Autocrats Gallery

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT:

Who doesn’t love a strongman? Take a stroll through our Autocrats Gallery, where you can cozy up to the world’s dictators. Take a selfie with Vladimir Putin in our photo booth, or stop by our writing table to pen your own love letter to Kim Jong Un. Sucking up to autocrats is easy! Tell them what they want to hear, give them whatever they want, and they will pretend to like you. You can feel like you, too, are a strongman as Putin, Kim, Xi, Erdogan, and Duterte use you as their puppet. The more time you spend in our Autocrats Gallery, the easier it is to pretend that you are one too.

CURATOR’S ANALYSIS:

Trump likes strongmen. A weak man who desperately wants to appear strong, Trump has spent the past four years trying to woo the world’s strongmen into accepting him into their ranks. The Dictators of the World club is small and exclusive. You have to be cold, amoral, power-hungry. You have to believe the ends justify the means, and that it doesn’t matter how many people are hurt or killed to achieve your goal: the hardening and strengthening of your own power. You must be willing to put your ego above all else. While Trump shares many of these qualities with the world’s strongmen, the key attribute he is missing is strength. He simply doesn’t have what it takes. Unable to make it into the exclusive Dictators club on his own merits (just as he was unable to earn the most votes on his own merits or become head of a company on his own merits), Trump is sycophantically trying to charm his way in, hoping that if he can just get enough strongmen around him, he can appear strong too. Unfortunately for Trump, a weak man surrounded by strongmen only looks weaker.