The British Museum, owned by the University of Cambridge, recently tried to shake things up by moving exhibits and installing new signage. In an apparent bout of self-awareness, the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum
was denied His new “inclusive and representative gallery” has “awakened.” Of course, this denial prompted further scrutiny.
It turns out that the university’s 208-year-old collection has been reorganized and enhanced for left-wing purposes. This is an attempt to reuse art as propaganda, and it raises questions about the excessive historical evaluation of the country of Britain.
Luke Syson, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, said:
share The 2021 campus newspaper, Varsity, depicts his clear disdain for European civilization and its achievements, including his own institutions and the art within them.
”[The Fitzwilliam] There is a collection of materials considered [historically] “It belongs to the category of art and is treated as belonging to a civilization that is considered part of the chain of existence that connects to our own glorious civilization,” Sisson told the newspaper. Africa was not seen as part of the story Fitzwilliam wanted to tell. ”
Richard Fitzwilliam was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who, after his death, effectively established a museum and passed on his vast art collection and library to Cambridge University.
According to Syson, the story held by his long-dead benefactor was “a history of white, European, male-dominated art.”
“And even if I think it’s acceptable, the rest of the world is not acceptable and neither is I,” Saison added. “What we really want to do is make sure that the artwork that we currently commission and produce is placed in an appropriate manner in public spaces. We’re building a university, Cambridge.” You walk into a university and you don’t see people of color or women. We actually represent people. ”
Saison got his way.
telegraph paper
report The museum reportedly omitted chronological exhibitions because art history did not meet the comprehensiveness requirements of the time.
Paintings of interracial families by modern black artists thus serve as a clear check on the 18th century painter William Hogarth’s depiction of merchant families in the room now called “Identity.” right.
Barbara Walker, a contemporary painter and obsessed with race, has her work displayed in the same room as classics from centuries ago.
Other artists, including John Singer Sargent, were forced into exhibits based on assumed sexual preferences or immutable characteristics.
“I’d like to think there’s a way to tell these larger, more inclusive histories without needing pushback from people who try to suggest any interest. [this work is] “It’s what we would now call a ‘woke,'” said Saison.
Rebecca Birrell, the woman responsible for overseeing Shuffle, said: “I was very conscious of doing this particular rehang without being overly didactic or prejudging the meaning of the piece. It’s about wanting to give the audience a story, not a final explanation, but just possible readings and possible ways to think about it.”
“We want the work to have space to speak for itself,” Birrell added.
Despite Ms. Birrell’s suggestion that she not want to be didactic and Ms. Syson’s awakening aversion to being labeled, a look at the museum’s new signage shows that the museum has failed on both counts. It’s obvious.
telegraph paper
I got it. It’s the sign of the museum’s nature gallery, where beloved British painter John Constable’s 1820 work is on display. ”Hampstead Heath“Landscape painting has also always been intertwined with national identity.”
“The countryside was thought to be directly connected to the past and therefore a true reflection of the essence of the nation,” the sign continues. “Paintings depicting the rolling hills of England or the lush fields of France reinforced loyalty and pride in the homeland.”
“The dark side of this evoking nationalist sentiment is the implication that only those with a historical connection to the land have the right to belong,” the sign added.
This sentiment echoes one recently expressed by the British left-wing environmental group Wildlife and Countryside Link.
was suggested In November, he told MPs: “A racist colonial legacy frames British nature as ‘white spaces’ and frames people of color as ‘out of place’ in these spaces and environmental fields. “I continue to do so,” he said.
The group also argued that “white British cultural values are embedded in the design and management of green spaces, and in society’s expectations about how people should interact with them.” .
Last year, British Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the daughter of immigrants from Kenya and Mauritius, suggested that multiculturalism had failed, and responded: underline“No, rural areas are not racist. … There’s more left-wing identity politics, more victimhood, more division. Everything doesn’t have to be about race.”
The managers of the Fitzwilliam Museum clearly think differently, and they’re not just concerned with the lush hills and plains that nurtured generations of Britons.
The “Identity” gallery’s signage claims that portraits of wealthy sitters in uniforms are “an important tool for reinforcing the social order of the white ruling class, leaving little room for people’s expression” and inside. has denigrated many of the people depicted in the painting. People of color, working class, or other marginalized people. ”
The Telegraph highlighted that the portrait of Mr Fitzwilliam, the museum’s director, was among those condemned. The label on his portrait states that his wealth “came from his grandfather, Sir Matthew Decker, who amassed some of it through the transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans.”
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