Stanley Spencer, the Artist Pioneer Abandoned by Cambridge University

The museum of Cambridge University refuses to show classic art due to “racism”, and artist-critic Alexander Adams is concerned.

The painting Love Among the Nations (1935) by Stanley Spencer CBE RA (1891-1959) has been hung at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge since it was donated in 1963. As of last week, it is no longer there. A report reveals that it was first given a denigrating label, then taken off display in December 2022. When questioned by The Daily Telegraph, the museum said it had no plans to return the painting to public view. 

The painting is an idiosyncratic vision of fraternal love between the different peoples of the world. Spencer, who trained at the Slade School of Art in London, is best known for his religious paintings, set in his home village of Cookham, Berkshire. His eccentric formulations of Biblical stories and parables in modern settings won him popularity but many critics considered him hampered by his Englishness. Spencer’s war memorial chapel at Burghclere, Berkshire, is considered the seminal picture cycle commemorating the Great War.

Cambridge’s revised label for Love Among the Nations denounced the artist in no uncertain terms: “None of Spencer’s human subjects escape this taste for the grotesque, but the painting shows how this broadly misanthropic outlook intersected with an unquestioned racism. Raised on the moral rightness of British imperial rule, Spencer imagines civilization firmly in the West and savagery in its colonies.” What Spencer’s views on empire might have been is not established. Sweeping assertions and guilt by association are all that is required to condemn the man and all his output.

Pre-emptive Censorship

At the end of 2020, when race activists had the establishment kneeling and the populace donating billions of dollars, there was a hunt for ‘racisms’. The dining room of Tate Britain is decorated by The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats (1926-7), painted by Rex Whistler. This mural contains tiny figures of black and Chinese characters in traditional costumes. An online group frightened Tate into convening an ethics-committee report about the painting. That report advised hiding the mural from the public, which led to the temporary closure of the restaurant. Fitzwilliam’s curators will have been well aware that the roving eye of activists might turn to them and so they preemptively removed their Spencer, despite there having been no outside complaint or pressure on the museum.

Recently, the Tate—bound by statute from removing its Whistler mural—found a work-around and kept the “offensive” mural, if we are to use the BBC’s wording. Will the Fitzwilliam return Spencer’s painting? The Tate’s listed-building restrictions meant the mural could not be permanently removed; no such legalities prevent the Fitzwilliam from indefinitely mothballing their Spencer in storage.

Who is to say that further actions (proudly announced or secretly enacted) will not withdraw other publicly-owned artworks from museum walls? Anyone familiar with the Museums Association organisation advising staff (as lotuseaters.com reported here) will be aware that museums are being encouraged to be as censorious and as woke as possible.  

Potential Counter-Action

There is a possibility for this decision to be changed, however. 

Museum press departments are as sensitive to social-media pressure as their corporate colleagues. However, a more powerful force is money. If alumni who make donations or have promised legacies to Cambridge University contact the administration and tell them that they will cancel their gifts unless Love Among the Nations is returned to view, we could see a rapid volte-face. Boards of trustees are acutely sensitive to finances and would have few qualms about twisting the arm of museum director, Luke Syson. 

Another route direct to the director's office is for those who have promised to donate art to the museum to threaten to withdraw their offers unless the Spencer painting is reinstated. Such action would be strategic at best. Given the increasingly censorious and aggressive attitude shown by museum administrators—and enabled by boards of directors and donors—leaving any art to a public collection is naïve. Bequests are routinely disregarded by museum boards worldwide, as seen with the treatment of gifts by Barnes, Burrell, Frick, Turner, and others. 

Ultimately, institutions have shown that they are no longer guardians of culture, but debasers of culture. Museums are keen to shame national dignity and distort the wishes of donors. The only way of protecting our treasures is for a sweeping purge of organisations and forceful control from a future regime, preventing future infiltration. As always, we must place our faith in the cause: “Clear them out!”