Caravaggio killed a man. Should we therefore censor his art?

To remove art because it is tainted by the sins of its maker sets an impossible standard for art institutions, a standard that would demand they act as enforcers of moral orthodoxy.
 The work of every artist whose life was morally tainted by today’s standards would be approached only through the lens of that taint – and, if they fail the test, their work would need to be removed.
 No more marveling at Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro, his lovely and sensual young models.
(The artist’s favorite model is apocryphally known to be “his owne boy or servant thait laid with him” and, to add to his sins, he was also, probably, a murderer.) No more Picasso, who lived up to his infamous slogan “Women are machines for suffering”; no more of the tortured expressionism of Egon Schiele who was accused of sexually abusing his teen models; no more Eric Gill, who produced sculptures for the stations of the cross in Westminster Cathedral, but also sexually abused his daughters; and so many more. Museums will need more space in storage than in galleries.

Svetlana Mintcheva /  Continue