Australia’s Richest Woman Discovers The Streisand Effect In Trying To Remove Portrait She Disliked

I wonder if Gina Rinehart, an Australian mining magnate, is a fan of Barbra Streisand?

It’s been a bit since we had a straight-up classic Streisand Effect story like the good old days, where someone powerful saw something they didn’t like and insisted that it must be disappeared because they didn’t like it.

Meet Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest woman.

Apparently, she didn’t like a portrait of her done by the artist Vincent Namatjira that was hanging at the National Gallery of Australia. Namatjira is an interesting artist, who is known for works that “both skewer and honour their subjects” according to a Guardian profile of him from last year.

And, yeah, you could say that’s the case with his portrait of Rinehart.

I wouldn’t exactly call it flattering, but who knows. My tastes in art may differ from yours.

But, of course, the ability to skewer the powerful and mock them is an important part of a free society. The rich and powerful already can get away with so much nonsense, one of the only tools left to keep them slightly in check is public mockery and criticism.

And the thing is, most people would have looked at it and moved on without much of a thought (maybe with a chuckle), and that would have been that.

But, no, Rinehart is rich and if someone who is rich sees something they dislike, “something must be done.” In this case, that something was to demand the removal of the painting.

The mining billionaire Gina Rinehart has demanded the National Gallery of Australia remove her portrait from an exhibition by the award-winning artist Vincent Namatjira.

The image, arguably an unflattering picture of Australia’s richest woman, is one of many portraits unveiled at the Canberra gallery as part of the Archibald prize-winning artist’s first major survey exhibition.

The National Gallery has rebuffed efforts to have the picture taken down and said in a statement that it welcomed public dialogue on its collection and displays.

Take a wild guess what happened next?

Yup. You got it. This portrait that few people would have known about became national news.

If Gina Rinehart was trying to make sure no one saw a portrait of her, recent moves have had the opposite effect.

Last week, media – including Guardian Australia – reported that Australia’s richest woman had demanded the National Gallery of Australia remove a portrait of her. The painting by the artist Vincent Namatjira is one of numerous portraits on display at the Canberra gallery in Namatjira’s first major survey exhibition.

The Guardian even rightly tagged it as the latest example of the Streisand Effect in action:

Rinehart appears to have fallen victim to the “Streisand effect”, a term coined after Barbra Streisand launched a lawsuit in 2003 to try to remove an aerial photo of her California beach house from an online collection. Streisand’s attempt to suppress the image led to almost half a million people visiting the ­Pictopia site to view the photo within a month.

A similar thing seems to have happened with Rinehart. The NGA told Guardian Australia in a statement that there had been a “noticeable increase” in visitors to the national gallery as well as its digital channels over the past week.

Google trends has also given us a sweeping indicator of the worldwide gain in traction of the search term “Gina Rinehart”.

Before 15 May – the day the first stories about Rinehart’s portrait demand was published – interest in Rinehart on Google was at roughly 0, meaning there was not enough search data on the term.

But after the news broke, search interest picked up, with “Gina Rinehart” hitting peak popularity two days later.

A week later, interest lingered.

Who would have predicted that… other than just about everyone familiar with how these things go.

Look, being rich comes with all sorts of privileges. But one thing it should not come with is the ability to go through life without having to deal with an occasional bit of mockery pointed in your direction. But, when that happens, there are a variety of ways to deal with it, and Rinehart appears to have chosen the absolute worst.