You strip me bare assed, turn me on my side shove a fan in my hand smearing fingers on thigh pout my lips below an almond eye and silhouette me in smouldering ochre. “Gauguin, you piss me off,” begins “Two Nudes On a Tahitian Beach, 1894,” a poem by the New Zealand poet and academic Selina Tusitala Marsh. But to many locals, the painter’s clichéd representations of lush, exotic islands full of dusky maidens with no voice or identity are tiresome.

There is even a luxury cruise line that tours the region that is named after him.

Gauguin remains a tourist draw in Polynesia and the South Pacific. “I’m not saying take down the works: I’m saying lay it all bare about the whole person,” she said. Remer questioned the constant exhibitions of Gauguin and the Austrian artist Egon Schiele, who also depicted nude underage models, and the ways those shows were put together. Addressing “blind spots” in the work of historical artists “could make those artists more relevant,” she added. The show should “have addressed these issues in a more open and transparent way that connected with contemporary audiences,” Ms. Suda said that out of 2,313 feedback cards submitted by visitors at the Canadian exhibition, about 50 were complaints about Gauguin and about the museum programming. In Ottawa, the title “Head of a Savage, Mask” was shown with an extended label explaining that the words ‘savage’ and ‘barbarian,’ “considered offensive today, reflect attitudes common to Gauguin’s time and place.” Elsewhere, his “relationship with a young Tahitian woman” was changed to “his relationship with a 13- or 14-year-old Tahitian girl.” Nine labels were changed to avoid culturally insensitive language, according to the museum’s press office. A few days before the opening, the museum’s newly appointed director, Sasha Suda, and the exhibition’s curators decided to edit some of the wall texts after touring the show.

The show was co-produced with the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and opened in Ottawa in late May. Riopelle described Gauguin as “a very complicated person, a very driven person, a very callous person,” and said he was “disappointed” that his overwhelming urge to make art “led him to hurt or use so many people badly.”

Good Day, Mr. Gauguin by Michael Pierre