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A Dutch museum has currently been in the workings of a new initiative called "Adjustment of Colonial Terminology" Basically they will be changing the original names of hundreds of works of art to more "sensitive" titles. One pice called "young negro girl" to "girl with fan"
So far the museum has gotten lots of positive feed back from minorities in the area who have stated that many of the names were offensive. However there has been a handful of criticisms calling this initiative "whitewashing" To an extent I agree. I think that it is silly to rename historical pieces because they are offensive. Yes, the majority of said artists were white, racist old guys BUT that is apart of history. I think it is silly to try and hide our history and pretend it never happened. Just like the northerners during reconstruction tried to convince themselves that the civil war wasn't that bad.
I agree. The original titles of these pieces are relative to the time period which they were created, and to take that away is to take away a stamp of history.
ReplyDeleteMaddie Hanratty 8th