https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-national-gallery-of-identity-politics-11545179349
‘Every thing is what it is and not another thing,” observed the 18th-century British philosopher Joseph Butler. If that seems obvious, you haven’t been paying attention to what has been going on in the culture. Once upon a time (and it wasn’t that long ago), universities were what they claimed to be, institutions dedicated to the preservation and transmission of civilization’s highest values. Now they are bastions of political correctness, “intersectionality” and identity politics.
Something similar can be said of art museums. Although barely 200 years old as an institution, the art museum until recently existed primarily to preserve and nurture a love of art. Today, many art museums serve as fronts in battles that have little or nothing to do with art: entertainment, yes; snobbery and money, of course; and politics, politics, politics.
The latest example of this trend is particularly egregious because it involves one of America’s premier institutions, the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Established and endowed by Andrew Mellon in 1937, the National Gallery quickly became one of the nation’s two or three most exquisite art museums. In terms of the breadth, depth and excellence of its collection, its only real rival is the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. And because of its place in the nation’s capital (and its claim on the taxpayer’s purse—about $140 million of its $190 million budget comes from the U.S. Treasury), the National Gallery occupies a singular place in the metabolism of America’s cultural life.
Obituarists looking to write the epitaph of the American art museum could do worse than ponder the elevation of Kaywin Feldman, currently director and president of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, to take the helm of the National Gallery in March when Earl A. “Rusty” Powell III, director since 1993, retires.
