BlogBack: Hispanic Society Habitué Decries Koran Deaccessions
Ted Gallagher, a self-described attorney "with a strong amateur art historic streak" and a B.A. in Spanish art and history, responds to Hispanic Society's Koran Deaccessions:
Sadly, the sale by the Hispanic Society of America of unique Koranic manuscripts for fast cash is yet another case of public art treasures being shed in the name of "mission shift."
The Hispanic Society of America does not overstate the quality of its collections as "unparalleled in their scope and quality outside the Iberian Peninsula, addressing nearly every aspect of culture in Spain." Perhaps I am wrong, but when invading forces impose Islam as the dominant state religion in a previously Christian country for eight centuries, from A.D. 711 until 1492, and that country's Christian population is in a continuous war of reconquest to rid the infidels, leading to a fervor of Christianity in the 16th century that manifested itself in the Inquisition, I would say the earliest complete, dated Koran would be well at home in such a museum as a great art-historical treasure. At least the museum founder believed this to be so.
I now live in Inwood, and spent a year's worth of Saturdays in the neighborhood Hispanic Society library, studying Velázquez, Zurbarán and others of the Sevillian school. The Society is a national treasure, and this loss is heavy on us.
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CULTUREGRRL SPEAKS on museum issues and ethics, arts journalism.
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LEE ROSENBAUM I'm a veteran cultural journalist with many pieces in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and major art magazines. I have been a cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC and WQXR) and have provided arts commentary on NPR and public radio stations in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. I am a HuffPost Arts writer. I've been profiled on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer's Art Beat and in the Chicago Reader. I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at at Investigative Reporters and Editors 2011 Annual Meeting, Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and a conference of the Museum Association of New York, on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University, on arts blogging at American University and on Smithsonian exhibition controversies at Rutgers University.
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