{"id":46271,"date":"2019-01-01T05:00:40","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T10:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=46271"},"modified":"2018-12-31T15:21:31","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T20:21:31","slug":"whither-european-fine-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/01\/01\/whither-european-fine-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Whither European fine art?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s apparently not just problematic because the vast majority of it was produced by dead white males, but it’s also now considered to be a totem of white supremacist beliefs<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

“The Raft of the Medusa” (French: Le Radeau de la M\u00e9duse<\/em>) by Th\u00e9odore G\u00e9ricault 1818-19, an oil-on-canvas painting measuring 491 cm \u00d7 716 cm (16 ft 1 in \u00d7 23 ft 6 in)
Louvre, image via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

A Philadelphia-based art historian and curator believes exhibitions of European art in American museums should be \u201creconsidered\u201d in light of \u201ca surge in white supremacist violence\u201d across the country.<\/p>\n

Alexander Kaufmann says that \u201c[b]ecause the centering of Europe is baked into the architecture\u201d of museums, and \u201cusually inhabit the largest and most central galleries,\u201d people might not notice a connection to white supremacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut white supremacists do,\u201d he adds ominously.<\/p>\n

\u201cEurope\u2019s cultural prestige is their evidence for the racial superiority of white America,\u201d Kaufmann writes in Hyperallergic<\/em>. White supremacists and white nationalists gather at museums because that\u2019s \u201cwhere Europe\u2019s cultural patrimony is most visibly singled out as exceptional.\u201d<\/p>\n

White supremacy notwithstanding, American museums\u2019 original missions \u2014 \u201cprovid[ing] instruction for the industrial classes\u201d and helping the country achieve the goal of becoming the \u201cnoblest development of humanity\u201d \u2014 have long required a response, Kaufmann argues, and the activism of groups like the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition and the Guerrilla Girls can provide just that.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the violence in Charlottesville, Charleston, and Pittsburgh,\u201d Kaufmann says, \u201cour encyclopedic museums must take steps within their galleries of European Art to combat white supremacist ideology.\u201d (But are women who run around in gorilla masks \u201cto expose gender and ethnic bias [and] corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture\u201d really<\/em> part of a serious solution?)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s apparently not just problematic because the vast majority of it was produced by dead white males, but it’s also now considered to be a totem of white supremacist beliefs: A Philadelphia-based art historian and curator believes exhibitions of European art in American museums should be \u201creconsidered\u201d in light of \u201ca surge in white supremacist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,7,28,53],"tags":[102,262,99],"class_list":["post-46271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-history","category-media","category-politics","tag-art","tag-culture","tag-racism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-c2j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46273,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46271\/revisions\/46273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}