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Museums afraid to offend might as well close

An article in the New York Times about an exhibit of Philip Guston’s work. Four museums, including MFA Boston. The show would have included Guston’s cartoon paintings depicting white-hooded figures. Now, anyone with any sense — and not looking to be offended — would see the paintings as a spoof on ideas of white supremacy, the hooded figures clownish, trolls.

Apparently not. A joint statement by the museums’ directors said that they were “postponing the exhibition until a time at which we think that the powerful message of social and racial justice that is at the center of Philip Guston’s work can be more clearly interpreted.”

As you might expect, a firestorm ensued (or, as of one can be mustered for a middling reformed AbEx artist). Darby English, a professor of art history at the University of Chicago and a former adjunct curator at MoMA, called the decision “cowardly.” Responding to the fact that the show’s catalog is available in museum gift shops, Mark Godfrey, a curator at Tate Modern who co-organized the exhibition, asked why “the institutions are proud to put their name to a catalog where Klan paintings are reproduced on 26 different pages, but not confident to show them on their walls.”

The decision is cowardice and pandering by museums afraid to let patrons decide whether to be offended. (The remedy is to move to the next piece, for crying out loud). Guston depicted cartoonish Klan figures and Balthus is kiddie porn and Gaugin exploited those poor Tahitians and Picasso was a misogynist and Pollock beat up Lee Krasner and Caravaggio was a criminal. And so on.

If museums won’t display art that might offend someone, we are left with Mary Cassatt and Thomas Kincaid. Then, museums might as well shut the doors and furlough their remaining staff.

CLYDE SHUMAN,

Ossineke

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