Censors censured

I AM glad that Manchester Art Gallery has returned Hylas And The Nymphs to its rightful place (Mail).

Picking and choosing art to make it acceptable to modern standards is wrong. You only have to look at history, from Hitler to the Taliban, to see attempts at trying to deny and destroy a nation’s heritage.

A gallery’s role is to exhibit art for all to see; it’s up to the public to decide which paintings they do or do not like.

Oxford University decided to keep the Cecil Rhodes statue in the face of a campaign calling for its removal. I’m fully aware of the ignorance and prejudices prevalent in the Victorian period but, even as a black man, I thought that was a brave decision and, indeed, the right thing to do. HENLEY JOHNSON,

St James, Jamaica. I’D LIKE to see a new painting entitled Manchester Art Gallery Curator Collecting Her P45.

I have been studying art for decades, visiting galleries and exhibitions, and know it is important to have a grasp of history and not to make judgments based on a fashionable politically correct view.

After all, art students hone their skills by drawing nudes. DAVE KETTERIDGE,

Doncaster, S. Yorks. AS A young teacher in the Seventies, a school TV programme was accompanied by a leaflet showing Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian Man, a male nude.

The headmaster insisted we draw ‘underpants’ on the figure before handing out leaflets to the children. CHRISTINE THOMPSON,

Ripley, Derbys.