{"id":146740,"date":"2022-11-18T13:40:18","date_gmt":"2022-11-18T12:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=146740"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:26:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:26:31","slug":"ugly-removal-at-leiden-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2022\/11\/18\/ugly-removal-at-leiden-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Ugly removal at Leiden University"},"content":{"rendered":"

The most disturbing aspect may have been the pride taken in the painting\u2019s removal. \u201cImmediate action was taken today\u201d, read the tweet<\/a> from the dean of the Faculty of Law at Leiden after a painting was taken down from a wall in the university.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLevien Willemse<\/a>, \t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPauline Wiersema<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Art is meant to get you to think and to allow for alternative perspectives. This is what Rein Dool\u2019s 1976 painting was intended to do. It shows a group of executive university staff: elderly men sitting around a conference table, smoking. Rather than painting a flattering portrait of these people, Dool created an ironic representation of navel-gazing executives. It is a mirror of the closed nature of the university, which was dispensed with in the nineteen-seventies through student action among other things.<\/p>\n\n\t

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