MICHAEL WALSH: The Naked Ladies Are Back — but for How Long?

Not content with tearing down monuments and hollowing out cultural institutions in the name of “social justice” (which is simply a fancy term for revenge), the totalitarians of the Left have now turned their basilisk glare on historic works of art. Case in point, Hylas and the Nymphs by one of the foremost artists of the pre-Raphaelite movement in Britain, J. W. Waterhouse. A flap over this painting arose the other day when the Manchester Art Gallery removed the work over “sensitivity” issues:

A gallery has temporarily removed a Victorian painting of naked adolescent girls in a move to “encourage debate” about how such images should be displayed in the modern age. Manchester Art Gallery has taken down Hylas and the Nymphs by JW Waterhouse. Curator Clare Gannaway said there were “tricky issues about gender, race and representation” in the gallery. “But we want to talk about that with people.” She denied accusations that the gallery was censoring the 1896 picture.

Why remove the paintings, when you can simply dub them “degenerate art” and invite the public in for a special showing? If you’re going socialist in the first place, why not national socialist?