UCT removing art: puritanism and cowardice

If it's UCT's intention to reboot - refresh, revise, renew - its art collection by "covering" and "removing" (sic) pieces arbitrarily deemed offensive to the racial and sexual sensibilities of the millennials, why do so only after the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) movement - most of whom have no sense of history, and probably wouldn't know a Monet from a Caravaggio - set the terms and conditions of the university's custodianship of its art? 

Why remove art only after UCT stated its was instituting an accelerated racial transformation process?  This is in the context of a senior lecturer telling me the debate and environment around race and transformation had become bitter, personal and unpleasant.

If it's UCT's intention to "provisionally" remove art, i.e. return them later, why has it not relocated the Rhodes statue elsewhere on campus for display, which at the time vice-chancellor Max Price said was the intention?  He showed his fundamentalist, socialist underpants when he stated, before the university had conducted a referendum and council had made a decision about the statue, that he wanted it removed from its location at the main entry to campus, and he felt it was inappropriate there.  Yes, Himself, not council.

At the time, in correspondence with UCT and Heritage Western Cape, which I threatened with access to information provisions to obtain sparse information, it became clear to me UCT and the agency colluded, before consultations with the public and broad university community had even begun and against the spirit of regulations governing public art, to hastily, and indecently, remove the statue for its "protection".  Since then there has been silence about its fate.

This is UCT's disreputable record in dealing with art and its cowardice capitulating to the mob.

In a letter to council last year I said I was appalled at how they managed the statue debacle, and as an alumnus I dissociated myself from their actions.  Their management of the RMF protests then and this year and the renaming and art issues has not changed my mind.  I'm no longer proud to be associated with UCT - my diploma certificate has become a thing of shame.

An increasing number of artists, including Breyten Breytenbach whose painting Hovering Dog was removed, have expressed concern.  Breytenbach has cut ties with the UCT.

Perhaps UCT should read what Boris Johnson, London mayor and Winston Churchill's biographer, says about the destruction of art for puritanical, religious and political reasons.

UCT, particularly Price, the chief puritan, is being motivated by puritanism, political correctness and the collective cowardice of group thinking (to paraphrase Marianne Thamm), the kind displayed by ANC MPs when they exonerated President Jacob Zuma, and a deficit of intellect. Read their contorted justification for removing the art.

I should be astonished at the poor leadership Price and council is displaying through the various self-made crisis afflicting the university, but I'm not.  The mediocre standards of management and accountability affect all public institutions in South Africa, even its preeminent university. 

Perhaps they should be put in "storage" to safeguard the university's dwindling reputation.

Updated with a link to a Daily Maverick article.