The latest edition of the Royal Academy’s magazine asks, “Should art ever be destroyed?” Historian Mary Beard’s response is that “occasional destruction” may be okay. She states — rather loftily — that art is “a major player in political and cultural debate and disagreement, and it must take the risks that come with that.” Works of art, it seems, are like women walking down unlit streets. They must be ready for the odd assailant.

Reassuringly, some players disagree with Mary Beard. On 11 October, the National Museum Directors’ Council wrote to The Times deploring the growing frequency of assaults on art. “Since July 2022, the National Gallery alone has been the victim of five separate attacks on iconic paintings.”

A week later, airport style security measures were brought in there.

The National Gallery attacks were carried out by the climate activist group Just Stop Oil. There is widely shared film footage in which demonstrators throw soup, glue themselves to frames, break picture glass with hammers. Their actions stretch the concept of “debate” to its limit.

Just Stop Oil deploys words as well as deeds. During the action of 14 October 2022, which involved the iconic Sunflowers, 21-year-old Phoebe Plummer, asked Gallery visitors:

What is worth more — art or life? Is it worth more than food, more than justice?

Phoebe went on to speak of “the protection of our planet and people … Fuel is unaffordable for millions of cold and hungry people.” In the heat of the moment, it is possible she forgot that art galleries function as warm spaces, open to those who must economise on heating.

Days after the new security measures were brought in, the blogger Diamond Geezer went to Trafalgar Square:

The National Gallery essentially isn’t walk up any more, it’s a queueing marathon…. I felt particularly bad for the Van Gogh queue, most of whom were…elderly, but still expected to queue for well over half an hour without anywhere to sit.

In the wider arts world, there is not only sympathy for Just Stop Oil’s beliefs, but also support for their methods. No one present in Room 6 of National Gallery on 14 October 2022 — least of all Phoebe Plummer and her co-activist Anna Holland — found the action funny. Yet within hours, Royal Society of Literature Fellow Claire Armitstead was commenting in The Guardian on the event’s “situationist wit”.

Plummer and Holland went on to face criminal charges. On the eve of their sentencing, the art collective Liberate Tate, in collaboration with Greenpeace, wrote an open letter to the judge concerned, asserting:

Art can be, and frequently is, iconoclasm. These activists should not receive custodial sentences for an act that connects entirely to the artistic canon … It is our expert opinion that … it will inevitably enrich the story and social meaning of Sunflowers; and will be remembered, discussed and valued in itself as a creative and incisive work.

The signatories were curators, authors, academics, authors, actors and theatre directors. Their attempt to broaden the aesthetic understanding of the judiciary was not a success. 

In his sentencing remarks Judge Hehir — clearly unimpressed with the “situationist wit” — said, “Phoebe Plummer, your words on camera — ‘What is worth more, art or life?’ reveal how little the two of you cared about Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, or art generally.” The women were convicted of criminal damage and given sentences of 27 and 20 months, respectively.

Liberate Tate’s letter may be open, but it bears the reek of a closed world. There’s a perverse, class-based playfulness in its claim that destroying things is creative. Those who live on vandalised estates may not agree.

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Contemporary art criticism asks us to think about what isn’t there. For instance, curators of the National Gallery’s current exhibition “Constable and the Hay Wain” invite us to consider the absence of political struggle in his paintings. In this light, we may look at who did not sign the Liberate Tate/Greenpeace letter.

There is a striking absence of those “inexpert” people whose footfall helps to ensure the funding — and survival — of public galleries. Those who feel pride, a sense of ownership even, in these collections. Who feel impoverished, not enriched, when their artworks are threatened. 

Acts of overt destruction are rare. But there is a more subtle threat that looms when iconoclastic experts are in the ascendant. Their views are not ones held by the wider community. But in the service of cherished ideals, gallery professionals can direct and distort — even diminish — what visitors may see.

A few examples.

The Burrell Collection, a Glasgow museum, reopened in March 2022 after a 5-year  refurbishment, The new display included many items of Chinese pottery, including two 17th century figures of Guanyin, a female deity. One label described her as a “Transgender Icon” and an accompanying label stated:

Guanyin has always represented the basic human values of compassion and kindness. Trans people deserve respect and understanding. Trans rights are human rights. Be more Guanyin.

A second label declared, “Trans people have always existed and are rooted in history.”

This might seem like harmless — even well-intentioned — curatorial zeal. But at the time, the country’s Government was busy gearing itself up to pass the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. The labels showed the Burrell’s staff taking one side in a hard-fought debate.

From a Buddhist perspective too, the wording is suspect. Guanyin is descended from the male Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara — a Bodhisattva being one who forgoes enlightenment till everybody is free. To attain this end, they manifest in whatever form most effectively liberates others from suffering. The centuries-old compassion embodied by Guanyin is fundamentally different from today’s navel-gazing gender politics. 

Within weeks, For Women Scotland, who campaign for women’s and children’s rights, expressed their concern to the Burrell, saying, “curators have to walk a fine line and be careful that they do not politicise or impose contemporary Western viewpoints onto other cultures.” Two years later, the disputed labels remain in situ. 

While the Burrell got ready to reopen, Birmingham University’s Barber Institute of Fine Arts launched a project, which it describes as the “unlearning” of “previously accepted … narratives.’ This focused on two paintings, Murillo’s The Marriage Feast at Cana and Van Dyck’s Ecce Homo.

The Marriage Feast depicts Christ’s first miracle — water is turned to wine — in 17th century Seville. There’s a wide, lavishly set table, with the newly married couple in the centre and Christ seated at the left. On the right, servants fill water pots while a boy in a bright red tunic looks on. The boy is black, and the label tells us:

His lavish outfit suggests that he may have been enslaved. There were many enslaved Africans or Afro-Hispanics in Seville at the time, many of whom were forced to convert to Christianity through baptism. The painting was commissioned by Nicolas Omazur, a Flemish silk merchant … possibly to mark his marriage … and demonstrate his religious piety.

The subtext is clear. We are to understand that Murillo’s work celebrates an immoral order, a system in which rich white people appear virtuous, even as they participate in — and profit from — exploitation.

Yet there are other ways of seeing. A viewer who considers the picture, not its label, may note the married pair have been rendered in pale colours and seem to fade into the background. The people who are foregrounded are the vividly painted Christ, the servants and the boy. 

It is equally possible that The Marriage Feast at Cana is subversive, suggesting that wealth and status are made unimportant by Christianity’s transformative power. But perhaps the Barber Institute’s dedication to “unlearning” prevents it from citing Galatians 3.28:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female — for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

The second “unlearned” painting is Van Dyck’s Ecce Homo. This depicts a scourged Christ, crowned with thorns, being presented to the mob before his crucifixion. Van Dyck does not include Pilate or the crowd. He only shows us Jesus beside a black Roman soldier.

In reproduction, the soldier is Christ’s shadowy opposite. When viewed in the gallery, the similarities between the two become more evident. Both heads turn in the same direction. A white brushstroke on the soldier’s lower eyelid echoes a tear on Jesus’s pale face. The Roman legionary stares at him intensely. And the gesture with which he holds a cloak round Christ’s nakedness is protective. It is a mysterious work and, like all paintings of this type, one that is meant to elicit contemplation. 

The Barber’s label short-circuits that process. We are told that Ecce Homo:

… may be understood as an expression of racial demonisation, and of the links between race and religion, during the artist’s time. Today, this makes it a problematic work. 

A blog on the Barber’s website goes further. This outlines a curatorial research project to:

… interrogate and contextualise this derogatory and demonising presentation of a person of colour as well as  discussing the racial violence and stereotyping that this work contributes to. 

The curator has no doubt that Van Dyck’s painting “upholds the relationship between whiteness and power.” That verdict carries more than an echo of Mary Beard’s claim that artworks may invite their own destruction. Only a minority of visitors will access this blog. But they are likely to read the label telling them Ecce Homo is “problematic”.  

On one level this description is apt. A problematic work is one that is full of uncertainty, and it isn’t possible to be certain of what Van Dyck sought to convey. But another meaning of problematic is “offensive or harmful”.  How many visitors will believe it is wrong to look at a work that causes harm and offence, and walk away? How many will see ugliness instead of aesthetic power?

And how did we get to this point?

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These examples are recent ones. But Denise Fahmy, a co-founder of Freedom in Arts, points out that such endeavours began in the late 1980s and 90s. Denise, who is a visual arts specialist,  argues that “unlearning” has its rewarding aspects. “The idea of deconstructing culture to reveal structural power,” she writes, “Has been a resonant, influential and genuine endeavour.”

At the outset, the aim was promoting overlooked artists, giving them platforms. But as a fresh set of networks emerged, so did a new hierarchy. The ceramic artist Claudia Clare links this to:

… the vexed question of how do you assess, make judgements, of visual arts? And who decides? Because it is so hard to decide, especially for the long term, what is good, bad, and somewhere in between, the judgements are made on the basis of “who you know”. 

Questions of justice and exclusion can be valid, of course, and can fuel power and necessary debate. Yet it feels unjust that all but narrow cliques of activists and curators are being excluded here. As they wage their heated war of ideas, audiences — those who stand and wait outside the National Gallery — are left out in the cold.