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British museum viciously mocked for warning landscape paintings may evoke ‘nationalist’ feelings

March 16, 2024 | | Print Article

An art museum in the U.K. is warning visitors that pictures that depict the pastoral British countryside can trigger “dark nationalist” feelings.

Cambridge University’s Fitzwilliam Museum is revamping some of its displays to be compatible with leftist sensitivities of the modern era although the museum’s director bristles over the idea that the overhaul is “woke,” a term that is rapidly becoming a dirty word.

“I would love to think that there’s a way of telling these larger, more inclusive histories that doesn’t feel as if it requires a push-back from those who try to suggest that any interest at all in [this work is] what would now be called ‘woke’,”  Luke Syson told The Telegraph.

A new sign advises “rolling English hills” can evoke feelings of “pride towards a homeland” in an apparent effort to promote a certain stigma about the past that’s incompatible with current-day cultural cleansers.

In a gallery that displays “a bucolic work” by British artist John Constable who is renowned for his bucolic paintings of country settings, patrons are advised that “there is a darker side” to the “nationalist feeling” that could be evoked by images of the countryside.

“Landscape paintings were also always entangled with national identity,” reads a sign in the Nature gallery. “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 museum warns. “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.”

According to The Telegraph, visitors to the new Identity gallery are informed that “uniformed and wealthy sitters” portraits “became vital tools in reinforcing the social order of a white ruling class, leaving very little room for representations of people of colour, the working classes or other marginalized people”.

The museum’s denigrating of the past and those who have wistful feelings about a more traditional – and saner – time was slammed by X users.

Meanwhile, the “woke” conquest of Western civilization continues in jolly old England.

“Lady in Blue, a painted bronze statue by New York artist Tschabalala Self, was on Friday confirmed as the latest sculpture to be installed on the plinth, with an unveiling expected in 2026,” The Telegraph reported. “Described as a ‘young, metropolitan woman of colour who could be just one of many Londoners today’, the statue depicts a black woman wearing a blue dress and high heels midway through a confident stride.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has approved plans to install the symbol of “equity” in the high profile public setting. It’s akin to the “woke” revolutionaries who have taken over London planting their flag at the heart of the one-time capital of Western culture.

Chris Donaldson
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