State of the Art or Art of the State?

The Death of Discomfort: Why Institutions Count Bodies Instead of Courage 

Art institutions, like much of the world around them, are disturbingly retreating into the past. Courage, critical insight, and the ability to challenge norms, once central measures of an art museum or kunsthal, are increasingly irrelevant. Instead, institutions are assessed by metrics that reward compliance, visibility, and popularity: visitor numbers, social media engagement, and sponsor appeal. The more audience-friendly, “safe,” or politically convenient an exhibition, the more it is celebrated. Risk becomes a liability, discomfort an obstacle, and complexity an inconvenience.

Even diversity, once demanded and fought for by artists, curators, and activists, has been reduced to a bureaucratic KPI: standardized, simplified, and neatly packaged. Vision, research, debate, iterative failure, and nuanced experimentation are increasingly irrelevant. Museums in Denmark cut staff; institutions in Sweden frame austerity as “sustainability.” Across the Atlantic, political agendas directly reshape cultural institutions, from grant allocations to curriculum decisions. Survival now dominates institutional priorities, leaving curiosity, critique, and courage as optional virtues.

In the United States, as Andrew Weinstein reports in The Times (Oct 24, 2025), the federal government has executed a “full-frontal assault” on American cultural life. By rescinding grants, purging boards, and commandeering leadership positions, the state has moved beyond mere neglect into active hostility. At the Smithsonian Institution, the systematic review of “divisive” language under the guise of “restoring truth and sanity” is a transparent echo of historical authoritarian strategies for controlling narratives. When funding is tied to the elimination of dissent, the museum ceases to be a site of inquiry; it becomes a state instrument of ideological survival.

Sweden presents a subtler, yet equally troubling, case. In her article Art Schools Are Not Policy Instruments (Kunstkritik, 30.01.26), Sanne Kofod Olsen critiques Tidö 2.0, a policy proposal to “recast” the Royal Institute of Art (Mejan) as a national center for classical art and architecture. Olsen points out that the term “classical” is undefined, while “recast” implies conformity and standardization, threatening the very foundation of artistic freedom. Many now-considered “classical” artists, including Carl Larsson, Anders Zorn, and Ernst Josephson, resisted academic norms in their time. Imposing a fixed canon today would not restore tradition; it would erase the conditions that allow experimentation, dissent, and artistic evolution.

Denmark faces a similar tension, albeit driven primarily by economics and political priorities. Museums, kunsthaller, and galleries are increasingly expected to grow audiences, drive tourism, and produce exhibitions that are “socially legible” rather than intellectually demanding. Academic critiques note that institutions are deeply entangled in the politics of capital and legitimation strategies, where curatorial choices and programming reflect external expectations as much as artistic vision. Long-term trends toward private and market-oriented funding models subtly guide institutional agendas. Risk-taking, discomfort, and provocation, qualities intrinsic to art’s power, are often suppressed in favor of accessibility and safety.

In this context, it is worth recalling Asger Jorn’s uncompromising stance. On 15 January 1964, Jorn sent a telegram to Harry F. Guggenheim after receiving the Guggenheim International Award for his painting Dead Drunk Danes (1960):

GO TO HELL WITH YOUR MONEY BASTARD—STOP—REFUSE PRICE—STOP—NEVER ASKED FOR IT—STOP—AGAINST ALL DECENCY MIX ARTIST AGAINST HIS WILL IN YOUR PUBLICITY—STOP—I WANT PUBLIC CONFIRMATION NOT TO HAVE PARTICIPATED IN YOUR RIDICULOUS GAME JORN

Jorn’s act remains a blueprint for autonomy and resistance: refusal, friction, and insistence that the work itself, not recognition or funding, defines value. In a world where institutions measure success through metrics, Jorn reminds us that art’s agency resides in creation, not validation.

This is the lesson for contemporary cultural institutions. From Copenhagen to Stockholm, from New York to Washington, D.C., the pressures converge: politics, markets, and audience metrics are successfully rebranding the “Art of the State” as the “State of the Art.” Without a deliberate protection of autonomy, art risks becoming an archival exercise, concerned with objects that are safe, consumable, and easily packaged, rather than provocative, challenging, or essential.

Institutions must recalibrate toward friction and challenge rather than compliance and popularity. Funding must prioritize the “ridiculous game” of risk-taking and experimentation that Asger Jorn so violently defended. The museum’s digital counter is not the arbiter of value; likes and visitors are not measures of relevance. Freedom, dissent, and agency are.

Art is not a policy instrument. Art is not a service. Art is the refusal of simplification, the assertion of agency, and the insistence on freedom. Risk, discomfort, critique, and friction are not optional; they define relevance. Art is power. Art is freedom. Art is courage. Above all, bureaucracy - GO TO HELL.