The National Trust appeared in a Guardian article last Tuesday for covering artworks with male subjects at an exhibit aimed in celebrating the life of Margaret Armstrong. Margaret Armstrong was a 19th-century woman married to the celebrated Lord William Armstrong, and the idea of the exhibition was to show visitors rooms of artworks with male subjects covered with plastic sheets so they can, allegedly, encourage a discussion about the lack of female representation in art.
That’s censoring art with males in it, to encourage a feminist agenda driven discussion (a discussion that always ends up shaming and silencing men into a one-sided rant fest), in an exhibit that’s aimed to celebrate the life of the wife of a celebrated 19th-century weapon designer and visionary. A wife that doesn’t seem to have any notable achievements in life that can be compared to her husband’s (in fact, the couple had no children).
This is a ridiculous excuse to present a politically-correct, radical feminist agenda-driven exhibit anyone has come up with yet. The last contender was the removal of Hylas and the Nymphs from its display at the Manchester Art Gallery earlier this year. And like the Nymphs incident, this ones was just as poorly received. People who visited the gallery paid £50 for a ticket, was expecting to find items and artefacts about Margaret Armstrong only to be greeted by the covered art. Many have accused the National Trust of censorship and being politically correct while calling the whole exhibit ridiculous. So much so that they had to empty their comments box filled with various complaint and accusations several times a day since the show started.
And while the National Trust acts baffled as to why no one liked their little exhibit, there are a couple of things that can explain as to why their exhibit is ridiculous, to the point that nobody wants it.
Lady Armstrong is an Unknown
As mentioned earlier, Lady Armstrong has no notable achievements. So it was weird that the National Trust would even want to dedicate an exhibit to her when they practically don’t know anything about her. The people responsible for the exhibition, Kate Stobbart and Harriet Sutcliffe, even admits in a video that there’s almost nothing notable about Lady Armstrong’s life and that they can’t find enough things about her for making an exhibit. The National Trust has since deleted the video.
“We wanted to try and bring out Lady Margaret, and every time we tried to do that we failed really, because conversations with the experts here, and our own conversations when we were back in Newcastle, inevitably led to Lord Armstrong and not very much on Lady Armstrong,”
Stobbart said. So they claimed they instead went for a different approach: censoring art with men in them.
There is No Discourse to be Had
Anita Sarkessian, a famous modern feminist that many had supported in the past, once sported a banner on her Twitter account with the phrase “Trust No Man” shining in silver and white. She is a representative of a much wider movement that echoes the same sentiment, and many people have been aware of what the feminist movement has turned into: it has become such a man-hating movement that it even demonises gay men and transgender people. They stopped being interested in discussing things with men and instead say “trust no man” while lecturing and shouting angrily at men.
So it is understandable why people sent the National Trust negative reviews. Society at large understands that feminist dogma is all about man-hating these days and that feminist would trouble just about anyone or do anything to push their narrative, even if they had to use the name of someone’s dead wife. And to think that the National Trust received a £114,748 government grant to fund this debacle.
1st Image: Covered artworks, via dailymail.co.uk
2nd Image: A covered sculpture, via dailymail.co.uk
