One of Britain’s most renowned art museums, London’s Courtauld Gallery, added new labels to some of its finest paintings on display, including Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère and Paul Gauguin’s Nevermore. The labels warn viewers against forms of misogyny and sexism supposedly exhibited in the works.
In an interview with The Telegraph, art historian Ruth Millington rejected the relabeling, calling it a “woke attempt to call out misogyny” which “unwittingly centers the male gaze” by shifting the viewer’s attention to the man and framing the woman as “a passive victim.” Millington added that “in a painting of multiple gazes, it’s unfair and misogynistic to emphasize the male perspective.” She suggested instead that she’d “rather read a fresh new label which invites viewers to imagine what the woman is thinking.”
Previously works by William Hogarth had been canceled amidst accusations of “sexual violence, anti-Semitism and racism;” John William Waterhouse’s painting Hylas and the Nymphs was taken down by the Manchester Art Gallery to “prompt conversation.” Even collections of historical instruments made from ivory, possibly related to slave trade, such as harpsichords formerly owned by Georg Friedrich Händel, have fallen in the crosshairs of the “decolonisation” efforts conducted by the Royal Academy of Music.
