Cambridge University’s Fitzwilliam institution overhauls displays with visitors informed that landscape images can stir dark emotions
The Fitzwilliam Museum has suggested that paintings of the British countryside evoke dark “nationalist feelings”.
The museum, owned by the University of Cambridge, has undertaken an overhaul of its displays, in a move that its director insisted was not “woke”.
Luke Syson said last week: “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’.”
The new signage states that pictures of “rolling English hills” can stir feelings of “pride towards a homeland”.
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”.
Categories include Men Looking at Women, Identity, Migration and Movement, and Nature, which includes English landscapes by Constable, Gainsborough and Palmer, and French scenes by Pissarro, Renoir, Monet and Cézanne.
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.”
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.”
A sign for the new Identity gallery informs visitors that portraits of uniformed and wealthy sitters “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 marginalised 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”.
The Migration and Movement gallery display notes that “while some people chose to leave their homes, global conflict, discrimination and European colonialism meant others fled or were exiled by force”.
