Following the Party Line at the Museum

 

Last week Debby and I went to an exhibit at the Kimbell museum of Dutch art from the great days of the Dutch republic, with most of the paintings and prints coming from a museum in Boston. It was magnificent. Anyone who can should take in the exhibit. We went twice.

However, the notes accompanying the paintings are better skipped if one is interested in art instead of dulling, repetitive, irrelevant, woke sermonizing. A beautiful painting of ships is attached to a note reminding readers that some sailing ships were used to transport slaves. A still life of luxury items has a note about slaves or exploited locals in some of the countries where the items originated, and so on and on and on.

What is appropriate in a history book or seminar is not at an art exhibit. In an art exhibit it is both jarring and distracting and an example of how pernicious and pervasive the critical race/DEI stuff is and of how hostile it is to Western civilization. I doubt that an exhibit of artifacts from ancient Egypt curated by the same writers would be accompanied repeatedly reminders that the pyramids were not built by skilled union labor or that notes accompanying an exhibit of Chinese art would dwell on the prevalence of slavery in China throughout its history or that an exhibit of Indian sculpture would feature commentary on the evils of the caste system.

So, go to the exhibit. Skip over the notes. And maybe drop the people at the museum a text or email saying what they are doing is wrong, because it is. And people should speak up. We and our civilization do not have to take this lying down.