> Most of the plunder was taken back to Europe and either tucked away in private collections or presented as gifts to royal families. Queen Victoria of Britain was given a pet Pekingese dog, the first of its kind ever seen in Europe. Unabashed by its provenance, she named it Looty.
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."
It's a difficult thing to do and there are so many hidden strings and interests at stake but the reality is quite clear. A lot of things were looted and are in our western countries somehow illegally. IMO they should be returned to their countries of origin if evidence of that says so. If things were bought/sold and there are documents to attest that, they could stay.
In the polite paraphrase of John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight:
"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".
> they should reach out through official channels and negotiate their return
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.)
During last couple of hundred years Europeans colonized good portion of Asian countries and lot of history and art of taken back to Europe. Now lot of European countries hold these things in museums. It is a source of income for these countries and also attracts tourism ecosystems, so they are never going to give it back to countries it came from.
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.
Why would that be ironic? Some museums are for foreign antiquities, some of them are for native/aboriginal artifacts and history. A city can have more than one museum.
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?!
Ridiculous, check out how the Chinese artworks is being treated in some western museums. They don't know how to protect the artworks since cultural ignorance(the material needs to be treated specially), some of the artworks are fking cut into pieces.
Even if that were the case, I’d argue that it has fared much better in London than it would have in China - most likely it would have been “harmonized” in the 1960s.
[1]In 1914–1915 the scroll was dismantled, and remounted on two long stretchers, one containing the nine scenes of the original painting, and one containing all the other sections, except for the Zou Yigui painting, which was mounted separately as an album leaf.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admonitions_Scroll
They knew how the materials worked, and we've pieced together how and why the various steps taken in the aim of conservation were taken.
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.
so then argue this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admonitions_Scroll
if the thieves know that, how did they dismantle this Chinese painting and remount it with the Japanese painting mounting method?
Because the wooden backing of the Japanese method was used across the board for conservation of most asian silk scrolls because it lends itself very well to conservation and preservation of the piece while also allowing display in museums.
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.
The Western museums preserved Chinese artifacts that otherwise would have been destroyed by the Chinese themselves. That fact does indeed legitimize the status quo. The artifacts must and will remain, excluding those pilfered by the criminals described in the article.
> That fact does indeed legitimize the status quo.
So how about let western white people own everything, and kill all non white people, as non white are not doing a good job of protecting their own stuff.
This is what you called "legitimize".
This is not only utterly racism, it's also plain stupid. If there were no opioid war, the artifacts would have been protected very well.
The commenter was angry, but I understand his anger. I can see how even the slightest hint of it in sharing my personal experiences can trigger negative responses from other people, but it also helps for you and others to be sensitive to the trauma that many others (and our families) have lived through.
If there were no Opium Wars, there would have been no Nine-Power Treaties, and thus the Qing would not have fallen, and thus Mao and the CPC would not have eventually gained control over China, and thus the Cultural Revolution and the Four-Olds Campaign would not have happened?
If I rob your house and take your furniture, and then later see you burning a chair on your lawn. Am I absolved of the theft in the first place if I kept your furniture nice and clean in my house?
You’re committing the depressingly common fallacy of scaling interpersonal ethics up to intercultural. Let me suggest that you give some thought to how your analogy fails in this regard.
Note that you do not address the claim that an immoral act (the destruction of Chinese art during the Cultural Revolution) does not absolve another one (the pillaging of Chinese art by Europeans decades/centuries earlier). If scaling interpersonal ethics up to the intercultural is a common fallacy (which it's not), then you have committed the depressingly common fallacy of Argument from Fallacy [1].
If it is not a common fallacy, let me make an appeal to you:
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?
Both of you are lumping all Chinese people together as a monolith. Let's put it this way.
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?
A lot of the Summer Palace's current state is due to the state of neglect in which it was left afterwards by the successive regimes.
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.
A recent example of that from 2016, when a large stretch of the Great Wall was paved over flat with concrete, in what was claimed to be an act of restoration:
There is not one single "Great Wall". There are many stretches and thousands of miles of them, built and rebuilt over thousands of years, all in various stage of decay save for a few sites preserved for tourism. Peter Hessler wrote a very readable piece for the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/05/21/walking-the-wa...
It's possible that the author wasn't trying to play into the stereotypes but the editor wanted to stay "on-message" and asked for revisions in order to be published.
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.
It’s much easier and feasible to give back artwork. It’s not like millions of people living in the Great Plains are going to be able/willing to move so that we can give the land back to the original tribes. It’s reasonable to consider keeping artwork as indefensible whilst acknowledging the impracticality of giving back land.
The issue of "at what point land in history did stealing land become something illegitimate that we should reverse" is extremely fraught. It was a major part of both the UN and the League of nations to delegitimise this, but it wasn't systematic.
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.~
> 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.
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 don't think that's the right way to think about it. Legitimacy is only meaningful when it can be enforced. Yes, international law is very important in providing a systematic approach to determining what kinds of acts justify what kinds of responses. Ultimately, though, land is yours if you can hold it.
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.
I guess that's why no one has done anything about Russia's (re-)annexation of Crimea? Everyone who signed the charter is duty-bound to sternly frown, slowly shake heads, and make "tut tut" noises?
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 principle of "Finder's Keepers" is completely illegitimate when it comes to transportable objects like artwork, but it's at least a little bit legitimate when it comes to land - in the case of North America, generations of people have been born there and made their lives there, so they have some claim to the land even if its original seizure was a crime.
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.
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.
I did not call them peace loving or non-violent. I said they had no concept of land ownership. You are making my point for me - though condescendingly and with a source that is somewhat rambling and obtuse.
Of course they were violent and murderous: they are human beings. They did not, however, commit genocide in the pursuit of property.
Or Thrace, Constantinople, and Ionia? What about Pakistan? Alexander of Macedon clearly left it to "the strongest", not to a gaggle of warring Macedonian officers, and certainly not to a section of a former British imperial territory.
What is your opinion of the painting: The Wedding at Cana[1]? Should it be returned to the Catholic Church? If a rich, Catholic or Italian collector decided to steal it from the Louvre, would you root for that criminal? If not, what is the moral boundary of when it is acceptable to steal art?
I absolutely side with Chinese here. I once saw the world’s longest water buffalo horns in a British museum with the accompanying caption as something on the lines of “purchased by a Britisher from an Indian farmer”. I thought either the poor guy got murdered or he was given a single quid for formality purposes to get his thumb imprint on forms to complete the paper trail. He wouldn’t even be able to read English on those forms. Exploitation and plunder is how I see these museums. I think these items should be property of originating country and taken on loan to display it to the public.
OK I'll bite. So basically you're guessing that an ignorant Indian got suckered into giving up this prized possession to a murderous/exploiting white man?
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.
It is rather a curious thing that something so simple and not valuable in the past to one person could be seen as so unique and valuable to everyone in the future due to simply surviving the passage of time. See much of archaeology.
I'm inclined to agree with you, however you also have to consider all the history destroyed civil strife: ISIS destroying ancient statues in Iraq, rebels in Timbuktu, the Chinese government destroying Lhasa, etc. There's an argument that we need to geographically distribute history to ensure its survival.
I think most people would agree with your reasoning here, but there is a difference between a country voluntarily gifting their artifacts / artwork to other countries as opposed to other countries obtaining them through morally questionable means and then claiming it's better to keep things that way.
The British too away a lot of jewels from India, they give some bullshit about how it was gifted to them by the princely states etc, it was straight up highway robbery. There has been a decades-long row between the British and Indian government regarding this.
I'm inclined to agree too. Though having the possible damaging and destruction of the artifacts of collective heritage rest on the actions and decisions of a few exclusive individuals isn't really cool.
>> Reminded me of the more passive-aggressive Greek approach to their own stolen artworks.
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.
>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.
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.
Causality and morality are operating separately. Because of the Old China's Empirical Close Door Policy, they got invaded by Europeans. Because of the invasion, art works were robbed, the Old China fell and the New China was born. Because of the New China's destruction of the Four Olds, some art works were destroyed. Because of many art works were stolen, they got preserved and being stolen back to the New China gradually. Like clock work.
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...
Agreed. During the 1950s/60s/70s the amount of precious art and historic artifacts lost is just staggering, it makes one sick everytime thinking about 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?
I'm disinclined to respect property ownership claims over significant cultural artifacts to someone that has intentionally destroyed one.
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.
> Because of the Old China's Empirical Close Door Policy, they got invaded by Europeans. Because of the invasion, art works were robbed, the Old China fell and the New China was born.
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?
I don't understand the downvotes. I'm describing the personal experience of my own family, and trying to relate it to this audience.
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.
To be clear, the issue being raised here is the manner in which some of the pieces are being returned: through theft. Regardless of morality, past deeds, and rightful ownership, it’s unacceptable to take matters like this into one’s own hands. Keep in mind that cars were lit on fire as a distraction: innocent people who had nothing to do with the original lootings were harmed.
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.
It’s a lot more definitive than you make it out to be. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Ten wrongs don’t make a right. This is why wars continue for generations: peoples hold grudges against each other.
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.
This is nothing more than virtue signaling. No one was hurt.
This is the same argument used by people that think reparations are stupid and yet refuse to stop benefiting from the violence that created the wealth they benefit from to this day. It's hypocritical.
I wonder how long a second nation has to hold onto an item that orginally came from another nation before it becomes more a piece of the second nation's history and culture than the first.
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?
This is an interesting insight. How about the following test: If the art reflects the culture of the adopted nation, then it belongs there. If not, then no.
And if it doesn't reflect the culture of either? Does it no longer belong anywhere? I suppose it must be possible for it to belong in a nation whose culture isn't reflected in the art, since many nations have historical art that doesn't reflect their contemporary culture.
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.
Then it this case it wouldn't. Old Culture was destroyed by Mao in a deliberate purge and destruction of history. His party still claims to hold to his principals and is the only leadership of that nation. They willfully and forcefully disavowed that culture as not communist enough. Fortunately it has been preserved.
It's interesting to see these European nations are publicly displaying these pilfered stuff, knowing many of them carry ugly history, in museums for the whole world to see.
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.
Well, many Chinese museums 'matter-of-factly' display artifacts plundered from their subjugated populations (the Uighers, the Tibetans, the Miao, etc) so I'd hazard a guess that it's a fairly universal trait.
I have been to many major memuems in China and I don't remember seeing large sections of precious artifacts from the populations you mentioned. Can you name some of them? Also technically they are all within one country, it's different from what we are talk about.
"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.
Wouldn't you say that's the general consensus if the work is considered important ?
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.
Who's to say "what they were worth" at that time and in that place? Pretty much the only indication we have is whatever price the buyer was willing to pay and the seller was 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.
I bought some embroidery in a shop in Korea a few years ago. If someone classes that as stolen art, then the word has become pretty meaningless.
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?
It's interesting how whataboutism is called out in every thread about China but its somehow okay when the topic of interest is the Brits/French. Your two examples don't even hold water, the first one is a temporary exhibition of donated artwork, the second is filled with replicas or illustratory material, not original works. You even say yourself that you can't easily find too many others, while the examples you've found are like apples to oranges compared to the art unabashedly displayed in european museums that were looted from their places of origin in very near history.
The mental gymnastics at work here are to be expected. There's really a total lack of integrity when it comes to Europeans admitting the extraordinary crimes of the past and providing redress. This is why absolutely nobody takes seriously the empty words about human rights. And note it is not a matter of "ancient history"; it is widely recognized that American soldiers looted art from Iraq and Afghanistan worth millions [1] but there is very rarely investigations and prosecutions for this.
It sounds like you are claiming that no lives were lost during colonization (of Asia, the Americas, Africa, Australia...) or slaves traded. Would you like to clarify your statement?
>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.
But these European museums for the past hundred years have been like this, "hey folks, look here, in the past we invaded other countries, burnt down their houses, plundered their stuff. It's wrong, OK! Now with that out of the way, here are our loot, everybody come in to take a look. Enjoy!" It's facinating.
Technically, these artworks should be "properties the world. " It would be nice if all artworks return to their original countries eventually like Pandas. Maybe loan to other countries' museums for display with earn royalties. That would make traveling to the artworks of original countries much more worthawhile. And have countries sign a UN agreement to preserve their own artworks with a common standard.
Excerpt from near the end of the article (about Summer Palace zodiac heads, separate pieces from the heists):
> 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.
I agree with you. It would be as though the Constitution, the Liberty Bell, most of the contents of the Smithsonian, and almost all the contents inside the White House were looted and then put on display elsewhere, and it took the looters 3-ish days to finish burning what they couldn't carry with them. And followed by claiming a bunch of US land as their own territory in the aftermath.
It would be pretty awful, and I would never wish that experience upon anyone, even people I disliked.
Colonialism was a bad experience for the colonized. :-/
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?
Losing an item is also a part of history. Should we have sent the British a bill for burning the White House back in 1812, and be demanding payment to this day, or was rebuilding it, and enshrining the history of its burning in our culture the better decision? I'd argue the later.
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 would suggest that it's not appropriate to tell other people how to view their own history, particularly history that is recent enough that living people either remember it or spoke to those who did.
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.
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.)
Is there any irony in the fact that the Chinese government is stealing back artwork that was once theirs, while at the same time stealing IP from international companies?
One may argue that artwork and IP isn't on the same level, but it's a bit hypocritical right?
141 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 226 ms ] threadThe "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.
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.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291523444/download
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.
So how about let western white people own everything, and kill all non white people, as non white are not doing a good job of protecting their own stuff.
This is what you called "legitimize".
This is not only utterly racism, it's also plain stupid. If there were no opioid war, the artifacts would have been protected very well.
Get your logic straight first.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing
The commenter was angry, but I understand his anger. I can see how even the slightest hint of it in sharing my personal experiences can trigger negative responses from other people, but it also helps for you and others to be sensitive to the trauma that many others (and our families) have lived through.
If there were no Opium Wars, there would have been no Nine-Power Treaties, and thus the Qing would not have fallen, and thus Mao and the CPC would not have eventually gained control over China, and thus the Cultural Revolution and the Four-Olds Campaign would not have happened?
I am saying it's not legalized.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
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...)
That does not logically follow from any point you've made. Preservation of something does not legitimize its theft.
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...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37442276
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 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.
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.
Please keep this sort of rude trick off HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Of course they were violent and murderous: they are human beings. They did not, however, commit genocide in the pursuit of property.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wedding_at_Cana
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.
Except he didn't do that. He assumed that one Indian wasn't informed of the true worth of what he was selling.
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.
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.
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...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No problems there either.
Should HN have a policy banning such posts?
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.
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.
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?
[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.
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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?