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US President Donald Trump speaks during a visit to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., USA, on August 13, 2025.

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Trump tries to Make Art Great Again

Our motto at GZERO is, “Everything is political.”

Sports? You bet. See our piece earlier this year on Barcelona creating football academies in the Kurdish part of Iraq and Syria.

Food? Sure. Check out our 2022 report on the battle over where borscht was invented and learn just how heated that pot of soup can get.

Art? Duh. The author Toni Morrison said, “All good art is political.” Case in point, our coverage of a Broadway play about a measles outbreak among a community of anti-vaxxers in Berkeley, California.

But art can also be usurped by rulers and deployed as propaganda or a means of control. In ancient Rome, Augustus commissioned statues that depicted himself as eternally youthful and victorious – a pre-botox masterclass in excellent PR. On the eve of World War II, Adolf Hitler staged the notorious “Degenerate Art” exhibition to mock modernism and elevate “pure” Aryan aesthetics. And during the Cold War, Washington funded abstract expressionism – think Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko – as a subtle weapon against Soviet socialist realism.

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2024: Ten big moments when politics and culture collided

The line between entertainment and politics seems blurrier than ever these days, and not only because the most powerful leader in the world is once again going to be, among many other things, a former reality TV star.

The ubiquity of social media, the bitterness of political polarization, and the ferocity of the culture wars leaves almost no aspect of our societies untouched by politics these days.

Here’s a look at ten big moments from 2024 when popular culture shaped, or was shaped by, the biggest political stories of the year.

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The Parthenon Marbles dispute and the debate over cultural repatriation | GZERO World

The Parthenon Marbles dispute and the debate over cultural repatriation

Who gets to claim art as their own? It’s a complicated issue, and elite art institutions are undergoing a reckoning over their Indiana Jones-style acquisition tactics of the past. GZERO’s Alex Kliment explores the complex debate of art repatriation and the controversy surrounding ancient artifacts displayed in Western museums. One of the most infamous cases involves the Parthenon Marbles (sometimes called the Elgin Marbles) at the British Museum, which the British took during Ottoman rule. The Greeks have been demanding the Marbles be returned for almost 200 years.

“I think this is really a moral or ethical case,” says Leila Amineddoleh, an art repatriation expert, “Should museums hold onto objects that were taken under either violent circumstances or were taken during a time of looting, theft or when a country was colonized?”

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken plays guitar at the State Department, September 27, 2023.

@SecBlinken/X.com

What we’re listening to: US tries out Hoochie Coochie diplomacy

To be honest, if you told us that the US secretary of state, a 61-year-old white guy, was gonna grab a Stratocaster and belt out some Delta Blues in public, we’d have braced for a much more awkward outcome than this.

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Racial makeup of undergraduate students in the U.S. (2010-2021)

Luisa Vieira/GZERO

The Graphic Truth: Hispanic college enrollment has surged

September 15 marked the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month, and as the United States enters a new era in college admissions following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down race-based affirmative action protections this summer, many worry that the new rules could hurt the chances of aspiring students from traditionally marginalized communities.

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Once upon a time: Pakistan's fabled storytellers fade away

December 14, 2020 12:02 PM

SHOGRAN, Pakistan (AFP) - Mohammad Naseem's eyes shine while he shares the legend of a remote, alpine lake nestled among snow-capped Himalayan peaks as a rare crowd of onlookers hears one of Pakistan's last "storytellers".

Coronavirus pandemic respite for Thai 'sea gypsies' threatened by mass tourism

November 23, 2020 11:17 AM

The threat of eviction also hangs over the 1,200 Chao Lay living in Rawai.

Amid calls for boycott and bad reviews, Mulan heads towards opening weekend in China

September 09, 2020 9:47 PM

BEIJING - Even before hitting the big screens in mainland China, Disney's lavish US$200 million (S$273.8 million) live action remake of Mulan has been hit with controversy, delays and calls for a boycott.

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