Mick Hartley

Well, they've finally apologised.

One thing is clear to us now – we should have handled this better. We have apologised to Jess de Wahls for the way we have treated her and do so again publicly now. We had no right to judge her views on our social media. This betrayed our most important core value – the protection of free speech.

The Royal Academy, that is.

The Royal Academy of Arts has apologised for removing the artist Jess de Wahls’s work from a gift shop after she was accused of transphobia, saying it had “no right to judge her views”.

The move was welcomed by De Wahls, who urged all institutions to “grow up” and “make space for disagreement”.

The academy added in a statement today that its decision not to stock De Wahls’s embroidery after eight social media users complained about her views “betrayed our most important core value — the protection of free speech”.

In an interview with The Times published last night, the artist said of online abuse in the week following the decision: “It’s horrible. It’s really difficult for people to understand what this feels like who hasn’t had it. There’s nothing comparable in ‘real life’.”

She said today that she was delighted that the row had been “disinfected by daylight” and hoped that her experience would encourage others to stand up for their views on gender.

“There are going to be a lot more people like me who will not sit down and just take it. Enough is enough. It is totalitarian, it’s scary and I’m just so sick of it. Humans can’t change sex. Let’s get back to the facts and go from there. I really hope they learn lessons from this. There is always going to be someone who calls bullshit.”

De Wahls said that Axel Rüger, the Royal Academy chief executive, had called her to apologise. “He apologised, I felt sincerely so. He said this should never have happened, that it had been a great error of judgement and that they need to avoid something like this going forward. He said as an art institution, they should remain judgment-free.”

“I do think we need to get back to a level where opinions can be voiced and art can be made, and putting the patches back is a good gesture,” she said. “Institutions should look really, really closely at how they want to deal with social media. There has to be space for disagreement, in art institutions in particular. They have to make sure this doesn’t happen.

“To me, this was institutional capture. They need to learn to grow up. This is literally the internet running wild and people need to set boundaries.” De Wahl said that she was glad that her work would be reinstated, adding that she hoped other institutions were watching.

At the Glinner Update they cite a tweet from the RA's comms manager, Adam Koszary – "Google, define: performative" – which suggests that he at least views the apology as insincere. Perhaps the internal struggle continues…