(NewsGlobal.com)- Due to the “present circumstances,” the British National Gallery has altered the name of a 19th-century drawing by French impressionist Edgar Degas from “Russian Dancers” to “Ukrainian Dancers.”
Besides the deserved eye-roll toward the “wokeness,” the gallery joining the ranks of people seeking to “cancel” the past is a heresy.
Degas named his painting. If you rename it, you are canceling Degas, not Russians.
After Ukrainian artist and activist Mariam Naiem penned letters to several western art museums that had pieces from the series, the painting’s original name was changed.
It’s a “micro win,” Naiem said. Forcing a gallery to do something ridiculous will be her crowning achievement. If she is a Degas fan, she certainly didn’t respect him.
The gallery confessed that the name change was the product of public pressure and had nothing to do with new facts uncovered regarding Degas’ work. Degas is an innocent bystander who’s been victimized by the mob.
For many years, the title of this classic work has been a topic of debate, and it has been explored in academic literature. Why a pastel drawing called “Russian Dancers” would be controversial is quizzical. Would an artist have been pressured to rename a painting called “The Muslims” in the wake of 9/11?
The gallery said that due to the increasing spotlight over the last month because of the present circumstances, they believed it was an excellent time to revise the painting’s title to better reflect the painting’s theme.
The theme is Russians dancing.
According to a gallery’s official website description, the dancers in the 1890s pastel and charcoal artwork “are probably definitely Ukrainian rather than Russian.” No additional explanation is provided.
“Probably definitely.”
Despite the shaky confidence of the statement, it wouldn’t matter if the dancers were, in fact, Ukrainian. Degas titled his piece “Russian Dancers.”
Full stop.
The renaming is another example of how, as part of a wave of Russophobia, Russia’s cultural past, which has nothing to do with current events, is b
