Fitzwilliam Museum’s rehang ‘not woke’, insists director
‘Being inclusive and representative shouldn’t be controversial; it should be enriching’
THE director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge said that an “inclusive” rehang of its collection placing historical paintings alongside modern works of art was not “woke”.
Luke Syson said it should not be controversial to be “inclusive and representative” as the gallery reopens this week after a five-year refurbishment, with rooms based on themes rather than chronological displays.
The university museum’s main galleries will have an emphasis on reflecting the “evolution of its collection”.
Each gallery containing the museum’s 208-year-old collection will have a theme that brings together historic, modern and contemporary themes.
Contemporary works, such as Zipporah by Barbara Walker, will hang in the same rooms as paintings from the 1600s.
One room, called “identity”, will feature 18th-century portraits by William Hogarth alongside contemporary black British artist Joy Labinjo’s An 18th-century Family, which imagines African abolitionist Olaudah Equiano and his mixed-race household.
A room called “interiors”, will feature Ethel Walker’s 1916 painting Silence of the Ravine, which is thought to be the earliest female nude painted by an openly lesbian artist in the UK.
There will also be a wall of paintings dating from the 1720s to the 1920s all depicting women reading.
In one section about “men looking at women” Eugène Delacroix’s 1825 work Odalisque contrasts with Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Joan of Arc from 1882.
Mr Syson told The Observer he was hoping there would be no pushback over the new approach and it would be unfair to accuse the museum of being woke.
He said: “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 pushback from those who try to suggest that any interest at all in work by women artists or artists of colour – or subject matter that takes us into the world of LBGT culture – is being ‘radical chic’ or what would now be called ‘woke’.
“Being inclusive and representative shouldn’t be controversial; it should be enriching. We should all welcome the opportunities to understand each other better through the eyes of great makers and artists.”
Mr Syson said the display “suggests some new ways of looking, without insisting on them” of the museum’s most famous works alongside “new discoveries” from lesser-known painters.
Dr Rebecca Birrell, the curator of the rehang, said she hoped the display would avoid the controversy of other rehangs, adding: “You want the work to have the space to speak for itself.”