I don't normally visit exhibitions in company, but this time I made an exception and press-ganged a female acquaintance to join me. The reason for this was that the show I visited, "Women In-Between: Asian Women Artists 1984-2012" at the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Art, is an exhibition of female artists' work. As a mere male, I didn't quite feel equipped enough in my own right to deal with this.

Introducing identity issues is problematic enough when you do it into the wider society, against a background of, say, social justice or inclusivism; but it is even more of a problem when it is done in an area like art, which should essentially be meritocratic. What we really want when we visit an exhibition is to encounter genius and talent, and that should be regardless of the number of Y-chromosomes involved.

It could be argued that concentrating on women and Asian artists may help create a sense of narrative and meaning. However, the group in question is such a vast and diverse one that it can't really be summed up in a coherent narrative, even if you refer to some of the feminist shibboleths about the general oppression of women. And whether such gender despotism is a fact or not is beside the point, because nothing stifles art as surely as didacticism and an earnest, heavy-handed message — even if it is justified.