The Bay Area’s little-known Museum of Propaganda is worth the trek

It’s a hot Friday afternoon in San Rafael, California, and someone is knocking at the door of the Museum of International Propaganda. There are still a few minutes before the obscure attraction on the edge of downtown officially opens at 3:30 p.m., so curator Tom Areton isn’t anticipating any visitors during our interview. The surprise guest turns out to be Lori Deibel, research librarian at the Marin History Museum, carrying an unmarked envelope.

“Hi, I’m Lori from the Marin History Museum,” she says. “And I have something for you that doesn’t fit our collection that you might be interested in.” 

Areton, 75, is very interested. He has devoted much of his life to the pursuit of propaganda, traveling to nearly 100 countries, alongside his wife Lilka, to track down rare items and artwork that symbolize institutional ideology, such as a watch gifted to soldiers by the Chinese government after the Tiananmen Square massacre. But long before he began traversing the globe looking for propaganda, it had profound effects on him and his family. 

Born in Czechoslovakia while it was under social rule by the Soviet Union, Areton became familiar with nationalistic messaging at a very early age. An oil painting of a Soviet soldier “liberating” a village of Slovak children hung on the wall of his high school. Today, after a long bureaucratic battle with customs agents, it graces the walls of his museum. Just 2 miles away at the Mount Tamalpais Cemetery, another marker demonstrates propaganda’s effect on the curator’s life: A recently installed empty tomb, known as a cenotaph, memorializes the 57 members of Areton’s extended family who died in the Holocaust. 

Compared to landmark museums like San Francisco’s de Young and Legion of Honor, the Museum of International Propaganda is a modest operation, blending into the small-town landscape of San Rafael. Tucked in a corner shopping center alongside a salon and Pilates studio, the storefront formerly housed a Kinney Shoes store until Areton took over in 2016. Now, the loafers in the windows are replaced by artwork glorifying dictators and demonizing their enemies, with an ominous figure giving a Nazi salute visible from the street. The $3,000 per month rent, costs for electricity and a docent’s salary are all subsidized by Areton’s student foreign exchange program Cultural Homestay International, which is headquartered a mile away. But despite the museum’s small size, it has a surprisingly broad scope.

“Propaganda is a huge subject,” Areton says. “It shows its face in many different areas. There’s religious propaganda, commercial, political, religious, you name it. This is a small space — what we have is the political propaganda of the last century. So you will not find here Trump or Obama or whatever.”

Sometimes Areton stumbles upon his propaganda, like when he discovered a poster shop in Havana. According to Areton, Cuba’s socialist government is one of the most prolific producers of propaganda, close in production to countries like Russia, China and North Korea. When he asked the Havana shopkeeper how much the money he had in his wallet would buy him, the answer was the whole store. Within 30 minutes, the employee packaged up the entire cache of art to be shipped to San Rafael. 

Other times, propaganda shows up anonymously on his doorstep, like in the case of a standing ashtray with a Nazi insignia that looks like a set piece from Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds.”

“One morning I came here and this was in the doorway,” he said, motioning towards the ashtray. “No letter, no note, no sticker. It was just in the doorway.”

Then there’s the occasional donation from other archivists, like today’s surprise delivery from the Marin History Museum. Areton welcomes Deibel inside and she empties the contents of the envelope on a table, revealing a collection of World War II leaflets produced by the U.S. armed forces. These types of (literal) flyers were dropped by American planes over Japanese islands. Areton points out that the writing on them isn’t typical Japanese characters, but rather phonetic Hiragana script, such that the American propaganda — of which there’s a large cache in the museum — could be understood by children who weren’t yet able to read.

Youth indoctrination is a common thread in the first section of the museum, which focuses on leader idealization. In these works, adoring children surround dictators, who are characterized as father figures to be idolized. 

The rest of the museum is organized by theme: fear and intimidation, national glorification, overstated tributes to the common man, vilification, veneration of the military, and a post-1989 section, which features reactionary art that criticized fallen dictators and bygone political movements.

The museum serves as a cautionary tale on the persuasive power of the visual arts, and how authoritative governments have bent even the most innocuous topics towards nationalist interests.

“You can actually use anything for propaganda,” Areton said. “But can you use insects for propaganda? The answer is yes.” He points out an Eastern European poster from the 1950s showing the Colorado potato beetle, which has a pattern on its back that resembles stars and stripes. The German government turned the invasive pest into a symbol of the West, publishing a book called “Stop the American bug.” Areton remembers being sent out into potato fields himself in the third grade to pick the insects off the crops.

Although the messaging behind the art in the Museum of International Propaganda is subversive at best and offensive at worst, the most surprising thing about a visit to the museum is how stylized much of the work is. As Areton says, “Propaganda in essence is art in service of political power.” Abstract geometric Russian Suprematist posters from the early 20th century look like they could easily be your favorite art rock band’s album cover, and a colorful Cuban poster of a woman’s silhouette from 1977 would fit right in as a mural in the Haight.

While many niche museums of this size feel a bit underwhelming, the Museum of International Propaganda is one of those rare far-flung attractions that are a surprise highlight of a day trip. And although it’s nearly impossible not to pass judgment on the art’s motives, Areton said he hopes that the museum doesn’t serve as a piece of propaganda in its own right. 

“I see myself as an educator. I’m not here to proselytize … you make up your own mind.”