After complaints of racism, a Boston museum has canceled an interactive event that allowed visitors to try on a kimono.
In
order to promote Claude Monet’s painting “La Japonaise,” the Museum of Fine Arts Boston scheduled “Kimono Wednesdays” to run throughout the month of July. The event let patrons “
channel your inner Camille Monet” by allowing them to
pose for photos in a replica of the kimono in Monet’s painting.
According to the
museum’s website, an important part of Monet’s painting is the fact that the subject of the painting,
his wife, is wearing a blonde wig in order to “emphasize her Western identity” in contrast to the Japanese kimono. But,
activists were upset that white people were able to try on kimonos, claiming it is “offensive” and an example of “cultural appropriation.
