An English art gallery wanted to start a conversation about contemporary culture, so they removed a 19th-century painting of naked nymphs altogether. The Pre-Raphaelite painting, “Hylas and the Nymphs,” by the Victorian artist John William Waterhouse, is back on display. It should Ylas, a companion of the mythological hero Heracles, being lured into a pond by seven naked young women. The painting is based on a Greek myth, in which Hylas did not make it out of the pond alive — and the women were nymphs. The Manchester Art Gallery said that the removal was meant to “to prompt conversation about how we display and interpret artworks in Manchester’s public collection.” They asked visitors to leave sticky notes at the spot where the painting had hung and it posted questions including, “The gallery exists in a world full of intertwined issues of gender, race, sexuality and class which affect us all. How could artworks speak in more contemporary, relevant ways?” Hundreds of sticky notes were left, as well as hundreds more online comments and widespread news coverage. Clare Gannaway, the contemporary art curator at the museum, told BBC that the decision came out of staff conversations about gender representation and that the whole idea was to spark a debate.
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