Artist Withdraws Video Installation From National Portrait Gallery

Helen Cammock withdrew her 40-minute video installation Persistence from the National Portrait Gallery on 22 June 2026. The work had been on temporary display for 10 months as part of the exhibition Artists First: Contemporary Perspectives on Portraiture and was scheduled to remain until August.

Cammock, a Turner Prize-winning artist who had developed the piece with the gallery since 2023, said the decision followed external pressure.

In a statement she said there is incredible pressure on artists and arts institutions to bend to external pressure and that she does not accept this pressure. The video referred to the wilful starvation of the Indian population by Winston Churchill during the 1943 Bengal famine and compared Oliver Cromwell's 17th-century campaigns in Ireland to Churchill's actions.

An estimated three million people died in eastern India during the famine.

Lord Roberts of Belgravia, a Churchill biographer, sent an open letter to the gallery stating that the description was incorrect. The letter, signed by more than 50 peers including Churchill's grandson Sir Nicholas Soames, said the famine was caused by a typhoon and that Churchill directed his war cabinet to make every effort to send grain.

A member of the public had complained directly to the gallery, which initially defended the work as the artist's personal reflections.

The dispute received widespread media coverage in national newspapers last week. The National Portrait Gallery stated that it respects Cammock's decision and acknowledges the opinions of those offended by the film. It added that the project aimed to give artists the opportunity to create personal responses to its collection and that the views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the gallery.