12 ms·

The Great Chinese Art Heist

94 points by prismatic 8y ago

onemoresoop 8y ago
> 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.
- chillacy 8y ago
  This is the official policy: > ... 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."
  - onemoresoop 8y ago
    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.
    - onemoresoop 8y ago
      And illegally obtained art should be out of our museums, period. I wonder if, on the private market and not museum worthy, whether the prices for these would go down.
  - qiqing 8y ago
    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". Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/why-wouldnt-britain-return-the-kohinoor-heres-comedian-john-olivers-hilarious-take-on-it-273055-2015-11-17 https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/why-wouldnt-britain-retu...
- kodablah 8y ago
  > 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.)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
qiqing 8y ago
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.
pnathan 8y ago
What if the US was invaded and the original Constitution stolen, and put on display? I think it would eat at any patriotic American's heart a little.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  More like, 'what if the US was invaded, and someone's nice vase was stolen'. I'm sure some would be miffed.
- qiqing 8y ago
  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.
  - pnathan 8y ago
    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?
- AcerbicZero 8y ago
  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.
akshayB 8y ago
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.
- i_am_nomad 8y ago
  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.
- vertline3 8y ago
  A lot of the lack of old art in china is due to the "destruction of the four olds."
  - justicezyx 8y ago
    What's the point? 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.
    - vertline3 8y ago
      I'm saying it would have likely been destroyed, just as early Christianity destroyed Roman statues. Just as Arabs preserved Roman texts.
      - rustacean 8y ago
        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.
Bayart 8y ago
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.
- adventured 8y ago
  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: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/world/asia/china-great-wall-botched-repair.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/world/asia/china-great-wa... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37442276 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37442276
  - fspeech 8y ago
    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-wall https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/05/21/walking-the-wa...
justicezyx 8y ago
Can we stop this subtle unconscious linkage embedded in the article. 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.
- icantdrive55 8y ago
  How do we find the facts, in a country that kills honest journalists/citizens? The same goes for Russia.
- qiqing 8y ago
  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.
jhpriestley 8y ago
Reminded me of the more passive-aggressive Greek approach to their own stolen artworks: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113889188 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113889... 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.
- laverick 8y ago
  I find the issue a bit more complex. If keeping a Greek statue is indefensible, what about land in North America?
  - lainga 8y ago
    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.
  - Leary 8y ago
    If the land was stolen, then it's indefensible. Or should we have a separate moral code?
    - drharby 8y ago
      Literally indefensible in the sense that the natives defended against the US Cavalry and howitzers and lost.
  - skh 8y ago
    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.
  - pjc50 8y ago
HillaryBriss 8y ago
>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.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
rustacean 8y ago
if the European thieves returned the artworks?
ConfusedDog 8y ago
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...
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  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.
- qiqing 8y ago
  > 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?
EliRivers 8y ago
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?
- glitchc 8y ago
  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.
  - EliRivers 8y ago
    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.
  - kevin_b_er 8y ago
    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.
kev6168 8y ago
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.
- trung1trung2 8y ago
  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.
  - kev6168 8y ago
    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.
    - zeth___ 8y ago
      Technically Greece and Britain are within the EU. No problems there either.
      - Leary 8y ago
        Just renamed the British Museum the EU museum and we are fine.
  - justicezyx 8y ago
    Throw-away account posting baseless statements. Should HN have a policy banning such posts?
- candiodari 8y ago
ConfusedDog 8y ago
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.
qiqing 8y ago
Notable excerpt from the article: 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.)
giarc 8y ago
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?
- justicezyx 8y ago
  > stealing back artwork that was once theirs Where in the article says this?
  - giarc 8y ago
    This was all artwork that was stolen by Europeans and brought back to Europe. That is pretty clear.

94 points by prismatic 8y ago

> 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.

chillacy 8y ago
This is the official policy: > ... 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."
- onemoresoop 8y ago
  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.
  - onemoresoop 8y ago
    And illegally obtained art should be out of our museums, period. I wonder if, on the private market and not museum worthy, whether the prices for these would go down.
- qiqing 8y ago
  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". Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/why-wouldnt-britain-return-the-kohinoor-heres-comedian-john-olivers-hilarious-take-on-it-273055-2015-11-17 https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/why-wouldnt-britain-retu...
kodablah 8y ago
> 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.)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

qiqing 8y ago

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.

pnathan 8y ago

What if the US was invaded and the original Constitution stolen, and put on display? I think it would eat at any patriotic American's heart a little.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
More like, 'what if the US was invaded, and someone's nice vase was stolen'. I'm sure some would be miffed.
qiqing 8y ago
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.
- pnathan 8y ago
  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?
AcerbicZero 8y ago
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.

akshayB 8y ago

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.

i_am_nomad 8y ago
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.
vertline3 8y ago
A lot of the lack of old art in china is due to the "destruction of the four olds."
- justicezyx 8y ago
  What's the point? 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.
  - vertline3 8y ago
    I'm saying it would have likely been destroyed, just as early Christianity destroyed Roman statues. Just as Arabs preserved Roman texts.
    - rustacean 8y ago
      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.

Bayart 8y ago

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.

adventured 8y ago
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: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/world/asia/china-great-wall-botched-repair.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/world/asia/china-great-wa... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37442276 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37442276
- fspeech 8y ago
  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-wall https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/05/21/walking-the-wa...

justicezyx 8y ago

Can we stop this subtle unconscious linkage embedded in the article. 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.

icantdrive55 8y ago
How do we find the facts, in a country that kills honest journalists/citizens? The same goes for Russia.
qiqing 8y ago
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.

jhpriestley 8y ago

Reminded me of the more passive-aggressive Greek approach to their own stolen artworks: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113889188 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113889... 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.

laverick 8y ago
I find the issue a bit more complex. If keeping a Greek statue is indefensible, what about land in North America?
- lainga 8y ago
  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.
- Leary 8y ago
  If the land was stolen, then it's indefensible. Or should we have a separate moral code?
  - drharby 8y ago
    Literally indefensible in the sense that the natives defended against the US Cavalry and howitzers and lost.
- skh 8y ago
  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.
- pjc50 8y ago

HillaryBriss 8y ago

>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.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

rustacean 8y ago

if the European thieves returned the artworks?

ConfusedDog 8y ago

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...

logfromblammo 8y ago
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.
qiqing 8y ago
> 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?

EliRivers 8y ago

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?

glitchc 8y ago
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.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  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.
- kevin_b_er 8y ago
  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.

kev6168 8y ago

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.

trung1trung2 8y ago
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.
- kev6168 8y ago
  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.
  - zeth___ 8y ago
    Technically Greece and Britain are within the EU. No problems there either.
    - Leary 8y ago
      Just renamed the British Museum the EU museum and we are fine.
- justicezyx 8y ago
  Throw-away account posting baseless statements. Should HN have a policy banning such posts?
candiodari 8y ago

ConfusedDog 8y ago

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.

qiqing 8y ago

Notable excerpt from the article: 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.)

giarc 8y ago

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?

justicezyx 8y ago
> stealing back artwork that was once theirs Where in the article says this?
- giarc 8y ago
  This was all artwork that was stolen by Europeans and brought back to Europe. That is pretty clear.