Seyss Inquart Possibly 1940 - 1945

This anonymous collage of press cuttings documents the installation of the Nazi Reich Commissioner Seyss-Inquart in the occupied Netherlands, in May 1940. It is held at the Rijksmuseum, a national institution implicated in the events it depicts. The display shows the new governor, pronouncements about blackout regulations, and Nazi officers saluting fallen Dutch soldiers, an act that is sarcastically described in the captions as an ostentatious show of respect performed in the expectation of reciprocal treatment. This is a work of propaganda that also serves as a historical document. The politics of imagery and the public role of art are here fused in a particularly chilling way. The social conditions that shaped artistic production in this period can be studied through resources that reveal the institutional apparatus of the Nazi state. The Rijksmuseum itself is a telling example of how art galleries and museums shape our understanding of culture and history.