“Trigger” Words in Museums
December 19, 2015
‘Young Negro-Girl’ by Simon Maris (1900), now called ‘Young Girl Holding a Fan
FROM The Independent:
In a controversial move, Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum is removing any terms that might be considered offensive from the digitised titles and descriptions of the 220,000 artworks it has collected.
Words like ‘negro’, ‘Indian’ and ‘dwarf’ are all going, according to ArtsBeat, replaced with less triggering terms.
The 1900 painting ‘Young Negro-Girl’ for instance, will now be called ‘Young Girl Holding a Fan’.
“The point is not to use names given by whites to others,” said Martine Gosselink, head of the history department at the Rijksmuseum.
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