Penumbr

Shifting a white-only perspective

The initiative started six years ago, but took a back seat until Rijksmuseum’s mammoth 10-year renovation project was completed in 2013. Gosselink says that the museum had in the past received complaints that artwork descriptions, some which date as far back as 1910, were written from a purely white perspective.

“We had a text saying that Australia was discovered by a European man, but we all know that obviously Australia had existed for millions of years before any Europeans went there,” says Gosselink.

However, far from erasing all traces of original titles and descriptions, Rijksmuseum will archive them so that the public can still access them if they wanted to.

“It’s not a matter of whitewashing our Dutch history, we do think that old colonial terms are also part of it,” says Gosselink.

The Rijksmuseum, which is one of the world’s leading art institutions, is working with representatives of indigenous groups and civil society organizations to come up with the most appropriate terms to use.  

“We would not want to change anything without their permission,” says Gosselink.

This is something I’ve been pushing for since I began this project, and I’m glad to see that it’s finally starting to catch on with influential institutions like the Rijksmuseum, whose immense online collection and digital archives have helped bring amazing content to MPoC.

The language used in the article leaves a bit to be desired, since titling artworks with racial slurs should never have been a thing in the first place. But I do think that leaving the former titles archived as evidence of institutional racism encourages accountability and helps show a changing narrative, rather than erasing all traces of the changes.

Secondly, thousands of works were created without titles, or the original titles were lost.  The Rijksmuseum was founded in 1885. For the overwhelmingly most part, the “original” titles they’re talking about are those given in 1885, by the museum.

And lastly, not only are many of those titles full of racial slurs, they’re inaccurate and do nothing to tell someone what the painting is actually of, where or when it was created, if it’s a portrait or a still life, or really anything about it at all.

Like honestly, how are people pissy that the museum is providing MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE ART? Earlier titles and information, all of that is STILL THERE.

Considering how much slur-laden, awful, dehumanizing crap I’ve had to wade through over the last 3 years to find these artworks to share with you all, the fact that literally anyone is finally willing to take another look at how these works are indexed and categories is a blessing.

This is what you see when you click the link

the description text for the painting reads as follows:

Young Woman with a Fan, Simon Maris, c. 1906                

oil on canvas, h 41cm × w 29cm.

Simon Maris painted this woman on various occasions, holding a cigarette or a red fan. Perhaps she was a model, yet this painting could also be an actual portrait. For want of information, in the past it was variously titled as The Negress, Portrait of a Mulatto, East-Indian Type, The Little Negress. These terms are now considered derogatory. Until her name is known, the painting will bear a neutral title.   

UNTIL HER NAME IS KNOWN.

Make Life Extraordinary – Reach for a Perrier

A friend of mine shared this on Facebook, and I shared it too. But seeing as I have a lot more followers on tumblr than friends on Facebook, I thought I’d bring it here.

Will’s post really talked to my heart, because it’s exactly what it’s like to live in a gentrified neighborhood. Sure, my wall didn’t get painted on, but the feelings of entitlement that are held over you are universal. It’s very frustrating when people have been living in your neighborhood for less than 3 years and they act like you’re the new ones.

And let’s not even get into the comment section of this post! You cannot compare gentrification, which systemically kicks poor people (who are usually poc) out of their neighborhoods to “white flight”.

‘Girl Meets World’ star Rowan Blanchard speaks out about the importance of intersectional feminism

“After a painful scalp reduction surgery to remove a bald spot, Donald Trump confronted his then-wife, who had previously used the same plastic surgeon.

“Your fucking doctor has ruined me!” Trump cried.

What followed was a “violent assault,” according to Lost Tycoon. Donald held back Ivana’s arms and began to pull out fistfuls of hair from her scalp, as if to mirror the pain he felt from his own operation. He tore off her clothes and unzipped his pants.

“Then he jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months. Ivana is terrified… It is a violent assault,” Hurt writes. “According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, ‘he raped me.’”

Following the incident, Ivana ran upstairs, hid behind a locked door, and remained there “crying for the rest of night.” When she returned to the master bedroom in the morning, he was there.

“As she looks in horror at the ripped-out hair scattered all over the bed, he glares at her and asks with menacing casualness: ‘Does it hurt?’”

Trumps lawyer on the incident: “You’re talking about the front-runner for the GOP, presidential candidate, as well as a private individual who never raped anybody. And, of course, understand that by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse.”

I watched that episode with my family and I could just feel how uncomfortable everyone was. Honestly, it was a really jarring, unpleasant episode.

Homer is a terrible dad. So is Peter. But Homer’s saving grace has always been that he tries—he’s bad at it and he fucks it up a lot, but he loves his family and he wants to be better than he is.

One of my favorite Homer moments is in “Diatribe of a Mad Housewife.” Tl;dr Marge writes a steamy romance novel starring herself and Ned, and when Homer finds out, he chases down Ned and, rather than attack him, asks him to teach him how to be a better husband.

There’s some part of his stupid self that wants to do better.

I never got that impression with Peter. Instead, the family has gotten more and more abusive towards Meg. It’s really unsettling for me when I started realizing that’s what happens sometimes in abusive families. Abusers sometimes single out one child to abuse, and quite often the other family members take the abuser’s side. After all, it’s easier to side with an abuser than to run the risk of becoming the target yourself.

There’s never really a point where it seems like Peter cares at all that his shitty behavior impacts his family. It actually seems to have gotten worse over the years. He expects everyone to clean up his messes because that’s always what happens; there’s really no reason for him not to be shitty.

And it’s easy to see how Meg is affected. She doesn’t have much of a character, really, because so much her screen time is devoted to being abused. The bits of character development all seem to hinge on her being this sad, neglected person who’s trying her best but never really gets any help from anyone. Quite the opposite; there have been a lot of episodes where her family sabotages any attempts to be herself.