"I hate the Brooklyn Museum."

Wrote Palladian in the comments to yesterday's post with Lincoln and the nude slave.

They have wonderful collections ruined by ham-handed attempts at teaching political lessons. For Chrissakes, they have a gallery called the Herstory Gallery. Really.

Dear Brooklyn Museum: Stop using the objects in your wonderful collections as if they were "Wacky Experiments" in a children's science museum. These objects, for the most part, were not made for urban liberal didactic purposes. Show us the stuff in a beautiful and sympathetic way and shut the fuck up. You were already tiresome by the time you "stuck it to the man" with the "Sensation" exhibit in the late 90s. Now you're just embarrassing yourself. And disrespecting the wonderful art over which you, unfortunately, have stewardship.

Let me endorse that comment by posting 3 photos of quotes painted on the wall with PC good intentions:







But they don't just do PC women-and-minorities self-esteem boosting. They foster interest in art with some fabulous displays of nudity:





And part of the didacticism is letting the kids know that only rubes are bothered by naked bodies displayed in the high art format. Here's the text on the wall next to that last sculpture (Bacchante, by Frederick William MacMannies):


enlarge.