The sad fate of the Brooklyn Museum

Our book, which is due to be published next Wednesday, is devoted to the current drift of certain museums [1] and could not cover all the establishments concerned, of which there are unfortunately hundreds worldwide. The Brooklyn Museum (ill. 1), although clearly one of the most active in this area, has thus escaped our attention. Fortunately, there is La Tribune de l’Art to catch us up...

1. The Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Ajay_Suresh (CC BY 2.0)

See the image in its page

In 2016, this museum had already completely hung up its American collections to better reflect the spirit of the times. Rather than presenting a representative overview of art from the United States, it was mainly a question, as journalist Lee Rosenbaum explained on his blog CultureGrrl to write the history of American art from a systematically critical point of view, emphasising only the dark sides of American history. This clearly did not go far enough, since a new hanging was carried out in October, the objective of which was clearly stated in a press release from the museum that is no longer online on its website but can be found on Webarchive: the aim of this "transformative reinstallation" is to highlight "Black and BIPC feminist perspectives [2]". It is therefore noticeable that feminism is no longer relevant, but has been replaced by "black feminism", no doubt because white women are, by nature, racist...

This new presentation is described at length in an article in Le Monde. The curator of the American collections explains that she approached American art "‘through the prism of forced migration, colonialism and slavery". At least there is no ambiguity.
To achieve this, it is therefore necessary to "break the classic, chronological and Western-centric narrative", which is reflected in particular in the display of a gallery of 19th-century portraits which, in her great kindness, she has not "removed" : she simply lowered them "to seat height" to initiate a debate on the…