Occupying Art

26 March | Kjetil Ansgar Jakobsen Seminar
Thursday
26
March
2026
6:00 pm
7:30 pm
Jeudis de Suger-Kjetil Jakobsen
© Adobe Stock / Cesare Ferrari
Occupying Art. The Fine Arts in Norway during the Nazi occupation 1940-45

Presentation of a research project as part of the "Jeudis de la Maison Suger", a residents' research seminar.

This session will welcome Kjetil Ansgar Jakobsen for a presentation of his ongoing research on artistic policies and visual propaganda implemented in Norway during the Nazi occupation. He will highlight how the regime mobilized the visual arts to shape public opinion and assert its ideology, placing the Norwegian case in a broader European perspective.

Presentation of the project

"Occupied Norway seems to have been the only occupied country where the National Socialists organized large scale 'Entartede Kunst' art exhibitions on the German model. In 1942 and 43  works by Pablo Picasso, George Braque and the Norwegian and Nordic 20th century modernists were transported from town to town in wartime Norway, where they were exposed in order to ridicule the artists and make the public conscient that the nation had finally been liberated from the malicious influence of the “Montparnasse Jewry”.  Professor Jakobsen will analyse the art policies and visual propaganda in Nazi occupied Norway in a European context."

Speaker

Kjetil Ansgar Jakobsen is a professor of intellectual history at Nord University in Norway. His research focuses on the metapolitics and ideological entrepreneurship of writers and intellectuals in different eras, including the present day. Jakobsen directs “Words and Violence.”

Published at 13 January 2026