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> She was in possession of a looted piece of ancient art. She couldn't keep it. I don't understand. Museums in the West are full of looted ancient art [1]. Wh

• anitil 4y ago
  Can I recommend a podcast called 'Stuff the British Stole' by Marc Fenell (aka 'That Movie ... Guy'). It looks at exactly this, including situations where an artefact only exists _because_ it was stolen. http://www.marcfennell.com/stolen http://www.marcfennell.com/stolen (Sorry I couldn't find the RSS feed)
  • Ansil849 4y ago
    • Cerium 4y ago
      Unfortunately a lot of the old art in the world only exists because by modern reconing it was stolen. Consider the fabulous collection at the palace museum in Taipei. Much just like it was destroyed in the cultural revolution.
      • Ansil849 4y ago
        Again... > That sounds like an a posteriori justification for stealing, like saying "see, that building ended up being bombed, so it's a good thing I stole all these Ukrainian paintings from the country last year". The logical fallacy here is using one unrelated bad event to justify another unrelated bad event. Taken to its logical conclusion, this argument would be that we should constantly keep looting art left and right, because who knows where and what is going to be destroyed at any moment.
        • teawrecks 4y ago
          No one said it "justified" the theft.
          • Ansil849 4y ago
            > No one said it "justified" the theft. Nor did I say that anyone said that it "justified" the theft. What I said was that that line of argumentation "sounds like an a posteriori justification for stealing".
            • teawrecks 4y ago
              So to sum it up this exchange: Person1: A You: This sounds like B, which is fallacious. Person2: A You: Again...this sounds like B, which is fallacious. Me: No one is claiming B You: I never said anyone claimed B. I said this sounds like B. Sound about right?
              • Ansil849 4y ago
                > Sound about right? Yup, with the added bit: If you're not claiming that A is like B, then what's the point of you bringing up A to the discussion, at all?
                • teawrecks 4y ago
                  When an object is stolen from a cache which was otherwise destroyed, 1) that is by definition a statistical anomaly, and 2) it may contain information from a time/place that is otherwise irrecoverable, which could make it valuable. Between these two facts, I think it would be way weirder if everyone quietly ignored the historical record of a specific artifact just because it was stolen. Imagine walking through a museum with a tour guide who is able to give mounds of information about every piece on display, until you ask them about a certain bust, and they say "oh we don't talk about the history of that piece" and you say "why not?" and he says "because it's not relevant". Be honest, what you're actually saying is, "this information isn't relevant TO ME."
    • _jal 4y ago
      You seem to be confusing descriptive for normative. They're stating a fact, not asserting the fact justifies some behavior.
      • Ansil849 4y ago
        It's a glib fact (and in fact, not even a fact as you by definition cannot assert something that didn't happen as a fact) that detracts from the theft. But sure, yes, if they had not been stolen, certain items may have been destroyed. OK. And, so what, what's your point beyond this trite truism?
        • _jal 4y ago
          The point was to attempt to correct an apparent misunderstanding. What's the point of your weirdly aggressive hostility?
          • Ansil849 4y ago
            What do you see as being the apparent misunderstanding?
    • dumpsterdiver 4y ago
      > That sounds like an a posteriori justification for stealing, like saying "see, that building ended up being bombed, so it's a good thing I stole all these Ukrainian paintings from the country last year" There's a difference between justification and acknowledgement. Just because people are able to acknowledge that specific artifacts only exist because they were stolen, does not mean that they believe the original theft was "right or reasonable."
      • Ansil849 4y ago
        > Just because people are able to acknowledge that specific artifacts only exist because they were stolen, does not mean that they believe the original theft was "right or reasonable." I mean...sure, but then what's the point of this facile acknowledgement? Yeah, if you hadn't burglarized my house yesterday, all my things would have burned up in the fire that happened there today. That's all well and good, except you still stole my shit. The fact that you inadvertently saved it from being burned is irrelevant to the action of the theft.
        • dumpsterdiver 4y ago
          > I mean...sure, but then what's the point of this facile acknowledgement? Why should anything beyond facile acknowledgement be expected from the average person when it comes to appreciating artifacts that still exist on our planet? Is it a moral crime to simply appreciate a painting, even though it was stolen hundreds of years ago? Are people "justifying" that crime that happened before they were born, because they're glad that the painting still exists?
          • Ansil849 4y ago
            > Is it a moral crime to simply appreciate a painting, even though it was stolen hundreds of years ago? Yes. Because your enjoyment deprives the ancestors of the people who actually created it. Try personalizing this to see if it resonates. There's a quilt that has been in your family for centuries, with each family member adding a patch. At some point, your house is burglarized and the quilt is taken. Hundreds of years later, the quilt is around the world, being seen by people who have absolutely no connection to it, meanwhile your great^n children no longer have access to this piece of their cultural heritage.
    • na85 4y ago
      > a posteriori justification I believe you're looking for the phrase "post hoc", because a posteriori refers to knowledge that can only be gained from application of a test of some sort, whether logical or scientific.
    • coffeecheque 4y ago
      Have a listen to the episode. It's called "Shots Fired" and looks at the history of the Gweagal shield. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/stuff-the-british-stole/shots-fired/12868096 https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/stuff-the-brit...
  • coffeecheque 4y ago
    Links: PODCAST MAIN PAGE: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/stuff-the-british-stole/ https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/stuff-the-brit... RSS FEED: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/stuff-the-british-stole/feed/12754606/podcast.xml https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/stuff-the-brit...
    • anitil 4y ago
      Ah thankyou I was looking on his page and could only see Spotify/Apple Podcasts
  • stormbrew 4y ago
    The issue of "this is a convenient thing to think if you want to feel less bad about stuff being stolen" aside, it's worth considering that a world in which these things weren't stolen might also be a world where colonialism didn't run rampant throughout the world and the "destruction" they were saved from may have been a consequence of that colonialism. Anyways, I think to some extent our civilization is descending into a kind of mass packrat disorder. We seem to fetishize preservation to an unhealthy degree on both small and large scales. Sometimes things break, are burnt down, or are left unmaintained until they die. But new things are created all the time, and maybe sometimes we get a little too stuck on the old stuff and don't acknowledge the new.
    • labster 4y ago
      Kids these days. If they’re not addicted to novelty and the social media algorithm, they’re freebasing historical preservation. I’m honestly not sure how you square the circle between obviously consumerist trends like fast fashion and mass-produced “collectibles” with fetishization of preservation and franchise-based popular culture. It kind of seems like different people like different stuff? Of course if you’re talking about architecture, there’s lots of fetishization of the not-very-old stuff from last century, because They don’t want you to know that we lost the building techniques of the Tartarian Empire. Or something.
      • ElSinchi 4y ago
        We should upload historical artifacts to the Blockchain and they will live forever as NFTs. Problem solved
      • stormbrew 4y ago
        Even within disposable consumer goods people stick random products from the 80s in plexiglass and call it precious and sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars. There's an idea out there that actually "using" a product like an old video game is somehow debasing it. In the end though I don't think people have much choice on the consumer product side of things. It is what it is for various reasons. But really I'm talking about broader social trends and what we do at the society level. Yes, architecture. Mustn't tear down that building that no one has been able to live in for 20 years, it's sacred. But also relics, ideas, monuments to even monumentally stupid and awful things, etc.
• MomoXenosaga 4y ago
  • Ansil849 4y ago
    Not committing theft, or returning shit you stole, is considered "woke" now?
    • umvi 4y ago
      If centuries ago your ancestors stole from a country that no longer exists in the modern day, then yeah it's woke to return it to a different country occupying the same geographic space.
      • Ansil849 4y ago
        It's interesting that you refer to the thieves as 'ancestors', but yet refer to those who were stolen from only in terms of "country", which then conveniently allows you to dismiss restitution based on a technicality ('the country doesn't exist anymore). Do the people who had their possession stolen not have existing ancestors too?
        • nitrogen 4y ago
          Several years ago someone stole my former startup's first hardware prototype, along with a bunch of other stuff. In 300 years, should my descendents have a right to claim restitution from the descendents of whoever stole my things? Do children inherit the sins of their parents?
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          • jeromegv 4y ago
            Some pieces of art can be strongly tied to the history or culture of a nation/group. Is that really morally objectionable to give that back to the people that still strongly identify with it? And using your bad example. If someone 300 years from now had an item of little sentimental value to them, but meant the world to another family that has a strong history tied with that company, wouldn’t you say that the moral thing is to give it to people that care about the object? It’s not always about the law and giving legal responsibilities. It’s just about doing the decent and moral thing.
• yumraj 4y ago
  Well there’s even a looted diamond sitting in the crown of the British queen[0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koh-i-Noor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koh-i-Noor
• stolen_biscuit 4y ago
  Museums shouldn't be full of looted treasures, museums should be full of treasures of the culture who built the museum. It is an injustice that any significant artifact is not in the custodianship of the culture it belongs to and when the infrastructure is in place to preserve the items, they should be returned to the community they came from.
  • breadov 4y ago
    Most countries are full of land stolen from the ancestors of the people who lived there, which was then exploited by the thieves, to make them and their descendents, incredibly wealthy and powerful. Indeed, across the entire globe, only a tiny fraction of the population own the vast majority of land and other resources. Let's all sort out this much bigger and globally impactful inequality first, before worrying about some museum pieces.
  • readbeard 4y ago
    To what modern-day culture do Roman artifacts belong?
    • robonerd 4y ago
      Even if we assume it rightfully belongs to people with Roman ancestry, that describes many modern Germans as well as it does modern Italians. People from these two regions were moving around and in near constant contact with each other for thousands of years. Somebody who is German today may have ancestors who were Italian two hundred years ago, and Greek 2000 years before that.
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    • mushbino 4y ago
      Which part of Rome? It depends. It doesn't make sense to send the Roman baths in England back to Italy for example.
    • stolen_biscuit 4y ago
• readbeard 4y ago
  I agree, I don't understand the principle here. And what about things like the Horses of Saint Mark [0], which were looted by Venetians after the sack of Constantinople in 1204? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_of_Saint_Mark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_of_Saint_Mark
• renewiltord 4y ago
  The principle is quite old: its incarnation for normal individuals is called the “statute of limitations”. This is true for many things: homes which people own taken from Japanese-Americans, wage theft discovered too late,… If you only care about your children and you have an effective means of transmitting wealth gotten through evil means, you merely have to forgo the benefit yourself.
• joshuaheard 4y ago
  The Louvre is basically all looted art from Napolean's wars.
  • robonerd 4y ago
    The building itself has passed hands numerous times through questionable means. Should the Coup of 18 Brumaire count as Napoleon stealing the entire country, Louvre included? What of the subsequent Bourbon restoration; another crime or merely a rectification of the first? And what of the Charter of 1815? Or the second Bourbon Restoration? Or is all of that legitimate because they all spoke French? (Remember, Napoleon was a Corsican!)
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• astura 4y ago
  I read it more like her morals prevented her from keeping/selling it, not that some outside entity was preventing her from keeping it. I sometimes say "I can't have that" to a food item I'm physically capable of eating but my moral framework precludes me from eating. My reading might be wrong.
• mperham 4y ago
  “Allow”? Who do you think is the authority here? What means do they have to enforce their judgment?
• fosk 4y ago
  Her and what army?
• bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  Well, being a cynic, because she was in possession of a looted piece from some relatively powerful sources, a German museum! And the looting happened during a famous war, and the Germans are America's allies now and like really powerful allies. but reading closer it says: >Back at home, Young had a problem: She was in possession of a looted piece of ancient art. She couldn't keep it. She couldn't sell it. And giving it back to its rightful owners was a lot harder than it sounds. So it sounds more like she felt she couldn't keep it or sell it because of her morals. on edit: of course if she had sold it maybe 10 years down the road the Germans come and say we want our head of Germanicus back please, then either the people who bought it are on the hook or maybe also her for selling stolen goods (depending on laws and how much people want to enforce them)
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• ezconnect 4y ago
  Because she doesn't have an army to protect her. The US returned a stolen bell from the Philippines after 117 years. The Philippines has been asking for it to be returned for a very long time.
• michaelt 4y ago
  > Why are they allowed to keep it I own land in the UK, which in reality means I brought it from someone who brought it from someone who brought it from someone who brought it from someone who was given it by the king as a reward for helping kill the previous owner. And if someone quarries marble on my land to make a statue, it has the same provenance. So we've basically decided there's a sliding scale. If it was stolen at gunpoint 1960 you've got to return it, but if it was in 1690 you get to keep it.