From an article in Forbes recommended by the Twitter account of classicist Donna Zuckerberg:

Whitewashing Ancient Statues: Whiteness, Racism And Color In The Ancient World APR 27, 2017 Sarah Bond , CONTRIBUTOR … As this history of painted statuary returns to view, it brings with it an unsettling question: if we know these statues were polychromatic, why do they remain lily white in our popular imagination? How we color (or fail to color) classical antiquity is often a result of our own cultural values. Before a show on color in antiquity at Frankfurt’s Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, art historian Max Hollein noted that well into the twenty-first century, the idea of a “pure, marble-white Antiquity” prevailed despite many hints that sculpture was often painted. One influential purveyor of this falsehood was Johann Joachim Winckelmann (d. 1768). … As emerita Princeton historian Nell Irvin Painter details in her book The History of White People, Winckelmann was himself a Eurocentrist who regularly denigrated non-European nationalities such as the Chinese or the Kalmyk. …

Anti-Kalmykism must be stamped out.

But Nell Irvin Painter sounds pretty homophobic: in her “History of White People” she passes along a rumor about Winckelmann’s murder:

… but other authorities suspect that Winckelmann, an older gay man with a taste for adventure, ran afoul of rough trade.

Are you allowed to say “rough trade” anymore?

Dr. Bond continues:

So, what did this painted sculptural exterior actually look like? Yellow, red and black were often applied as an underpainting before painted details were added. Art historian and polychromy expert Mark Abbe has emphasized that painters could then apply paints over this base coat to accentuate hair, eyes, eyebrows, jewelry and clothing with a vibrance white marble could not provide alone. … For their part, Romans had a great variety of skin tones within their Mediterranean world. Frescoes, mosaics and painted ceramics from both the Greek and Roman periods reveal a fascination with black Africans and particularly Ethiopians, but did not employ what W.E.B. Du Bois would call a “color prejudice.” Although Romans generally differentiated people on their cultural and ethnic background rather than the color of their skin, ancient sources do occasionally mention skin tone and artists tried to convey the color of their flesh. Classical artistic depictions could indeed exaggerate facial features in a way not dissimilar to the racist knickknacks that can still be found in flea markets and antique shops across the country. Yet ancient persons did not engage in the construct of biological racism. As emeritus Howard University classicist Frank Snowden has pointed out, “nothing comparable to the virulent color prejudice of modern times existed in the ancient world.”

You see, the Romans enslaved everybody, so that makes them morally better.

So what does it say to viewers today when museums display gleaming white statues? What does it say when the only people of color one is likely to see appear on a ceramic vessel? Intentional or not, museums present viewers with a false color binary of the ancient world. One that, in its curation, perpetuates this skewed representation of antiquity. The excellent Tumblr “People of Color in European Art History” addresses the dearth of people of color in art history, and museums should take note. As noted on their Tumblr page, the group’s mission is to return color to the past: “All too often, these works go unseen in museums, Art History classes, online galleries, and other venues because of retroactive whitewashing of Medieval Europe, Scandinavia, and Asia.” A southern Italian (likely Apulian) oinochoe (wine pitcher) from c. 350 BCE which depicts a black African. These are aesthetically though not contextually similar to the later racist “face pitchers” popular in the American South. This pitcher is on display at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA. A return of variety to the ancient world’s skin tones paints a truer picture. It also asks us to reflect on the current state of those disciplines, fields, and practices connected to historical study. As a classicist, I am no stranger to the seas of lily white, spectacled and tweed-wearing people at conferences. My field is dominated by white folks. We have known for a long time that we have a diversity problem, and one way to address this might be to emphasize what an integral part people of color played within ancient Mediterranean history. But the onus is also on the media and fashioners of popular culture. For example, depictions of ancient Rome within video games perpetuate the perception of whiteness through their recreated statues and depictions of the people of ancient Rome. As digital humanist and video game expert Hannah Scates-Kettler noted to me, the whiteness depicted in popular video games set in the ancient world–like Ryse: Son of Rome–discourages many people of color from seeing themselves in that landscape. Together, we sat down and played the game last week and there were indeed a lot of white people and white statues.

Indeed.

[Captions mine.]

Do you ever get the feeling that Donna Zuckerberg, who is said to be writing a book about the Alt-Right hijacking Greece & Rome to be entitled Not All Dead White Men, is elaborately trolling somebody?

Perhaps when President Zuckerberg appoints his sister chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, she’ll sponsor a “Praise Kek” digital art exhibit or something.