“Islamization?” they said. “That’ll never happen. You’re just being paranoid, bigoted, racist, and ‘Islamophobic.’ There is no Islamization in the West. The West stands firmly on its own principles, and never bows to violent intimidation. Free speech is a cardinal principle of any free society. Oh, but we have to draw a line between free speech and ‘hate speech.’ And Degas’ ‘Bather’ is now ‘hate speech.'”
“Dutch Museum Debates Censoring Degas Work to Avoid Muslim Offense,” by Abigail R. Esman, IPT News, February 18, 2020:
They are two of the most beloved artists of all time: Edgar Degas, celebrated for his extraordinary draftsmanship and tender, dynamic paintings of ballerinas; and Vincent van Gogh, adored not just for his tragic life story, but for his shimmering canvases, those world-famous images of starry nights and bright sunflowers.Now, a museum dedicated to Van Gogh’s oeuvre is asking whether it is “appropriate,” in anno 2020, to exhibit a drawing by Degas.
To be sure, it’s not just any drawing. The sketch in question depicts a bathing woman from behind, her derriere revealed in all its flesh and glory. It is also a drawing the Amsterdam-based Van Gogh Museum purchased last year at auction for the eye-widening price of $6 million.
Yet apparently even before acquiring the “Bather,” part of a series Van Gogh is known to have especially admired, museum staff discussed the issue of whether it could or should be placed on view. Earlier this month, the Van Gogh Museum’s new director, Emilie Gordenker, observed on Dutch national TV that while she is pleased the work is now hanging in the museum, she considers it important to address the question of “whether female nudes are appropriate for people of all cultures.”
This, as everyone immediately understood, was code, a subtle way of asking, really, whether nudes should be exhibited at all in a museum located in a city where Muslims happen to live.
It’s not the first time a question like this has been asked. In 2006, a Berlin opera house cancelled its performance of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” out of concern for the “incalculable safety risk” posed by a scene depicting the severed heads of Mohammed, Jesus, Buddha, and Neptune. A year later, the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague bowed to pressure from Muslim radicals who threatened the museum if it exhibited photographs by Iranian art student Soorah Hera that depicted gay men disguised as Mohammed and his son-in-law Ali. The works were removed from the exhibition, and Hera was forced into hiding. And following the death threats and assassination attempts against several European cartoonists who had depicted the prophet Mohammed, a sin in Islam, gunmen stormed the editorial office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. Twelve people were killed and11 injured in the attack.
But since the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Western cultural leaders have tended to be less willing to compromise on these issues. More important, there is nothing blasphemous about the Degas drawing, nothing about it to send radicalized Muslims into a violent rage. It poses no “security risk” to the museum. What’s more, no Muslim or Muslim group has threatened to take action, or even mentioned any discomfort with the drawing, at least publicly, nor has the museum indicated otherwise. And no one appears to have requested it not be placed on exhibition.
So why, then, the debate?
“The role of museums is changing,” Gordenker told TV program “Buitenhof” on Feb. 9. “They are increasingly seen as part of the culture and society around them.”
But is that really new? Many in the art world can recall the uproar when, in 1999, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani threatened to cut off all subsidies to the Brooklyn Museum over its plans to include a painting by the artist Christopher Ofili of the Virgin Mary, created with oil paint, glitter, and elephant dung. (The work is now part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.) The museum refused to bow to his pressure, and the public by and large stood with it. You do not censor art, the public declared. You especially do not censor art without first understanding it. And the censorship of public institutions is not an American value….