Gallery renames historic paintings with offensive titles
Artworks with “offensive” titles will be renamed under a new gallery policy.
Curators with the council-run Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums will rebrand paintings if their original names are found to be ones they would “no longer choose to use”.
Artworks from the first half of the 20th century have already been renamed to avoid offending modern visitors, and the term “African” has been removed from the title of one sculpture.
The policy is understood to be a first for art galleries in the UK.
The renaming decision was made as part of the Re-Framing the Gallery project, which was launched to erase language that might be “racist, offensive, and discriminatory”.
Aberdeen Galleries has issued a Renaming Statement, which pledges to take action on offensive language, stating: “Some language in the titles of artworks in our collection is racist, offensive, and discriminatory.
“We will remove this language where it appears in titles and replace specific terms, or amend whole titles as necessary, as we come across it in the course of working with the collection.”
Five pieces in the Aberdeen Art Gallery have so far been renamed as part of the commitment.
Art UK, the charity which receives funding from Arts Council England and other sources, carried out an investigation to establish more precisely what the culture depicted, and this work informed the new name.
A bronze sculpture by Belgian artist Arthur Puyt, depicting several Congolese men working with a small metal foundry in the Katanga province, was known as “African Group”. Now, it has been renamed to A Copper Foundry, Katanga.
Claude Rogers, the British artist, created a 1938 painting held by Aberdeen which depicts a black lady sitting in her Sunday best. This had been titled “a negress”, but under the new policy, this was changed to “a woman”.
Following further research, it was found that the sitter looked like another contemporary sitter known as “Imogen”, so the painting was renamed a second time after her.
Other works from the early 20th century by Gwenda Morgan, Neville Lewis and Esther Blaikie Mackinnon have also been retitled to remove racial terminology.
‘Openness, fairness and transparency’
In a pledge to rename artworks deemed offensive, Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums said: “We seek to create a culture that values all the differences that communities bring, and which values openness, fairness and transparency.
“We will continually strive to maintain an environment in which people from all backgrounds can live and work together harmoniously by challenging unlawful or unfair discrimination, prejudice, stereotyping, harassment, and undignified and disrespectful behaviour.”
The renaming policy is part of a broader project by the council-run service launched in 2022 to “recognise the integral role of empire and colonialism in museums”. This included identifying and sharing details of individuals and Aberdeen-built ships and their connections to the legacy of slavery.
To make what is held by the galleries more diverse, the service also pledged to “spend the next 5 years prioritising the acquisition of objects across the collections that fairly and equitably reflect the society we live in”.
Affirmative action
Several institutions across Scotland took action in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, and the SNP Government sponsored the creation of a steering group on “Empire, Slavery and Scotland’s Museums” (ESSM), investing £150,000 in the committee tasked with tackling historic legacies.
The committee, headed by Sir Geoff Palmer who led reviews of Edinburgh’s contested statues, told the Scottish Government that a new museum would be needed to “address our role in the empire”.
As part of the review of Edinburgh monuments which he led, Adam Smith’s grave was included in a dossier of sites linked to “slavery and colonialism”, despite the economist’s opposition to slavery.