ART

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION AT THE BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS

when is it okay to wear a kimono?

By Pamela Zhang

The Punchline is Controversy

In the June of 2015, the Boston Museum hosted Kimono Wednesdays where museum attendees could try on a kimono and pose in front of Monet’s painting La Japonaise. Painted in 1876, it depicts Monet’s wife, Camille, in a blond wig (“to emphasize her western identity”) wearing a kimono in front of a Japanese backdrop. The Museum’s website describes the event as a way to “channel your inner Camille Monet and pose wearing a silk kimono just like hers in front of the portrait painted by her husband. Our favorite photos will be featured on Facebook and Instagram!” . A "Spotlight" talk, originally titled "Claude Monet: Flirting With the Exotic," was to accompany the interactive exhibit."

The first night of the promotion a small protest took place, and during the second occurrence three protesters confronted the museum, placing themselves near the exhibit” holding up signs accusing the exhibit of yellow face and orientalism. The organized protesters had formed a group called “Stand Against Yellow Face”, since renamed as “Decolonize Our Museums."

They have written a response to “Kimono Wednesdays” and “Flirting with the Exotic” that you can read here. At first glance, it is easy to miss what the protesters are protesting. Many writings and counter-protests by those who argued against them made the mistake that they wanted to ban kimono wearing amongst the non-Japanese. Of course there were some who wanted this, but these were not part of the organized group of protesters and were outliers to the main concerns.

Protesters protesting

These protesters state that there is nothing inherently wrong with wearing kimonos for people of any race. What Decolonize Our Museums is concerned with was how the museum handled the event. By using the title “Flirting with the Exotic”, the museum seems to be fetishizing Japanese culture and embracing orientalism—a concept developed by the literary critic and activist Edward Said, where the West sees the East as an inferior double of Western values. This sense of superiority is definitely present in Monet’s painting and the museum’s description of it, describing Monet’s wife as “wearing a blond wig to emphasize her Western identity." Furthermore, the museum did not provide proper context and information on either the Monet painting or kimonos. One does not need to have any knowledge of Japanese history to wear a kimono, but a museum should be responsible for providing the proper context and information to go along with the shows they present.

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts missed the point when in response to the protests, they announced that people could no longer wear the kimono and could only touch it. This is probably why counter-protests assumed that the initial protests was against non-Japanese people wearing kimonos. What is wrong is the program’s fetishaztion and the lack of context put out by the museum to educate the public on Japanese kimonos and culture. The protestors questioned why the museum would have a kimono try-on event using a French painting. The Boston museum had thousands of Japanese art to choose from and could have represented the kimono in its proper context.

This is where it started.

The ongoing problem is not the problems of this one show, but the lack of overall representation of Eastern culture. It’s not about who can or cannot wear kimono. Anyone can wear a kimono. The issue lies with the representation. “By choosing a painting of a European woman to highlight and to invite the public to dress in her “kimono”, the MFA is continuing in this tradition of exoticizing the “East” through the lens of a misogynist White patriarchal West while contributing to the invisibilization [invisibility] and erasure of the Asian-American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) experience.” As Japanese art historian Reiko Tomii suggested during the MFA panel “why not host a kimono try on event where they went around the museum and wore kimono that were connected to various cultures? This would be much more educational and provide a view of kimono that is not entirely through Western art.”

Museums that have large Japanese art collections should have kimono try-ons. But why is it that the only kimono try-on event is for a painting of a white woman in a kimono? Japanese culture is worthy of public attention without having to view it through the lens of Europe and the West.This event is an example of orientalism as an ongoing issue present in institutional and educational settings. The end result is that it turns Asian culture into an exotic “other."

What's the matter?

It is unfortunate that not all protesters were with this organized group. There were definitely people protesting that white people should not wear kimonos. People tend to focus more on the weak, outrageous arguments, than the valid, legitimate ones. Many news articles and online commenters have interpreted the protests in this way. It’s frustrating because we’re all fighting for the same thing: appreciation of Japanese culture. It is not wrong to engage in other cultures and be inspired by them. What is wrong is fetishizing other cultures and losing the source of their greatness.

©Pamela Zhang and the CCA Arts Review