Earlier this year, I spoke at a panel discussion in New York City to mark the unveiling of Quebec—an enormous 9’ by 10’ painting that aspires to capture the full sweep of French Canadian history on one canvas, from Samuel de Champlain to the modern age of indigenous activism. The American artist, Adam Miller, grew up in the Pacific northwest, and studied the great masters in Florence. The evening’s featured speaker was Donald Kuspit, an eminent Jewish art critic who briefly lived in Quebec, but otherwise has little connection to the largely Catholic society of French Canada. He described Quebec as a luminous postmodern take on the Baroque—a style that took definitive expression in the works of Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens—and praised Miller for channelling influences adapted from the book of Genesis, imagery of the dead Christ, and Sandro Botticelli’s 15^th century masterpiece, Adoration of the Magi.

Which is to say, Quebec is very much part of that great cultural mash-up we call Western culture. And if Miller—who does not speak French—had engaged in an act of cultural appropriation, no one, including the Italian-Québécois business magnate who commissioned the work, seemed much put out by it. As a native Quebecer, I was impressed not only by the quality of Quebec, but also by Miller’s sheer nerve and astonishing, inventive juxtapositions. Decisions about what scenes or characters to include in an epic work such as this might have paralyzed a Canadian artist, as it is always difficult to view one’s own society clearly from within. As Quebec shows, it isn’t just the artist who benefits from cultural appropriation, but also his or her audience—since the cross-fertilization of ideas and attitudes helps a society remain vibrant and self-aware.

Yet this spirit of cultural universalism is now under assault, having been rolled into larger controversies over group identity and institutional racism. In a now infamous incident at Oberlin College in Ohio, students angrily called out the school’s main dining-services vendor for “cultural appropriation” in regard to schlocky versions of Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches and General Tso’s chicken. Responding to allegedly substandard sushi, a Japanese student told The Oberlin Review: “If people not from [Japanese] heritage take food, modify it and serve it as ‘authentic,’ it is appropriative.” In May, two white Oregon entrepreneurs found themselves under siege for cultural appropriation after they opened up a pop-up burrito business. (This was in Portland, of course. But still.)