Sir William Burrell , a wealthy ship owner and shrewd investor was one of the World’s greatest art collectors. A Glaswegian, he donated his collection to the City in the mid-forties. Today , it is housed in a custom built gallery at Pollok Park on the South side of the City. It contains an estimated 9000 art works and I would recommend a visit, should you find yourself in West Central Scotland.
Yesterday, my wife and I took three of our grandchildren there for a fine day out. It houses a diverse range , spanning different cultures and time periods. Previous visits have taught us to limit our visit to selected areas and so we found ourselves in a gallery with a considerable number of religion related effigies. I was struck by a German artist’s depiction of Mary Magdalene and others, receiving the body of the crucified Christ.
As was the practice , he is depicted as a pale , white Caucasian . However, a Google search would suggest that Christ , a Jew born in Judea, was probably of olive skin. In modern day parlance of Trump’s United States , he would be viewed as ‘ a person of colour’. I suspect, however, that any suggestion that he was other than a ‘white person’ would be viewed as antisemitic.
The definition of what constitutes antisemitism is the big stick deployed by governments and media owners to subvert truth. For some media, any criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza is viewed in that vein. Trump is currently waging war on universities for permitting ‘ anti American Propaganda’ . In English that means that some colleges are permitting students to discuss both sides of the War in Palestine.
Many of us have long seen the promotion of lateral thinking as a primary function of universities.
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