White people become enraged at foreigners when they view paintings of the English countryside.
That is now the official position of the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge. and the museum curator is doing something about it. Bucolic paintings of the English countryside are being replaced with modernist monstrosities.
The cause of rural white rage is *checks notes* classic landscape paintings that only white people are interested in viewing. “British countryside can evoke ‘dark nationalist’ feelings in paintings, warns museum”https://t.co/8pYCDOtYUo
I have often said that the Leftist ideology is anti-life and anti-beauty (which are essentially the same thing in most cases), and like clockwork, Leftists go out of their way to prove me correct.
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”.
The curator of the museum insists that this move is not “woke,” but rather…well, I am not sure, because it sure as hell looks woke to me and everybody else.
“Inclusive” is the word of the day, it seems, and English people who famously spend inordinate amounts of time walking in their countryside need to stop loving the rolling hills and stopping at every pub along the path. Get with the program and love yourself something more contemporary and urban. Maybe stop at a mosque and protest for Hamas.
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 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.”
Enrichment by subtraction, and most particularly the subtraction of the British population and what defines the culture.
Inclusivity is all the rage in Great Britain, or should I say among a certain subset of the British people–the transnational elite.
For instance, in Trafalgar Square one statue base out of four has a rotation of statues instead of a permanent monument to a great Briton, and the next one has just been announced. It looks very British indeed.
Described as a “homage to a metropolitan woman of colour”, this monstrosity has been chosen as the new sculpture to be displayed on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth. pic.twitter.com/jDt7oYtTEl
It’s not just the English countryside that is under attack in the arts; portraiture is as well since White Britons were such horrible 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 what is now the Fitzwilliam 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”.
There really isn’t much to say about this other than the obvious: when the curator of a museum is attacking the founder for being descended from an oppressor, perhaps they shouldn’t accept the salary they no doubt enjoy spending. It really is the only moral choice available to them.
The absurdity of all this is obvious. Literally, everybody is descended from both oppressors and oppressed, because if you go back far enough we will find somebody who fits into those categories in our genetic inheritance. The difference is that Western countries have kept a history due to long traditions of literacy, collection of ancient artworks, and of course an usual but often healthy history of self-reflection.
This is not true of many of the cultures celebrated by the diversity crowd. I am pretty sure that many of the cultures they seem to prefer wouldn’t have any museum curator positions open to them.
It’s fine–more than fine–to expend effort to reflect on what is admirable and not so much in human history, including our own.
What isn’t fine is an obsessive focus on what was bad in our own cultural history and a blindness to the weakness of others. The African slave trade was invented by Africans and, unfortunately, persists to this day on the continent. I don’t see a lot of museum curators attacking Africans selling others, because that would be politically incorrect.
The English countryside is beautiful, and the English have every right to enjoy it and its representation in art. That an art curator sees something dark in English people loving England shows that the real heart of darkness lies within her own breast.
