‘Offensive’ nymphs back on display
A GALLERY accused of censorship after removing a Victorian masterpiece for supposedly being offensive to women has performed a U-turn.
After a backlash against Manchester Art Gallery for taking down Hylas And The Nymphs by JW Waterhouse, it returned to pride of place over the weekend.
The Pre-Raphaelite work shows naked nymphs luring Argonaut warrior Hylas to a watery death. It had been claimed that the 1896 painting perpetuated ‘outdated and damaging stories’ that ‘women are either femmes fatales or passive bodies for male consumption’.
Its removal was arranged by contemporary artist Sonia Boyce. Visitors found in its usual place a message that it had been removed ‘to prompt conversations about how we display and interpret artworks’. Images of the painting were even removed from the gallery’s shop.
One art-lover called the move ‘feminism gone mad’ while others claimed it marked the moment the ‘Snowflake generation’ began rewriting Britain’s cultural history.
In response to the backlash, Manchester City Council, which runs the gallery, announced the painting would return.
The gallery’s interim director Amanda Wallace said: ‘We were hoping the experiment would stimulate discussion and it’s fair to say we’ve had that in spades.
‘We now plan to harness this strength of feeling for some further debate on these wider issues.’
Professor Liz Prettejohn, who curated a Waterhouse exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2009, told the BBC: ‘The Victorians are always getting criticised because they’re supposed to be prudish.
‘But here it would seem it’s us who are taking the roles of what we think of as the very moralistic Victorians.’