Petzel Gallery will be presenting Troy Brauntuch’s photo exhibition A Strange New Beauty on Jan 15th, Wednesday.
From 1937–1944, Germany’s Nazi regime engaged in cultural practices including the curation of large-scale exhibitions entitled the Great German Art Exhibitions (Große Deutsche Kunstausstellungen [GDK]). Indicative of the regime’s ideology, these exhibitions, which took place in Munich, included artworks that were collected by elite members of German society at that time. Documentation of these exhibitions have been compiled by GDK Research, who “publishes unknown photographic documents—evidence of art that was subsidized by the state during the NS era—in order to make source material available for critical discussion and analysis of the Nazi regime’s art and cultural policies.” The primary source material of A Strange New Beauty is this expansive photographic archive.