In 2020, the Baltimore Museum will only purchase works signed by women

Its director wants to rebalance the collection. It also marks the centenary of the right to vote granted to American women. The fact remains that we are in the hard tendency of political correctness.

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We learn beautiful things by reading “Le Monde”! In 2020, the Baltimore Museum will only purchase works signed by women. He plans to spend two million dollars on it. Part of the sum raised in 2018 by the sale of three works from the collection, in order to increase the representation of ethnic minorities. The eight million dollars were first used to buy pieces from designers of African-American, Korean or Mexican origin. I point out that the three evacuated pieces were signed Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Franz Kline. This is what drives a gay by the wayside. Warhol. It is becoming difficult nowadays to favor one minority over another. The fact remains that it does not in any case belong to any majority.

If women are by no means rare in the United States, and in Maryland where Baltimore is located, they appeared on the walls. This is what struck the director Christopher Bedford, appointed in 2017, when he came. The man, however White, says he is ready for “radical” gestures. We have not apparently seen everything yet. The idea of ​​focusing on women in 2010 certainly aims to “correct the image of the institution and a historical imbalance in the collections”, but also to celebrate an anniversary. In August 1920, women obtained the right to vote long before the French (and a fortiori the Swiss) with the 19^e amendment to the Constitution.

Risk policy

Obviously, the manager takes risks. While it is of course open to him to proceed with deaccessioning (or sales), given that the institution remains private, he must confront the backers. Whites, without a doubt. But these look grim. It also acts against the historic heart of the museum. But the Baltimore one owes almost everything to two women, Claribel and Etta Cone. They had notably acquired, between engravings, paintings and sculptures, some 500 Matisse. A little less of Picasso. They were also close friends of Gertrude Stein in the 1910s. Can we play feminism against feminism by wanting to bring it up to date?

That said, “Le Monde”, which has become the temple of “political correctness” in France, is starting to back-pedal. The daily newspaper, which has a little too gently handed the microphone to minorities, in order to boost the audience, seems to discover with surprise their appetite for power. Censures. Prohibitions. Pressures by social networks. Threat. We are dealing with him with an unprecedented form of fascism without a charismatic leader. The newspaper has therefore recently published several forums that go rather little in the direction of the new “morality”. Michel Guerrin even cracked a pretty nutty editorial. And well supported. Would things start to move?

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