JS Headlines "Nazi"; Gould's Teapot-Mind Boils Over

Whitney Gould has earned derision from common-sense individuals as a Dilettante-de-Butt-Ugly-Dumb, promoting orange/green/brown-painted buildings in the 3rd Ward and the infamous "Blue Shirt" hanging on an airport building, among other atrocious projects.

It is also clear that when she's been told to 'butt out,' she can haul out the poison pen and has no compunctions about waving the "Nazi" flag.

As its name implies, the new Man at Work museum at the Milwaukee School of Engineering is designed to celebrate the nobility of physical labor through the ages. But the engineer and the industrialist who run the museum have included artworks made to glorify the construction projects of the Nazi regime, art historians say.

A couple of things jump out of that lede. First off, the Dilettante is displeased that 'an engineer and an industrialist' are 'running' a museum. That sort of endeavor is reserved to "polite company," NOT 'engineers and industrialists.'

She found somebody to carp:

Another concern of critics is that neither Kopmeier nor Grohmann has professional expertise in art or art history, and there is no professional curator on the museum's staff. Kopmeier's background is in engineering and manufacturing. Grohmann, a native of Silesia (now Poland), whose family was in the marble business, is president of Aluminum Casting & Engineering Co.

Gott in Himmel!!!! No "professional curator?" No "professional expertise"? You mean to tell me that these guys, who have dirty shoes from tramping around in a FOUNDRY, have the nerve to open a museum? Heaven forfend! Clearly, it is the End of the (oh-so-Civilized) World!!

With wine-dark hot estrogen flowing through her pen, Gould works her Dudgeon to a Really Significant High Point:

The Grohmann Museum features a 700-piece trove of paintings and sculptures, some dating from the 16th century, that were collected by Milwaukee industrialist Eckhart G. Grohmann and donated to the school. To most eyes, the peasant scenes and industrial landscapes will not appear overtly political or sinister.

Ah, but to the Enlightened One--(that is, the self-appointed Enlightened One), there's a problem:

...the most represented artist in the collection, Erich Mercker (1891-1973), was commissioned directly by Hitler's government to create images of the Third Reich's expanding infrastructure.
One of the 81 Mercker works in the collection shows laborers cutting stone bound for the Chancellery in Berlin, the Reich's seat of power, and others depicting bridges of the Autobahn, one of Hitler's proudest achievements.

Some guy took a job painting pictures of another bunch of guys cutting stone. 11.57% of the pictures in the collection came from that artist's brush; the pix were paid for by the Third Reich.

OHMYGOD!

Here we have the "Man at Work" museum with pictures of men at work in Germany. The pictures were donated by a generous soul. They are directly on-point. Further, the museum is a private enterprise/exhibition site.

Frankly, only the Dilettante-du-Butt-Ugly Dumb cares about who signed some artist's paycheck:

Aaron Breitbart, a senior researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said there was a difference between artists like the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who openly glorified the Nazi regime with propaganda films, and artists who joined the Nazi party or did officially sanctioned work "just to get a job."

"They're not necessarily bad guys," he said of artists in the latter category. "There's a lot of gray in this area."

For a hint of how this "controversy" was fueled, see this:

Ischi Grohmann, Eckhart Grohmann's wife, told a reporter that the museum was "a private collection of a private man who gave this as a gift to a private school. The public has nothing to do with it."

She said she saw no need to disclose more information about the paintings, which are predominantly German and Northern European and by mostly little known artists.

"Aspects of history can be read in books," she said. "You see what you see - a quarry or a bridge or whatever."

In other words, Mrs. Grohmann told Ms. Gould to "buzz off." Someday I'd like to meet Mrs. Grohmann and thank her for her contribution to the betterment of Milwaukee. Too bad that The Enlightened One--the Dilletante-du-Butt-Ugly-Dumb-- didn't do what she was asked...

But I'll re-iterate what Mrs. Grohmann implied:

I think that Ms. Gould should spray some Raid where she has a bug and spend more time staring at the Blue Shirt. You know, the Blue Shirt which symbolizes men at work.

Think about that, Whitney.