The Great Chinese Art Heist
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In morality, Who has the right to those art works? Invader robbers who unintentional preserved the art works or the new generation of descendants who are stealing the art works back? People can argue all day. It's much more difficult to see the result from a morality perspective...
By Close Door Policy, are you including making opium illegal and trying to enforce that law within the borders until the drug cartel showed up with a navy behind it? Are you familiar with the Opium War?
People of my grandparents generation were born into a lot of trauma. My grandfather was sold by his own parents into indentured servitude to support their opium habit for which they had already sold their farmland. (Those were desperate times when people decided to follow a populist leader who didn't know how to govern, and who, though vilified by the West, can be more described as a combination of the positive attributes of Bernie Sanders and the negative attributes of Donald Trump.)
Rich people had a lot of privilege and on the receiving end of a lot of anger from poor people, once there weren't many foreigners around to be mad at any more, and some of the aristocrats really were jerks. But some wealthy people were just idealistic and trying to fix the country instead of fleeing to other parts of Southeast Asia (a mistake made by other parts of my family), and were in for a world of hurt.
So, in your opinion ... if European soldiers looted my home and stole works of art (which actually did happen to my family), and later on, other works of art were destroyed by mobs of poor people who attacked my family, you're saying that it makes what the European looters did totally ok and they can keep their loot?
Sometimes, people like to lump all Chinese people together as a monolith without any nuance, as though the crimes that angry mobs of poor people visited upon my family justifies the crimes committed by foreigners against my family just a little bit earlier.
There is no rhyme or reason to the suffering visited upon us by either party.
If we’re going to avoid grouping the Chinese together as a giant monolith, then we must do the same for the West: it’s not acceptable to set fire to cars so you can reclaim art.
The current government of China is a direct descendant of the one that tried to burn history in the Cultural Revolution. Subsequent regret and contrition notwithstanding, I think any claim that PRC might have had over the stolen artifacts was forfeited the instant they started smashing and burning similar artifacts still under their control.
The art thief implicitly respects that the artifact has cultural value--value that they intend to capture and exploit. The art destroyer does not. I'd prefer to award curation privileges to the person or institution that has respected the cultural value for the longest continuous interval. The PRC can only realistically claim that respect since 1976. You can't put a chair out with the trash and then take it back when you find out someone pulled it out of your garbage and restored it.
the best joke in this thread, open your browser then search for the artworks "protected" by the European thieves, for instance, why The British Museum cut Admonitions Scroll?
In no reality is it morally acceptable to go around setting cars belonging to innocent people ablaze because you’re upset with violence carried out by other people.
I am strongly opposed to the concept of inherited grudges and misdeeds. Children are not responsible for the decisions of their parents.
If China wants to reclaim the art, they should attempt to do so diplomatically. If they are denied, tough cookies: it’s not worth endangering lives to reclaim historical artifacts. I would sooner see the artifacts destroyed than lives put at risk as countries steal from each other. I would personally burn all of my family heirlooms if it meant protecting people who are alive today. I am honoring my ancestors more by preserving the lives they’ve created than by protecting their former belongings, no matter how sentimental they may be. And I am certain generations of ancestors would agree with me on that.
There were people who wronged my ancestors. We’ve all been wronged in one way or another. I forgive them. I don’t forgive their descendants, as their descendants have done nothing wrong, and I can’t forgive if nothing has been done wrong. I hold no grudges for the misdeeds of past generations.
The claims of European museums to art stolen in the past seem indefensible to me. Hard not to root for the criminals in this case, if they really are repatriating stolen artifacts.
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/indian-water-buffalo-hor...
Had it ever occurred to you that what actually happened was an incredulous Indian farmer was more than happy to take the white man's coin for a pair of buffalo horns that were lying around his farm? I mean, they're not exactly rare, you get a free pair every time a buffalo croaks.
Now, if you're talking about the Parthenon or the Old Summer Palace then fair enough. They were valuable to the original owners (OK not the Elgin marbles but still) and the Brits didn't exactly ask nicely.
But assuming all Indians/Chinese/Egyptians/Greeks/whatever were just credulous bumpkins is a completely unwarranted slight.
Israel's seizure of land at the Six Day War seems to be the exact point at which nobody can agree. It's the last of the settler states.
Greece, Iran, Italy, Mongolia, Turkey, Russia, and Ukraine all have potential claims.
If annexation by force is no longer a legitimate means of acquiring land, then it is reasonable to say that it was never legitimate. If it is, then going to war to take territory is still possible. But there really is no fair way to declare a fixed epoch and say that forceful annexation was only legitimate in the prior era, and is now unacceptable in the following era.
Either conquest is still okay, or it never was.
If it never was, you must be prepared to support repatriation claims from aboriginal peoples until the end of time. Perhaps there is a case for establishing adverse possession for land sovereignty. If you can take it and keep control of it for 20 years, your claim is presumed valid.
And it could give national rivals a nice, limited territorial war every 18 years or so, to feed their military industrial complexes through hard times, when the world is just too peaceful to make a profit.~
There's something to be said for systems that, more-or-less, are practical and work without making perfect logical sense or being perfectly self-consistent.
Building a perfect legal regime has a lot in common with building a perfect software application.
I believe the parent's argument was that land seizure by any country which has signed the UN charter after they've signed the charter is not legitimate.
It may not have been legitimate before, but signing the charter saying you agree it's not legitimate does put a nice line in the sand.
Sibling poster is correct. International law is basically that you can do whatever you want if you have the strength to back it up without backing down. Meaning that conquest is still de facto okay, even if you signed the charter to make it de jure not-okay. And as long as it's still okay, all those conquered peoples that lost their land can go pound... well, I don't know what they can pound, since the sand doesn't belong to them any more.
I think the legitimacy of US sovereignty over its land (or Canadian or Australian etc) is also strengthened by the fact that it is a representative democracy, so to some degree its management of the land is carried out on behalf of all of its citizens, including the descendants of natives. If the US were governed by an aristocracy of descendants of settlers, as in Apartheid South Africa, then that would be clearly unjust to me.
edit: to be clear, I think that native populations in all these countries have legitimate grievances today, I just wouldn't go so far as to say that all their original land is still rightfully theirs.
As I understand it, most north American indiginous groups had very little concept of realty.
Moreover, in this context, it's a specious argument.
Here ya go: https://www.google.com
As I understand it, most north American indiginous groups had very little concept of realty.
But they did understand war, and the taking of land/territory from one another. The idea that the indians were all kind of peace-loving pacifist hippies is a historical revision.
It will come as news to some people who don't read anything published earlier than the 1960's, but many indian tribes were proud warriors, and routinely fought and conquered other tribes.
There were also indian tribes that were shunned (for example, the Karankowa (sp?) in Texas who were known for being cannibals), and those who were considered backwater misfits (for example, Moapa Paiute).
The indian tribes were much more interesting and varied than modern history teaches.
Of course they were violent and murderous: they are human beings. They did not, however, commit genocide in the pursuit of property.
Please keep this sort of rude trick off HN.
Note that such arguments were once made regarding Egyptian artifacts. Post-ISIL there isn't the same drive to repatriate middle-eastern artifacts. I'm a fan of not keeping all my eggs in one basket. Perhaps artifacts from past civilizations should be spread around the world to avoid them being decimated by any local conflict.
The conservancy policies in China are generally quite appalling. Monuments are either disneyified for tourism and bigotted propaganda or left to rot/built over without a care in the world.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/world/asia/china-great-wa...
Is this "matter of fact" mindset an unique trait of European cultures? No judgement is passing here, I am only curious about the thinking and mindset. I would venture to guess that nations of other cultures in modern days probably would feel very uncomfortable to openly display artifacts sourced in similar ways.
What shroud do you keep Manhattan hidden under?
At least the British left the India to the Indians when they were done stealing all that wasn't nailed down.
The Americans on the other hand gave the Indians the bad parts of Idaho * .
* As long as no oil is discovered there.
So:
https://www.si.edu/collections
"The Smithsonian's collections represent our nation's rich heritage, art from across the globe, and the immense diversity of the natural and cultural world."
In other words, the Smithsonian has plenty of stolen art.
But what about real "other" cultures ?
http://en.chnmuseum.cn/tabid/520/Default.aspx?ExhibitionLang...
Yep, China does it too.
https://independent-travellers.com/malaysia/kuala_lumpur/nat...
So does Malaysia ... plenty of Chinese and even Western objects.
Can't easily find too many others, but of course in the middle east the collections also contain much stolen art.
When Van Gogh sold a painting, at what point did it become stolen? Was it stolen from him as he willingly accepted money for it, or was the act of theft committed later when the purchaser moved house?
The British museum paid for most of their artworks. Granted, probably not what they were worth, but certainly a price the sellers were willing to accept.
We might consider them "priceless" objects in a museum now, but that doesn't tell us anything about what they were worth at the time of acquisition. The "value" of an artwork is almost entirely a cultural construct, not something inherent in the object, and may vary drastically across both time and space.
[1] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-iraq-war-...
Yeah, sure, because art taken hundred years ago is somehow comparable to breaking human rights.
Seems anything related to China is hidden with a connection with the government or some kind of populist concerted movement.
The authors know too well such articles serves the stereotype and did nothing to state the fact clearly.
The "looty" is going back to China via museum heists. The only way this art could be preserved in European collections is to temporarily remove it from museums and keep it hidden away. IMO, if China wants its looted art back they should reach out through official channels and negotiate their return.
> ... David Cameron during a visit to India in 2010, when he was asked if Britain would ever return the [Kohinoor Diamond].
> "If you say yes to one you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty,” said the Prime Minister then. "I think I'm afraid to say, to disappoint all your viewers, it's going to have to say put."
I wonder if, on the private market and not museum worthy, whether the prices for these would go down.
"I understand that you want the diamond, but the thing is that we have the diamond, you don't and we're going to keep having it forever. So in summary, finders keepers, go yourself. Cheerio." says Oliver, 'breaking down' former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg's "integral legal argument".
While referring to the crown on which the diamond now sits as an "elegant head sofa", Oliver calls Prime Minister David Cameron's response ("They're not having it back") as "petulant and childish" and expresses surprise that he didn't "lick the diamond to officially call dibs on it".
He doesn't stop there. The comedian 'reasons' Britain's reluctance on returning the Kohinoor saying if they were to start giving back the artifacts they brought in from their former colonies, the British Museum would go empty. He also refers to the British Museum as "an active crime scene".
Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/why-wouldnt-britain-retu...
In some cases, they do (depending upon what you mean by official and negotiate):
> In 2013, for instance, two of the famed zodiac heads, the rabbit and the rat, from the estate of the French designer Yves Saint Laurent, were handed over after a planned auction was scuttled. Officials in China told Christie's, the auction house, that if the heads were ever sold off, there would be "serious effects" on the firm's business. (Not long after the heads were returned, Christie's became the first international fine-art auction house to receive a license to operate independently in China.)
Also I sometimes find it ironic some of these museums in European hold very little local history, instead they hoard history of other countries they ruled in past.
Does that legalize the current status quo that what are inside the non Chinese museums have all their rights and good will to keep what their ancestors robbed from China?!
Please speak you thoughts clearly.
That does not logically follow from any point you've made. Preservation of something does not legitimize its theft.
If I go to your house and beat you up, you have every right to call the police on me and they should be able to throw me in jail, and keep an eye on me until I've reformed my ways. However, this doesn't mean you can go to my house and start stealing all my things: just like any other immoral act, as you point out, one crime doesn't absolve another. This should apply even if you're a policeman.
Accordingly, the USSR should not have seized Kaliningrad, Stettin, and Silesia. Don't you think those territories should be returned to Germany?
If you come to my house and beat me up and loot my stuff, and then burn most of my house down, but I survive, and then a mob of poor people came by and then destroyed other artifacts in my house, do the actions of the mob of poor people absolve you, the original looter?
Does it complicate or simplify things if you, the original looter, also sold opium to the mob of poor people?
(And this assumes that art is like furniture. Hold my beer...)
Here's a 2014 paper on the history of the scroll, including a fairly detailed section on the conservation & restoration efforts since the piece arrived at the British Museum.
The trade off between this method and keeping the scroll in unmounted silk form was between having a more stable backing for the scroll itself to aid in preservation at the cost of removing the scroll's ability to be bent.
The concern for this scroll specifically was that this scroll was unevenly decayed, had numerous repairs in the past and constant continuing repairs would be needed to mitigate wear and tear - frayed silk ends were already an issue. The standard method of dealing with this issue is remounting, and evidence indicated this scroll had been remounted numerous times in it's history.
The museum decided to affix the scroll and apply a form of sealant, after remounting the edge silk sections (which they literally brought experts over from asia to do). This was done to remove the need to repaint and splice sections in (which was the traditional method of maintaining the piece, but which obviously changes it over time) and mitigate future damage to the piece.
TLDR: just read the link I posted.
> The curator guided me toward a dark, carpeted room in the rear of the museum. Inside, each of the four revered heads—the ox, the tiger, the monkey, and the pig—had been given its own display case, in which it sat atop purple velvet cushioning.
> “The first time I saw them, I was so excited,” the curator told me. She spoke in a low, reverential whisper. She was a student then and remembered how, on the day the heads were officially returned, her entire school had watched the ceremony on television. Students wept at their desks.
Does it never become that? Is it just relative amount of time?
Does it depend on the rationale for the first nation requesting its return i.e. is return of stolen goods different to return of goods legally purchased? Is it different to goods that the first had effectively discarded or thrown away?
The idea that millennia old artifacts automatically belongs to a person or group because they live in the kind of area where it was made a thousand years previously just doesn't seem very satisfactory. Maybe it's the word "belong"; historical, meaningful or significant art feels like it shouldn't "belong" to anyone in the same sense of "belong" that I can own a tin of peas.
Cave paintings in El Castillo, 40000 years old. The word "belong" really doesn't feel right.
I admire the single-minded dedication to purpose which the unified central government brings to bear. With that kind of focus and coordination, the government often achieves its goals with little effort.
Some have stood their ground, arguing the legitimacy of their acquisitions or touting the value to the Chinese of sharing their culture abroad. Others have quietly shipped crates of art back to China, in hopes of avoiding trouble with either the thieves or the government.
In 2013, for instance, two of the famed zodiac heads, the rabbit and the rat, from the estate of the French designer Yves Saint Laurent, were handed over after a planned auction was scuttled. Officials in China told Christie's, the auction house, that if the heads were ever sold off, there would be “serious effects” on the firm's business. (Not long after the heads were returned, Christie's became the first international fine-art auction house to receive a license to operate independently in China.)
One may argue that artwork and IP isn't on the same level, but it's a bit hypocritical right?
Where in the article says this?
I guess my point is that the objects aren't the history. Ideally there would be a more open system to allow the study of older artifices, but in the end I think maintaining a link to the history is more important than possessing the actual object. Of course if that became the norm its likely at some point most objects would be repatriated over time anyway, excluding those where the location become historically relevant itself.
I do think there's definitely a real debate about when an artifact passes from "hey, that's ours, give it back" to "what a fascinating bit of world history, belonging to the world".
There's also a very real history of literal colonialism going on here, that simply can not be discarded. It is probably an accurate concept to contexualize this as part of a country decolonizing itself and asserting that it has a valid history.
Contextualizing for American audiences, the Summer Palace was burnt in the same time period as our civil war, and those ghosts are not near laid to rest.
Anyway, like I said: if someone stole the Constitution, I'd generally be sore about it and see it as a patriotic good to get it back. even tho' there are a ton of copies everywhere, and the value is in the ideas.
It would be pretty awful, and I would never wish that experience upon anyone, even people I disliked.
You seem to be very up on current Mainland thought - do you have any web sites in English you'd recommend for a genuine (not exoticized) information source?