Kulturkampf

[HaughtyFrank]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/14/fitzwilliam-museum-cambridge-university-not-woke-displays

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https://archive.ph/tzmvm

Luke Syson said last week: “I would love to think that there’s a way of telling these larger, more inclusive histories that doesn’t feel as if it requires a push-back from those who try to suggest that any interest at all in [this work is] what would now be called ‘woke’.”
The new signage states that pictures of “rolling English hills” can stir feelings of “pride towards a homeland

However, in a gallery displaying a bucolic work by Constable, visitors are informed that “there is a darker side” to the “nationalist feeling” evoked by images of the British countryside.
It states that this national sentiment comes with “the implication that only those with a historical tie to the land have a right to belong”.
Paintings at the Fitzwilliam have been reordered into themed categories, in a shake-up the museum’s director hopes will make the gallery’s displays “inclusive and representative”.



A sign for the Nature gallery states: “Landscape paintings were also always entangled with national identity.

“The countryside was seen as a direct link to the past, and therefore a true reflection of the essence of a nation.
“Paintings showing rolling English hills or lush French fields reinforced loyalty and pride towards a homeland.
“The darker side of evoking this nationalist feeling is the implication that only those with a historical tie to the land have a right to belong.”


The claims about the depiction of landscapes comes after the charity umbrella group Wildlife and Countryside Link submitted a report to MPs which claimed that the British countryside was seen as a “racist colonial” white space.
However, Mr Syson has insisted the shake-up of the museum is not “woke” or “radical chic”, saying: “Being inclusive and representative shouldn’t be controversial; it should be enriching.”