The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats

The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats is a mural by the English painter Rex Whistler (1905 -1944) commissioned in 1926 and completed in 1927 at the Tate Gallery in London by the museum's first director (monikered "The Keeper of the Tate"), Charles Aitken for the re-opening of the institution's restaurant where to this day it forms the entire interior surround of what is now the eponymously named eatery, "The Rex Whistler Restaurant".[1]

The work has been at the center of controversy in recent years over the artist's depiction of a black child chained to and running behind a horse and cart and images of Chinese people deemed to read as stereotypical.

When the restaurant re-opened with the mural completed it was described by its publicity as "the most amusing room in Europe".[2]  However the organization "the White Pube" began a campaign against the mural on Instagram . The Tate stated in response "“it is important to acknowledge the presence of offensive and unacceptable content and its relationship to racist and imperialist attitudes in the 1920s and today.”[3][4]

History

The mural was commissioned in 1926 and completed in 1927. The idea for a mural in the establishment was first come up with by the  antiques dealer Joseph Doveen who donated 500£ to the nascent effort.[5] Rex Whistler was recommended for the job, submitted drawings, and was chosen for the proect in 1926 while he was still a student at the Slade School of Art. He was paid £5 a day over the 18 months it took to complete the work.[2]

The action depicted in the mural takes place in the fictive land of "Epicurania" ruled over by the "Duke of Epicurania". The content of the mural was created in a collaboration between Whistler and the novelist Edith Olivier (1872-1948).  The story articulated in the work depicts an account wherein an "expedition" of a group of seven people departs in search of exotic meats. They jettison on all manner of tranport; bicycles, carts and horses from their point of departure (the) ‘Duchy of Epicurania’, and venture through bizarre and enchanting lands while coming uoon creatures such as; unicorns, truffle dogs and two giant gluttons guarding the entrance to a cave. The tale finalizes with the adventurers arriving back to an ebulliant welcome, and the menu of the Epicuranians, which had previously consisted of dry biscuits, is forever changed."[2][1]

The mural had restorarion work done to it in 2014 during a £45 million museum revamp. [6]

gollark: So```lualocal o = os.pullEventos.pullEvent = coroutine.yield-- after stuffos.pullEvent = o```
gollark: if it does, of course.
gollark: You probably want to revert that when the program *exits*.
gollark: > Which is exactly what they wanted here!Not necessarily, this actually does sound like a case where they might want each task to run in its own coroutines (or would, if their pathfinding did yields).
gollark: I mean, it's great for very simple situations where you want to run two things at once in the simplest case, but often projects want to run a listener "thread" and temporarily spawn tasks to handle them or something and this ends up being constantly reinvented.

References
  1. "Tate removes reference to 'amusing' restaurant after racist images in mural draw anger". the Guardian. August 4, 2020.
  2. https://web.archive.org/web/20120626005002/http://www.tate.org.uk/about/our-work/collection/about-the-collection/works-in-the-fabric-of-tate-buildings/rex-whistler-expedition-in-pursuit-of-rare-meats
  3. "Protesters Launch Petition to Remove Tate Britain's Racist Mural". August 5, 2020.
  4. https://www.hindustantimes.com/art-and-culture/the-expedition-in-pursuit-of-rare-meats-tate-museum-faces-heat-over-racist-mural-in-europe-s-most-amusing-room/storyCFc7w3ysDZEeGe4GfB5qAM.html
  5. http://tdclassicist.blogspot.com/2012/09/rex-whistler-murals.html?m=1
  6. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/aug/04/tate-removes-reference-to-amusing-restaurant-after-racist-images-in-mural-draw-anger
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