: “AIA’s members believe the design of federal buildings must first be responsive to the people and communities who will use those buildings. Our federal buildings across the country must reflect America’s wealth of culture, rich traditions, and unique geographic regions. AIA has strong concerns that mandating architecture styles stifles innovation and harms local communities.”
First, it is important to consider why this nation’s founding fathers thought it suitable—even critical—that its most important architecture drew inspiration from ancient Greek and Roman styles. It does not take a stretch of the imagination to understand what their aims were. In establishing a new democratic nation, they reached to the iconography of earlier, ancient democracies for their symbolism; this Neoclassical style, after all, had also gained in popularity across Europe around the time the U.S. was founded. There is a kind of idealism in this design that this nation has failed to live up to from the start; now, the Republican administration aims to make this style the norm—a so-called beautification project that attempts to give a still-young nation legitimacy through the aesthetics of the ancient and establishes a norm of traditional values.
To understand this, we need to set aside our personal preferences. Like many of you, I’m sure, I do find Neoclassical style very beautiful. But we enter very tricky territory when any style is held as a traditional, nationalistic standard. This has happened before.
If you’ve seen The Brutalist—a flawed and poorly structured film with a gorgeous score and cinematography—you’ve seen how new architectural styles can threaten the status quo. There is a reason why the rise of the Nazis led the Bauhaus school, known for its modernist design, to shut down in 1933, and why, even today, the far-right group Alternative for Germany (AfD) rejects celebrations of the iconic and influential design school. It is a common tactic of populist, authoritarian governments to promote traditional design styles. Princeton professor of politics Jan-Werner Müller has written extensively on this topic.
The issue is not a matter of preferring the look of one style over another, but the fact that authoritarians “have systematically sought to transform the built environment—especially city centers—in line with their understanding of who the ‘real people’ are,” Müller wrote in 2023 in Foreign Policy about Türkiye, Hungary, and India—counties that have all funneled state dollars into preserving and rebuilding traditional structures. Their goal has been to “generate admiration, a sense of national achievement—and tourism.” All of this has a normalizing effect on authoritarian regimes.
Some—like Trump—have shrugged off their preferences, calling modernist styles “ugly,” in spite of how their own creations are often regarded. Modernism is also sometimes criticized by these proponents of reconstruction for being “cosmopolitan” or “elitist.” They insist that a national style—one that typically has nothing to do with those outside of the ruling class—can unite the people, when in reality, it hardly ever represents their actual cultures, wants, and needs. Mütter notes in a piece for The New Stateman on Germany’s far-right architecture that “not all proponents of reconstruction are on the hard right, but everyone who is on the hard right happens to be in favour [sic] of reconstruction.”
In the mass of executive orders, a dictate about the way buildings should look pales in urgency when compared to orders that immediately suppress marginalized people’s gender identity, personal safety, and freedoms. But it can have an insidious effect. “The uncritical recreation of baroque buildings is also, intentionally or not, part of today’s culture wars: an intervention on the side of tradition and supposed normality; beautiful old-looking buildings, in contrast with challenging, or outright disturbing, modernist edifices,” Mütter writes, pointing to the research of Dutch political scientist Cas Muddle. “…the culture war is how citizens who claim to be opposed to extremism find their way to much harder far-right ideas.”
If you want to see how bad book bans are getting, take a look at Idaho. Last year, the state passed House Bill 710 (HB 710), which has resulted so far in adults-only rooms, crazy signage that warns under-18s that they aren’t allowed to go past a certain point without a parent or guardian, who must sign an affidavit every time they go to the library, and further restriction of books, Book Riot reported. One seven-library system has also proposed a new policy that would not allow any of its branches to “acquire or own materials for the children’s, teens, or young adult collections that contain ‘abortion, police discrimination, drugs, gender identity, occult, racism, rape, suicide, violence, nontraditional families or lifestyle.’” That would encompass just about every book I can think of that might appear on a middle or high school reading list.
Unfortunately, these draconian measures aren’t letting up any time soon. On Friday, the Department of Education said it would no longer investigate public schools that received censorship complaints—a signal that the current administration is already weaning the department’s oversight and authority and further allowing states to decide the fate of children’s education. Things can get a lot worse from here.
Well here’s a good story about a library thriving. The Palm Springs Library says that it issued nearly 20% more library cards in the fiscal year 2023-2024, saw a 17% increase in foot traffic, and patrons checked out 6.5% more materials, the Palm Springs Post reported. It’s seen great success from live events, which have helped it secure the funding for an impending renovation, but perhaps most interestingly, it’s seen a boom in the popularity of its DVD collection. The Post notes: “There’s no paywall at the library. No ever-increasing monthly fee locking out people who can’t afford to pay. The library won’t sell data about your movie preferences to the highest bidder.”
Librarian Scott Biegen, who curates the library’s film collection, says that the library has a better selection of emerging filmmakers and older films than many streaming services (which makes sense when you consider the fact that Netflix only has four streaming films made before 1970, the Post points out). Especially at a time when digital media can disappear without any warning, access to physical media remains essential. Especially when censorship is on the rise.
Here’s another thing that happened this week: Yet another executive order has ended federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, calling them “illegal and immoral.” This has meant the National Gallery of Art, along with countless other government institutions, has had to dismantle its DEI programs. The NGA, which former treasury secretary Andrew W. Mellon founded in 1937, launched a new visual identity and affirmation of its strategic priorities in 2021, to be “more open, inclusive, and welcoming to everyone,” “operate a sustainable and equitable museum,” and to serve “the nation by welcoming all people to explore and experience art, creativity, and our shared humanity.”
The museum told Hyperallergic that it has closed its Office of Belonging and Inclusion and reassigned all employees in that office to vacant positions in the organization; the publication also noted that it removed any reference to DEI from its website—the words “‘diversity, equity, access and inclusion’ have been replaced with ‘welcoming and accessible.’” This is likely how some organizations will skate by the executive order without completely changing course from their progressive missions. However, time will tell if such organizations can still uphold those values of diversity, equity, and inclusion amid this crackdown. Even before this change, we saw the NGA host a Trump-Vance fundraiser last weekend. I’ll be curious to see how incoming NGA president Darren Walker, who comes from the social justice-focused Ford Foundation, will navigate this space with so much scrutiny on the values he’s clearly maintained in his career.
Walkable cities are good for musicians, which is why busking—which was officially legalized in the city in 2022 after a hard-won battle–isn’t totally taking off in Houston. The sprawling Texas city does not make it particularly easy for musicians to find the right place with enough foot traffic to set up and perform, though an upcoming pedestrian development, the Main Street Promenade, could help, Houstonia reports.
Busking can help musicians supplement their income, but it also provides them with ample opportunities to practice outside of their homes or studios. Plus, it can have a beneficial environmental impact, bringing communities closer together and elevating the cultural output of a city—which may be why fellow Texas city Austin developed a Public Performance Program that gives local musicians the opportunity to play publicly at a rate of $200 per hour.
A new documentary released last week in the U.K. (that does not appear to be available in the U.S. just yet) shows the culmination of British composer Leo Geyer’s years-long effort to reconstruct original music that prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau composed during World War II. There were at least six orchestras at the concentration camp; Nazi soldiers forced prisoners to entertain them and to perform during forced labor marches, though Geyer shares in the documentary how inmates put on secret performances and also practiced civil disobedience by incorporating forbidden music into their arrangements. Many of the original scores written at Auschwitz were thought to be lost to time; Geyer discovered their existence by chance after speaking with a curator at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. This documentary, Lost Music of Auschwitz, marks the first time that this music has been restored and performed since the Holocaust. “Through this music, I hope to bring everyone together to remember not only those whose lives were saved due to their musical talents but also all those who suffered and perished during the Holocaust,” Geyer says.
Music continues in Gaza, where singer and musician Mohand Al Ashram teaches children in displacement camps and performs with fellow musicians in order to provide psychological support, Classic FM reported. Through the organization Melodies of Hope, he hosts music therapy workshops; recently, Al Ashram and his students celebrated the news of a ceasefire with song.
Over in Davos, the World Economic Forum used the arts to emphasize the ongoing climate crisis. This year’s program featured a concert of original compositions by Michael Kamm and Tim Allhoff, as well as a visual installation by artist and technologist Refik Anadol, who used his Large Nature Model—his AI model that uses renewable energy and “ethically sourced massive data sets”—“to transform glacier data into stunning digital landscapes, visually capturing the movement and texture of glaciers.”
At the annual meeting, American Ballet Theatre principal Misty Copeland also spoke about how the cultural sector can promote gender equality. Copeland is a vocal advocate for diversity and representation in ballet and arts access through her foundation, and in her talk at Davos, she stressed the importance of women, especially women of color, holding leadership positions within the cultural sector. Beyond that, she added that “culture must provoke dialogue. Art has the unique ability to challenge biases subtly yet profoundly. A ballet, a play, a film, or even a single photograph can ignite empathy and spark a shift in mindset.”
This year, the ballet world is seeing two icons take their final bows. ABT principal Gillian Murphy, who joined the company in 1996, will retire after a performance in Swan Lake this summer, the company announced in December. On Wednesday, New York City Ballet announced that principal Ashley Boulder would give her final performance, in Balanchine’s Firebird, in February. She first performed that ballet’s titular role at 17, learning the role in two hours after another dancer fell ill, the New York Times reported. After this curtain call, Boulder will focus on The Ashley Bouder Project, her organization that “is dedicated to promoting women and diversity in creative and leadership roles in the performing arts world.” If anyone would like to present me with tickets to these final shows I will gratefully accept. ▲