![The Lost Trail, by Charles Ferdinand Wimar](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/world-news/2024/06/24/TELEMMGLPICT000383154489_17192519662950_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqCceMXJtaZGMG8GkK7K3ZQszIdpUn0LXD-GlW6u1rXwA.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Backlash as Spanish museum opens new exhibition ‘re-reading’ collection for colonial ties
Gauguin and Picasso accused of ‘cultural appropriation’ for depictions of black people
![The Lost Trail, by Charles Ferdinand Wimar](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/world-news/2024/06/24/TELEMMGLPICT000383154489_17192519662950_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqCceMXJtaZGMG8GkK7K3ZQszIdpUn0LXD-GlW6u1rXwA.jpeg?imwidth=680)
One of Madrid’s most famous museums is facing a backlash for holding an exhibition examining its own artworks’ links to “colonial violence”.
The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, one of three museums in the capital which make up the “Golden Triangle of Art”, is “examining its conscience” through its own collection.
But it faces accusations of “revisionism” and cosying up to the progressive Left-wing government, which has ordered a review of all state museum collections for their colonial connections.
Guillermo Solana, the Madrid museum’s artistic director, made an impassioned defence of the show on Monday, saying it was Thyssen’s “most important exhibition of the year”.
He said: “I don’t see what is controversial about this. Nor do I know anyone who admires the exploits of the English in India, the Belgians in the Congo, the US in Vietnam, or anyone in Spain who still approves of slavery.”
![Portrait of David Lyon](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/world-news/2024/06/24/TELEMMGLPICT000383180833_17192523241930_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqvHvVfV1SJqTMKlHaE5FBljAQrtBX4DuxcERUgj-BuUY.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The exhibition, Colonial Memory in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collections, uses 58 works from the museum’s main historical collection and 17 contemporary pieces from its spin-off TBA21 collection to “highlight the consequences of colonialism [and] its presence in Western iconography through idyllic and exoticising images that mask inequality and colonial violence”.
From the inclusion of black slaves in 17th-century scenes to the “cultural appropriation” of Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso in their depictions of black people, the show charts the variants of colonial and racist attitudes as reflected in art through the centuries.
Included from the main Thyssen collection is a portrait of a British sugar plantation owner, David Lyon, lent a dandified air in an 1825 painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence – just a few years before he was paid a fortune in compensation for the emancipation of about 2,500 slaves on his Jamaica estate.
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Reacting to criticism by newspaper art critics such as Mario de las Heras in El Debate, who called the show “revisionist”, Mr Solana said that examining how art reflects colonialist attitudes and other discarded values of the past has been a reality for decades.
“I have not received any orders from the government,” said Mr Solana
Spain’s conservative and far-Right opposition parties have been critical of the decision by Ernest Urtasun, the Left-wing culture minister, to review all state museum collections for their colonial connections.
The Thyssen-Bornemisza is run by a private foundation but with involvement from the state, which leases the artworks from the Spanish widow of the late German art collector Heinrich Thyssen.