Feb. 5: Bare facts on art. Plus other letters to the editor

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Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

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Art attack

The National Gallery of Art in Washington has foolishly decided to indefinitely postpone an exhibition of the works of Chuck Close, one of our greatest living artists, on the grounds that Mr. Close is accused of making lewd comments to a nude model (Close Encounters Of The Artistic Kind, Feb. 1).

If we are to be consistent here, all the great movies made by Harvey Weinstein, for example, should be deleted from all media sources and made unavailable for viewing by anybody.

It is a good job that curators of art in bygone days were able to separate great art from the flawed artists who created it, otherwise the works of Caravaggio (convicted of murder) would certainly have gone on the bonfire, and the Mona Lisa relegated to the basement since Leonardo da Vinci was arrested (charges later dropped) for sodomy, which at the time was a capital offence.

Pauline Kellow, Toronto

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I couldn't believe your column saying the practice of painting female nudes is sexual in nature. Artists paint nudes, landscape, still life and so on because they are beautiful or capture a quality they want to explore in their art, or to deal with current issues.

Few subjects can rival the human figure for diversity of form and line. Few subjects challenge an artist as does the execution of a figure. It is said to be the ultimate challenge for an artist. These are the reasons most artists paint nudes.

I am a female artist. When my fellow artists of all genders and I gather to paint the figure, it is for the above reasons. We do not leer at or fondle our models, who are respected as professionals.

Has the #MeToo movement brought us to this? To ban nudes in public galleries? Next thing you know, we will be clothing our piano legs in Victorian-era leggings.

Lois Crawford, Burlington, Ont.

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Some deterrence

Now let me see if I understand this correctly (Canada Bread, Weston Revealed As Key Players In Price-Fixing Scheme, Feb.1).

Loblaw and its parent, George Weston, have admitted to participating in an industrywide bread price-fixing scheme. Penalties for price fixing are punishable by a fine of up to $24-million and 14 years in prison. In exchange for co-operating with a Competition Bureau investigation in early 2015, the companies will not face criminal charges.

Now that's what I call deterrence. With punishment like that you know these companies have learned their lesson.

Alf Kwinter, Toronto

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Bring pay up to speed

Parent Adriane Franklin says: "Obviously, we don't have enough bus drivers [in the Greater Toronto Area]. But I don't know how you resolve that" (School-Bus Driver Shortage Cuts Into Class Time, Feb. 2).

The answer is in raising their pay, benefits and working conditions. It is astonishing that with dozens of our children's lives in their hands, bus drivers are reportedly earning "only slightly over" the minimum wage for their part-time work, as your article notes.

Eugene Spanier, Toronto

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Missed opportunities

While the removal of the statue of Edward Cornwallis will undoubtedly ease tensions, its disappearance signals the loss of a valuable opportunity for Halifax to consider more nuanced approaches to presenting history, one that would allow multiple perspectives to be included (Halifax's Cornwallis Statue To Come Down, Jan. 31).

Had city councillors followed through on discussing alternatives to simple removal – including adding Mi'kmaq perspectives, for example – they would have put Halifax in the vanguard of creating complex responses to troublesome histories.

Instead they opted for erasure. In a pluralistic society, there will never be consensus on who or what is deserving of recognition. Everyone from Sir John A. MacDonald through all the Canadian prime ministers and other historical figures cannot be memorialized without offending someone. We need a more reflexive approach to public monuments that allows for diversity of views instead of obliterating history.

Alexandra Phillips, associate professor, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver

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I must respond to Michael Harvey's letter that claims the removal of the Cornwallis statue amounts to sanitizing history (Tearing Down History, Feb. 2).

This same disingenuous argument has been brought forward in relation to statues of Confederate generals removed in the southern United States. The removal of a single statue from a place of civic honour does not delete the history to which it refers. The removal becomes part of that history and demonstrates that history is not fixed eternally in amber (or bronze!) but an evolving discussion.

With the removal of the Cornwallis statue, he is not also automatically deleted from the many history books and texts that mention his time and his activities. Those texts continue to exist, continue to be read and written and can be accessed by all. It is not necessary to see his statue to know who he was and what he did.

Vid Ingelevics, Toronto

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The gulag is here

John Semley's piece on University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson is a neat encapsulation of a recent article in The Atlantic magazine on the same professor entitled, "Why can't people hear what Jordan Peterson is saying?" (The Peterson Paradox: Earnest Academic, Or Just Another Angry White Guy? Feb. 1)

Mr. Semley's piece attempts to ridicule one of Dr. Peterson's opinions – that the thinking behind the postmodern radical left's position could lead us to the gulag.

Ridiculous? Recently, in Ontario, the leader of a political party was ousted in fewer than 48 hours as a result of unproven complaints of inappropriate behaviour launched by unidentified accusers, turning over the hallowed legal principles of innocent until proven guilty and the right to confront one's accuser. These principles have served Western democracies well for several centuries, and stood as powerful barriers against the knock in the night and the disappearances of millions of people. Couldn't happen here? Think again.

Sean O'Sullivan, Tillsonburg, Ont.

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Still out of tune

So only royal assent is needed to complete the simple change to make our national anthem gender neutral (O Canada Approved For Gender-Neutral Makeover, Feb. 1). I don't have an issue with that change, since the anthem has been modified over time. I just wish our MPs had the courage to remove the reference to God in the lyrics as well. As a secular humanist, I believe this would make our anthem truly inclusive, and I would be able to sing along as well.

Stephen Hayden, Kitchener, Ont.