Delingpole: Cartoon Museum Purges ‘White Cisgender’ Cartoonists Like Hogarth to Appease BLM

London’s Cartoon Museum has been inspired by Black Lives Matter to begin a purge of its ‘white cisgender men’ cartoonists such as William Hogarth and James Gillray.

According to the Museum’s director Joe Sullivan, quoted in the Daily Telegraph:

“The climate of BLM has opened the eyes of decision-makers in museums to the necessity, and public appetite, for properly interrogating our collections.

From our perspective, our collection — like many museums — is over-represented with works by white cisgender men, which of course includes essential and significant works from artists such as HM Bateman, James Gillray, William Hogarth.”

Hogarth has been described as ‘the father of the modern cartoon.‘ The 18th-century painter and engraver is probably best known for his print series ‘Marriage a la Mode’, ‘A Rake’s Progress’, ‘A Harlot’s Progress’ and for his most famous work of all, ‘Gin Lane.’

These moral fables, rich with comical and satirical detail, illustrate the corruption, greed and licentiousness of mid-18th century London: young fools marrying for money, debauchees ending up mad in Bedlam Hospital or dying of venereal disease; mothers, drinking themselves to death of gin. (As opposed to the stout, hearty fellows in Beer Street, of whose benign ale-quaffing Hogarth clearly approved).

With his even more vicious successors James Gillray, George Cruikshank and Thomas Rowlandson – Hogarth was the pioneer of the modern political cartoon.

But suddenly — if we are to believe the Cartoon Museum’s director — their historical role needs re-evaluating, in light of a race-baiting, hard-left Marxist protest organisation which most British people do not support.

Sullivan has told the Telegraph:

“The current work we are doing on this is an audit of our collection to inform a new collecting policy that will guide what we collect in future and why.

“From my point of view, and The Cartoon Museum, we are definitely moving towards displaying less Hogarths and more modern and diverse work.”

Which does rather invite the question: how did this man get to be a director of a museum whose job is to celebrate the history of cartoons not to advance identity politics?