An anti-Pierre-Auguste Renoir group recently held a satirical protest outside of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston , asking the museum to remove works they had on display by the French Impressionist artist. Protest organizer Max Geller originally began his anti-Renoir campaign through an Instagram account entitled "Renoir Sucks at Painting," which mostly depicted Geller and friends pointing and laughing at Renoir paintings. He also started a Change.org petition asking President Obama to remove all Renoir works from the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., but the petition was eventually archived after getting only about a dozen signatures. With the satirical protest in Boston, though, Geller's one-man crusade has started to get national attention.
While the MFA protesters appeared to be a ragtag group of grad students having a laugh at the expense of a painter they considered overrated, their actions do raise some interesting questions, namely—who gets to decide what great art is, and how do museums decide what to put on display? "The overwhelming whiteness and male-dominated collections is a real problem," Geller, who lives in New York City and works in community organizing, told Condé Nast Traveler."A lot of people feel left out of their local fine art museum because the painters on the wall have nothing in common with the publics that they’re trying to serve...Those Renoirs at the Museum of Fine Arts, if a really courageous director wanted to decide to sell them off and use the money to buy new, exciting art, they could do it. It would take real courage. Museum curators and people who run fine art museums are risk-averse. They’re interested in Renoir, he has a recognizable name, so why risk it? The answer is, because it’s the only way to move forward."
As many art museums around the world struggle to attract younger audiences, they also have to consider the needs and wants of their donors, board members, and trustees. Often, an artist with huge pop-culture name recognition will bring casual visitors into museums and (perhaps more importantly) get them to spend money on tickets, memberships, and gift-shop swag. To this end, there have recently been an abundance of shows like "Picassomania" in Paris and the shows dedicated to fashion designers like Alexander McQueen, whose "Savage Beauty" exhibit sold out its entire runs in New York and London. Many in the art world are also pushing against the idea of what makes great art and encouraging museums to show more work by women and artists of color. "There are plenty of female painters who are really good," Geller adds. "There’s no reason to clog up the walls with Renoir."
In the meantime, though, Geller isn't asking questions about art and who gets to be in the canon of great painters. He just really, really wants you to know how much he hates Renoir. And he isn't the only one. Since photos of the protest in Boston went viral online, Geller has heard from other Renoir haters from as far away from Russia and Brazil, some of whom are planning events of their own. "I’m the spokesperson, but it is grassroots and there are cells all over the world."
