The Six Acts Project at Manchester Gallery opened up a huge conversation about the cultural role of the museum and the perceived duties of the curator.

Hylas and the Nymphs, an 1896 painting by Pre-Raphaelite artist John William Waterhouse, was removed from the gallery space on a night of performance from multiple Manchester and UK drag artists.

As a permanent feature of the Manchester Art Gallery this caused major uproar amongst members of the public and press.

Boyce's action recalls the activities of the Guerilla Girls, drawing attention to inequalities within the mainstream art world (primarily sex but also inequalities of gender, class, race and sexual orientation) with less than 1% of the permanent artworks produced by female artists.

The project also opened up questions of authority within the employment structure of the gallery, involving all staff in criticism and praise of the displayed works (board members to cleaners).

One of the reasons Boyce chose to take down this work was that it depicted an interaction between pubescent girls (Nymphs) and an adult man (Hylas).  She intended to start a conversation about the power dynamics within the painting and between the subject and viewer - whether it was appropriate to enjoy/celebrate a painting that depicts sexualised naked children.  With whom does the power lie in the painting - Hylas or the Nymphs?

One day during their work they noticed a man walking through the gallery making strange noises as he looked at the paintings, majority of them included young naked females - "You know these are paintings of naked young girls?"  "Even better." - The museum as a predatory site an idea of interest to Sonia - a trope in cinema/Hitchcock cinema.

Complaints made against Boyce can be seen to come out of the expectation that a museum or a curator fulfil the role of a kind of cultural custodian.  As well as out of a lazy, sexist preconception of the contemporary female artist as "prudish marxist-feminists".  Jonathan Jones (Guardian art cirtic) in particular seems to have missed several points of the removal and perhaps serves as a perfect example of why this act is needed. It questions an art history presented to us as permanent and unmoving, it questions the power dynamics of gender and sex that such artworks represent and the loud response to the removal proves that this work and the circumstances of its creation exist very much in our present day, not just in the context of the 1890s.  That such a minor, curatorial act be read as a stifling act of censorship is itself fascinating.  The outrage comes out of the political intention of the removal, not the removal itself.

The museum as a neutral environment.  The museum as a space of comfort.  Or the museum as political forum.

Boyce and the museum were taken completely by surprise.  They admit that taking it down was an act of censorship but with the intention of opening up a conversation.

Sonia was fascinated by the response and surprised by the deeply held feelings about what a museum means to people - feeling safe in the authorial knowledge the museum holds and represents.  But there are always decisions about what we see - the works didn't just appear.  She thought it was interesting to discover that people consider the museum a place to escape to from real life - a fantasy zone.

The response also drew attention to the conflict between historical and new/contemporary art - "these upstarts coming in and trying to erase/censor our history".  And the reason for this outrage is the perceived certainty of the past.

Her personal views are that she loves museums, that this act wasn't destructive or permanent and that she neither loves nor hates the painting removed, that there is clearly value in it.

On issues of race in art world and UK - headline about her involvement in the Venice Biennale referred to her as first Black female representative, giving nothing as to what she actually does as an artist.  "We are more than just bodies - we are not just Black, we are not just female." 

Recommended essay:  'How to provide an artistic service', Andrea Fraser


Removal is such a simple yet emotive/meaningful/political act. Sonia Boyce’s reasonable intention was to open up a conversation and ended up receiving abuse and backlash from public and press – the very act of opening up a conversation became political. Was an admitted act of temporary censorship but there’s clearly types of censorship that are more readily accepted than others.

There’s no greater censor of British history than the UK government – reading Ian Cobain’s ‘The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation’.