I am fully behind updating and amending the descriptions of artwork to modern terminology, including wording that reflects contemporary sensibilities about language.
I'm a lot more leery about changing the titles that artists gave to their works, even if said titles including language that people today find offensive. That's a lesson of history, as much as the art itself. And to make some amendments is a slippery slope, as it justifies all sorts of retitling shenanigans based religious, patriotic, or political "sensitivity".
So, for example, the illustration below is by Simon Maris, c. 1900. The old title was "Young Negro-Girl". The Rijksmuseum is retitling it to “Young Girl Holding a Fan”. That strikes me as taking away from the history of the piece for the sake of avoiding offense to people who might not want to know that currently objectionable terms were once used a century-plus ago.
(Note: if the title is not the artist's, but one given to the work by a museum or initial owner at the time, I have no objections to changing it, though keeping a record of the change, both for provenance and for that historical perspective, should be a part of that process.)
Rijksmuseum Removing Racially Charged Terms From Artworks’ Titles and Descriptions
The Rijksmuseum in Amstersdam is in the process of removing language that could be considered offensive from digitized titles and descriptions of some 220,000 artworks in its collection.
"Negro" is a racially-charged term? I thought it was neutral, as is "caucasian" (or am I wrong about that one, too?).
"Negro" is not considered proper usage today; the preference is for black or "African-American". Referring to someone (or a painting) today as "Negro" would be making an (assumed) intentional statement by doing so, whereas someone doing so in 1900 would not. But that's useful information, too; someone in 1900 who was being intentionally offensive would have chosen a different term. It's an important lesson from the past to realize that, I think.