The artist behind a National Portrait Gallery installation that sparked a row over Sir Winston Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine has withdrawn her work.
Helen Cammock said there is “an incredible pressure on artists and arts institutions to bend to external pressure”, and that the decision to remove the work “has not been taken lightly”.
The 40-minute video, titled Persistence, claimed that Sir Winston used “wilful” mass starvation as part of the Bengal famine in 1943.
It sparked controversy after historian and former trustee of the gallery Andrew Roberts wrote to “protest in the strongest possible terms” the video installation and claimed that the accusation was “foul and vile” and a “barefaced lie”.
His letter was countersigned by more than 50 members of the House of Lords, including Sir Winston’s grandson, Nicholas Soames, and Michael Hintze, who was trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 2017 to 2021.
The gallery said Ms Cammock’s work was “presented as an artistic piece, not a documentary, and the views expressed in the film do not necessarily reflect those of the NPG”.
Sir Winston’s role in the Bengal famine, which killed an estimated three million people, has been fiercely debated by historians.
Lord Roberts, who wrote Churchill: Walking with Destiny, claimed that the Bengal famine was caused by a typhoon on 16 October 1942 that not only destroyed rice crops but also the road and rail links used to bring food into the region. An estimated 3 million people died due to the Bengal famine.
He argues that Sir Winston had told the war cabinet that “the hard pressures of world war have for the first time for many years brought conditions of scarcity, verging in some localities into actual famine, upon India. Every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes, to deal with local shortages”.
Sir Winston also asked President Roosevelt and the prime ministers of Canada and Australia to send hundreds of thousands of tonnes of grain.
“He would not have done this if he were the genocidal maniac described by Ms Cammock in her taxpayer-funded rant against one of our greatest national heroes,” he wrote in the letter to Professor Shearer West, the interim chair of the board of trustees.
But researchers in India and the US concluded in 2019 that the Bengal famine was due to a “complete policy failure during the British era”.
In a statement, Ms Cammock said the work is “is not a documentary” but a creative work that “explores ideas and thoughts in response to the National Portrait Gallery, its collection and its archives”.
She added: “Nina Simone once said ‘An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times’ and sometimes this means revisiting, enquiry and challenge. The National Portrait Gallery is an incredibly important public resource and, as such, it is vital that it continues to engage in dialogue about the works that it is custodian of, and their relevance historically.”
The gallery confirmed Ms Cammock had withdrawn the film and said it “respects” her decision “just as we acknowledge the opinions of those who were offended by what was said in the film”:
“The aim of this project was to give artists the opportunity to create works as personal and creative responses to our Collection,” a spokesperson added. “The work was presented as an artistic piece, not a documentary, and the views expressed in the film do not necessarily reflect those of the NPG.
“The NPG is a museum of both art and history; we recognise the legacy of those portrayed on our walls, just as we respect artistic expression. We remain focused on our mission to reach and inspire audiences nationally and internationally through portraiture and the stories of our shared history.”
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