Museum warns of landscapes’ ‘nationalist’ bias
Fitzwilliam in Cambridge undergoes overhaul to make displays ‘inclusive and representative’
THE Fitzwilliam Museum has suggested that paintings of the British countryside evoke dark “nationalist feelings”.
The museum, owned by the University of Cambridge, has undertaken an overhaul of its displays, in a move that its director insisted was not “woke”.
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 pushback 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”.
Categories include “Men Looking at Women”, “Identity”, “Migration and Movement”, and “Nature”, which includes English landscapes by Constable, Gainsborough and Palmer, and French scenes by Pissarro, Renoir, Monet and Cézanne.
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 that 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.”
A sign for the new “Identity” gallery informs visitors that portraits of uniformed and wealthy sitters “became vital tools in reinforcing the social order of a white ruling class, leaving very little room for representations of people of colour, the working classes or other marginalised people”. It adds that “portraits were often entangled, in complex ways, with British imperialism and the institution of transatlantic slavery”.
Paintings in this space include Joseph Wright’s (1734-97) portrait of Richard Fitzwilliam, who bequeathed £100,000 to fund the museum. Labelling for the portrait points out that Fitzwilliam’s wealth “came from his grandfather, Sir Matthew Decker, who had amassed it in part through the transatlantic trade of enslaved African people”.
The gallery also displays paintings intended to broaden representation with works by John Singer Sargent, the subject of “speculation he led a secret, queer life”, and works by artists in the Jewish diaspora, and a modern work by Joy Labinjo, the British-nigerian artist.
The “Migration and Movement” gallery display notes that “while some people chose to leave their homes, global conflict, discrimination and European colonialism meant others fled or were exiled by force”. Here, visitors can see works by Jewish artists who fled the Nazis, along with works specifically focused on the Roma gypsies and travellers, including Turner’s A Beech Wood with Gypsies Around a Fire.
In the “Men Looking at Women” gallery, the different ways in which male artists have portrayed female subjects is explored, until women’s more equal status in society altered how they were depicted.