‘Dwarf’ paintings have been renamed to comply with disability law

The Spanish Prado Museum has reviewed over 27000 descriptions on the website and 1800 signs for exhibited works to eliminate terms deemed offensive.

Next week, a new legislation is set to pass in Spain which states that the term ‘disabled’ will be removed from the constitution and is to be replaced with ‘people with disabilities’. In line with this, the country’s principal art gallery is currently undertaking the task of removing controversial terms and phrases from various painting titles and descriptions.

Some of the paintings that will be affected by this include works by Herman and Velázquez.

The painting ‘The Boy from Vallecas’ by Velázquez was one of the first pieces to be changed. Previously, the sign on the painting read: ‘In addition to dwarfism, he suffered from ‘cretinism with oligophrenia’ and now the term ‘dwarfism’ has been replaced with ‘achondroplasia’ – the condition which restricts growth.

In addition, terms such as ‘deformed’ will also be removed from artworks in the museum.

Speaking to The Times, an official from the Prado Museum said: ‘We have a duty to be exemplary as a key institution.

‘We have decided to revisit, with a sharper criterion, signs that we did not see anything odd about when they were written, but that now we find are out of step with the times.’

Against this backdrop, this is not the first time the museum have made changes to the titles and descriptions of paintings. In 2022, at the opening of an art exhibition called ‘El Prado en femenino’, which showed the role of women as patrons, the museum axed terms such as ‘wife of’ and ‘unattractive woman’ among others, from posters of the works.

However, the landmark institution have said it would not change paintings that are known to be ‘historical’. For example, The Faggot, Auntie Gila, by Goya.

In the words of well-known artist Pablo Picasso: ‘Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life’. Individuals depicted in paintings should be appreciated and interpreted for what they actually are, not what others have deemed them to be.

Image: Alamy

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