[Tweeters] Historical Perspective on Re-naming Birds

[Hal Opperman]

Here’s an example to consider from the perspective my professional life as an art historian. (Yes, like everyone else in the world, we birders do have more than one side to our lives.) 

One of the most distinguished scholars of the art and architecture of the French Late Renaissance and Baroque (17th-18th centuries) was Anthony Blunt. In his field, Blunt's writings and the many students he formed were as groundbreaking and influential as were those of John James Audubon in his own field of North American ornithology—founding figures without whose legacy our present understanding in each of these fields would be unimaginably poorer. We stand on the shoulders of giants, as is said—of these two giants and many, many others.

In 1979, Blunt was outed as a onetime Soviet spy back in his student days in the 1930s—a member of the notorious “Cambridge Four” (along with Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, and Kim Philby; a fifth recruit was identified later). All were branded as traitors, quite rightfully. Blunt was stripped of his knighthood and appointments, and hounded from public life by the media and popular outrage. He died four years later, in 1983.

His obituary in the august Burlington Magazine, the venerable journal of the UK’s art history establishment, was written by André Chastel, the dean of the French art history establishment. Hewing closely to its title, “Anthony Blunt, art historian,” it is a tribute to a remarkable scholar richly deserving of our recognition and that of posterity.

Why can’t we see our guy as “John James Audubon, ornithologist”? Accord him the respect he is due? Doesn’t he deserve that?

Hal Opperman
Seattle
hal at catharus dot net


  
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