A Thoughtful, Detailed Rebuttal to My "Make Art Loans, Not War" Op-Ed

I'm really getting knocked lately. But I don't mind when it's a thoughtful, detailed, intelligent and passionate response.

Kwame Opoku takes issue with my recent LA Times Op-Ed piece on the Afrikanet.info website:

Many of the stolen cultural objects cannot simply be left where they are even if the owners agree finally to donate or, lend some of them....These are not just art objects, as Lee Rosenbaum may think. Many embody the unity and the spirit of the particular African people. These objects have to be returned, even if symbolically, so that our peoples see and feel that the long exile of their gods and kings has ended....

Besides, why should those who have been deprived of their cultural objects even think, at this stage, of making loans of the same objects to those who have been keeping them and still even today largely refuse to consider the issue of restitution?

I will only say in self-defense that I never meant to suggest that everything should stay where it is. What I said is that "source countries, possessing more high-quality artifacts from their ancient pasts than they can adequately display, don't need to get everything [emphasis added] back." I did not say, nor do I believe, that they should not get anything back.

I see a little patch of common ground in this quote from Opoku: "These objects have to be returned, even if symbolically." Some objects, certainly the ones that "embody the unity and the spirit" of a culture, should be physically returned. Others may be able to stay where they are on loan, with a clear acknowledgement by the exhibiting institution of the source country's ownership.

Can't we try to move from combativeness to mutually beneficial cooperation?

Having said that, I will acknowledge that museums are clearly aware of repatriation imperatives involving European countries. But as Opoku would surely argue, and as recent events in Southern California have illustrated, there's much more work to be done in addressing the cultural-property concerns of other areas of the world, including Africa and Southeast Asia.

January 30, 2008 6:07 PM | | Comments (0)

Categories:

Leave a comment

Me Elsewhere

Highlights from my writings and broadcasts: 


MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection (museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on the Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

more of me elsewhere

Blogroll

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on January 30, 2008 6:07 PM.

Clueless on the Kos: Museums and Donors' Appraisals was the previous entry in this blog.

Robert Olson: Call Your Lawyer is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

AJ Ads



AJ Blogs

AJBlogCentral | rss

culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
CultureGulf
Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...

music
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
On the Record
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds

publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.