Culturally “insensitive” words already axed from Mauritshuis artwork

By Janene Pieters on December 11, 2015 - 16:20
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Mauritshuis, The Hague (Picture: Wikimedia Commons/Ralf Roletschek)Mauritshuis, The Hague (Picture: Wikimedia Commons/Ralf Roletschek)

Update, 5:30 p.m., 11 December 2015: An earlier version of this article was published under an inaccurate headline. The NL Times regrets the error.

The Mauritshuis museum in Den Haag has already made changes to titles and descriptions of its impressive collection to remove culturally derogative words from their artworks. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is currently engaged in a similar project.

"In 2004 the Mauritshuis walked through all the titles during the creation of a complete catalog for our entire collection. To the extent that there were racist titles, they were adapted", a spokesperson said to the AD.

As an example, the museum cited that the Rembrandt painting The two negroes was changed to Two Moors in 2004. This was done based on a 17th century document that described an earlier version of the painting as Two Moors.

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