INTERPOL Trafficking in Illicit Goods Program moves into North Africa

In this very dry video (doesn’t INTERPOL have enough money to hire a social media intern?), Roberto Manriquez, the Acting Director of the Trafficking in Illicit Goods Program, explains that INTERPOL is very excited to start working in the North African region. After the dramatic — and traumatic for the cultural heritage community — events in Mali earlier this year, I think this move can be considered belated at best.

However, by expanding their operations to consider some of the world’s most violently threatened regions of cultural heritage (for instance, the extreme looting of Djenne terracotta figurines from Mali — there are less than twenty figures recovered through archaeological excavations while hundreds reside in museums worldwide), INTERPOL is certainly taking a step in the right direction. Archaeologists cannot save the world on their own, and INTERPOL is a formidable ally to have.

New Year, New Book

Hello everyone! One of my New Year’s Resolution (love em or hate em) is to update this blog more frequently, which really wouldn’t take very much considering the scarcity with which I posted last year. Another resolution is to read for pleasure more, which dovetails nicely with this blog.

Last week I visited my local library’s used book store, and picked up The Medici Conspiracy by Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini. Published in 2006, this book follows the trail of looted antiquities from Italy and Greece across the world. I’m only 15 pages in, but already hooked. The writing style is reminiscent of The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr in that it reads like a novel but is completely non-fiction and saturated with historical context and cold hard facts (Harr’s book is a must-read for art aficionados, taking the reader through the exciting discovery of a lost Caravaggio painting).

I managed to pick up The Medici Conspiracy for only two dollars (thank you, public libraries!), and I’m going to go ahead and issue a preliminary recommendation for anyone looking for a new book to ring in the new year. If you’re interested in hearing more about the book, listen to this interview from NPR, which also features a short excerpt.

Somehow the people responsible for this found a way in and a way out and they found time to take seven paintings.

Roland Ekkers, a spokesman for Rotterdam police, on the recent theft of seven paintings from the city’s Kunsthal Museum. I find it shocking that only a day after one of the biggest art thefts in history, the story no longer makes it onto the front page of the websites of either the Washington Post or the New York Times. Sad, isn’t it?

Stories of Rescue: Niels Bohr

Stories of Rescue: Niels Bohr

If you’re interested in reading something slightly different, take a look at this short blog I wrote for the Wiener Library on Niels Bohr’s efforts as a rescuer during the Holocaust. Bohr’s attempts to get young scientists out of Nazi-occupied Europe make me think about the ways in which globalization has helped create a discourse between researchers around the world.

Why do people steal art?

For a short but interesting follow-up to yesterday’s robbery, check out this article by the Washington Post’s Olga Khazan. It summarizes the main reasons why people steal art, making the complex issue palatable for someone who hasn’t read extensively on the subject.

Morning After

Reading this article about a robbery early this morning at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam has got me thinking: how does a museum carry on after being the victim of such a terrible crime? You need to decide not only how to handle the crime, but also how to communicate about it.

Communication is key

As a curator or director, you’re removed from direct contact with the public – through a veil of press releases and official statements, you can pick and choose which aspects of your recovery are distributed by the media.

But as a docent, you’re thrust into the spotlight of the scandal. Facing wave after wave of museum-goers, only made more thirsty by the standard day of closure following the theft, how do you deal with the questions? Chances are, you don’t even know the answers. And even if you do, it’s doubtful that the administration wants you letting everyone and their brother know that someone left the employee entrance unlocked and twelve hours later you were a few Picassos lighter.

Great balls of fire

Disasters hit museums in any number of ways, whether they be manmade or natural. During my time as a volunteer at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. (a fantastic private collection if you’re looking for something off the Smithsonian-beaten-track and don’t mind paying for it), there was a minor fire in one of the buildings. It happened during renovation work, and the Phillips handled the situation masterfully: the staff were quick to rescue works, the next special exhibition was installed on time, and they waived the admission fee for the rest of the month. Granted, half of the museum was closed to visitors, but you could still see, among other works, Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party, the feather in the Phillips’ cap.

The fire went as well as a fire could go in an art gallery, but reporting to volunteer the day after the disaster, I found myself a little out of my depths. Having gotten a quick debriefing from the volunteer coordinator on the details of the fire, I was told not to say too much and just reinforce the fact that a) nothing was damaged and b) admission was free. Sitting at my little wooden table where I was accustomed to pointing people to the loo and giving out restaurant recommendations, I faced one breathless patron after another. Unable to answer any of their salacious questions (which I would have liked to know the answers to, as well), I could see the disappointment on their faces.

What now?

For the Kunsthal, today marks a pivot point full of potential. They can approach the situation in any number of ways, but I hope they do so with finesse and honesty. Preparing their employees and volunteers for the onslaught of difficult questions is the first step. The second, and far more important, step is being completely open about the recovery process. Priceless works of art are stolen every day, and by denying that the damage is as extensive as it is, or covering up damages, museums are denying the significance of their victimization.

The largest property theft in U.S. history is the Isabella Stewart Gardner theft of 1990, and yet it is still unsolved. Museums in the Mediterranean are being assailed with minor thefts as the economic crisis worsens, work taken by Nazis continues to be fought over, and galleries continue to display illegally obtained artifacts.

In the 21st century, I would hope that the Kunsthal takes this opportunity to not only rally public support for the return of these particular artworks, but also to start a conversation about the state of stolen art around the world today. By telling their employees to guide visitors away from tricky questions about the crime, the museum administration would essentially be telling their employees to maintain the view that stolen art is not a big deal.

Art elucidates, challenges, denies, rejects, speaks, cries, and completes us. When a work of art is stolen, it affects all of us, not just the museum or its employees. It’s time for stolen art to move from the culture section to the front page.

Apologies for this post being quite rambly, it’s basically all of my reactions to the article in a big ol’ chunk of text. Writing this has really struck a chord in me – definitely look out for more thoughts on how museums respond to thefts like this one, as well as the perception of stolen art in the law, politics, and media. 

¡Mariachi Monday!

 

This week, UNESCO awarded Mexican mariachi music the status of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity at the 19th International Mariachi Convention (no, I didn’t know that was a thing, either). To celebrate this momentous occasion, I bring you a delightful video of a mariachi band serenading a darling beluga whale. That should be enough to keep the Monday blues at bay!

Bones in Britain

There have been some rather spooky archaeological discoveries in Great Britain this week, including the unearthing of hundreds of graves in Ipswich and the advancement of an expedition searching for King Richard III’s grave.

Last week, a team of archaeologists from the University of Leicester discovered the church of the Grey Friars, where it is commonly believed that our dearly deceased King Richard III was buried after dying during the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Then, on Friday, they discovered the garden of Robert Herrick (it’s okay, you’re not expected to know who he is), which apparently includes a memorial to the late king. The dig was meant to end on Friday, but with this latest discovery it looks as though the team will keep on till they get enough.

In Ipswich, 386 graves have been found during an archaeological excavation pre-building of a new housing development. In addition to the graves, evidence has been found of rubbish pits, burial mounds, and a church. The historical occupation of the site appears to span from the 7th to the 16th century, starting with the Saxons. No accompanying artifacts have yet been found, and the skeletons will be reburied in consecrated ground after examination by scientists.

dOCUMENTA(13): The Rotunda

Documenta is colossal – the festival spans dozens of spaces throughout Kassel, inside and outside, making it essentially impossible for visitors to see everything. Such a sprawling endeavor requires a unified starting point to start art-lovers on their journey, allowing them to have some semblance of a communal viewing experience, even if each visitor sees a slightly different set of pieces. This year, the Fridericianum’s Rotunda served as Documenta’s “Brain.”

Visible before it is accessible, the Rotunda houses an extremely varied group of art objects that seek to represent the entire festival in a single space. A rotunda is the perfect structure to house the switchboard of an exhibition as disparate as Documenta. Spherical in form and transitional in function, the architectural setting enhances our viewing experience of not only the objects in the room, but also the hundreds of other objects waiting to be seen around the city.

Mixing the contemporary with the historic and the beautiful with the spoiled, the objects in the Brain allow visitors to see an infinite number of transitional possibilities. The official guidebook describes the Rotunda as delving into the “shifting connotations” of the objects within it, including female figurines from the second millennia B.C. and photography that explores the American Vietnam War.

Items ruined from the National Museum in Beirut.

Ironically enough, my sister and I couldn’t actually find our way into the Rotunda at first, making it rather difficult to set off on a transitional journey. We weren’t able to unravel the mystery of the entrance until we’d already spent our day walking around the festival, so our experience in the “Brain” may have been somewhat compromised. After queueing for a bit (only a small number of visitors are allowed in the Rotunda at any one time to maintain a serene environment), we finally entered the space.

There are dozens of objects in the Rotunda, but a few stood out to me as being particularly relevant to the fight to protect our cultural heritage:

• A landscape painting by Mohammad Yusuf Asefi. Asefi protected paintings of animals and humans from destruction in the National Gallery of Kabul by “restoring” them (covering them).
• Two beautifully destroyed artifacts from the National Museum in Beirut. These two objects are actually the conflation of multiple artifacts that melted together from shellfire and bombing during the Lebanese civil war. One object is an amalgamation of two bronze figurines, while the other is an abstract creation of glass, ivory, and terra-cotta.
• Sketches of Horst Hoheisel’s replacement for a fountain in Kassel destroyed by Nazis in 1939. His 1987 design is an inverse replica of the ravaged original, allowing the negative to embody the loss. The dOCUMENTA(13) guidebook explains that this negative shape “refuses to serve as a symbolic reparation or aesthetic compensation for the fundamental loss of meaning that the Holocaust created in Western modernity,” expanding the fountain’s significance beyond its locational boundaries (432).

I loved the Rotunda, even if I didn’t see it until after seeing the rest of the festival, and even if I was chastised by a security guard for taking pictures of disallowed objects (sorry!). While perhaps intended to be more of an aperitif than a digestif, the “Brain” was a wonderfully curated way to finish the day, providing a sweet endnote to an amazing festival.

What I’m Reading Right Now

We’re in the month leading up to the start of university again, and it’s time for me to put down my quick summer reads and jump headfirst back into academic literature. I’ve purchased about a dozen core texts for my classes this year, ranging from an introduction to Kant to a complete anthology of modernism. University forced me to expand my collection of art books from simply pretty glossy anthologies of artwork to detailed analyses of relevant theories and philosophies. As I head into my first term of second year, these are the books I’m reading:

Kant: A Very Short Introduction – Roger Scruton

At only 135 pages long, this very short introduction is likely the shortest of my academic book collection. A good friend of mine who studies philosophy has warned me that one book is not nearly enough to gain even a basic understanding of Kant, but this particular publication seems to be a great way for philosophy philistines like myself to break into the subject.   

The Ideology of the Aesthetic – Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton is one of those great thinkers of our age who has published on almost everything under the academic sun. Known for his literary theory, this particular volume is an indispensable examination of the aesthetic as a theoretical and philosophical way of encountering the visual. Two chapters in, the book has been well written and insightful, clearly exploring the aesthetic in beautifully phrased sentences begging to be referenced in any university art history paper.

Marxism & Modernism – Eugene Lunn

The junction of aesthetics and politics is a subject that interests me greatly (and features as the topic of one of my seminars this year), so this book promises to be absolutely wonderful. Earlier in the year I read an amazing excerpt from “All That is Solid Melts into Air” by Marshall Berman (highly recommended, definitely check it out) theorizing that Marx was the first modernist. Hopefully this book is as fascinating as that essay!

In Praise of Shadows – Jun’ichiro Tanizaki

This book has become a bit of a legend for my family. Purchased as a present for me by my father many years ago, it has gone from merely a forlorn present at the back of my bookshelf to a glaring reminder of my failure as a daughter that burns into my retina every time I look at it. Tucked in the front cover is a news clipping from the New York Times Sunday magazine from 2010 detailing how Shadows inspired the designers of label Ohne Titel. In 2010, my lack of reading this book was still vaguely amusing. Now, every phone call with my father ends with “I love you, but have you read…” Yes, Dad. I’m working on it.

The Language of Things – Deyan Sudjic

I picked up this book at an amazing bookstore in Edinburgh (Analogue Books on Candlemaker Row, for those who are curious) when I was there last month. The store is mostly filled with independently published zines and treatises on design, but for the more fine art-inclined of us, there are a few gems to be found. This book was one of them, grabbing my attention with the subtitle “How We Are Seduced by the Objects Around Us.” Promising to enlighten the hidden meanings of the objects around me and reveal “how they shape our lives and why we desire them,” this book promises to be a fascinating read.

———-

And because I’m incapable of entering a bookshop without buying at least two new books, here are the books I bought with every intention of reading this summer but have yet to crack open (I’ll get there over reading week, I swear!):

1. Society of the Spectacle – Guy Debord
2. The Essential Frankfurt School Reader – Edited by Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt
3. The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World – Mark Antliff, et al.
4. Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China – Craig Clunas

What books are you guys reading right now? Any that you’ve been meaning to read for ages but haven’t quite gotten around to yet? Any that should definitely be on my “must read” list?