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Object Lessons: The Politics of Preservation and Museum Building in Western China in the Early Twentieth Century
Ist Teil von
International journal of cultural property, 2007-02, Vol.14 (1), p.1-32
Ort / Verlag
New York, USA: Cambridge University Press
Erscheinungsjahr
2007
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Nexis
Beschreibungen/Notizen
The preservation of cultural property is never a neutral activity; and
the question of who is to possess, care for, and interpret artifacts is
highly politically charged. This paper examines how preservation was used
as a justification for the removal of pieces of immovable archaeological
sites in the early twentieth century, and became a tool for building
museum collections. This study focuses on a collection of 12 wall painting
fragments from the site of Dunhuang, China, which were removed by art
historian Langdon Warner in 1924 for the Fogg Art Museum. The removal
process resulted in significant damage to some of the fragments as well as
to the site itself, calling into question what is preserved: an intact
ancient artifact or an ancient artifact scarred by and embedded with its
modern collection history? Using the Harvard collection as an example, I
explore the contradictions and legacies of early preservation ethics.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The Harvard University Art
Museums generously supported this research through the Baird Fellowship
and the Advanced-Level Training Program at the Straus Center for
Conservation. I am particularly thankful to Thomas Lentz, Francesca Bewer,
and Glenn Gates for their encouragement and advice throughout this study.
I thank Abigail Smith, Martha Mahard, and Joanne Bloom Toplyn of the Fine
Arts Library at Harvard University for providing access to archival
documents and photographs. I owe a great debt to the staff of the Straus
Center for Conservation, particularly Henry Lie, Craigen Bowen, Kathleen
Kennelly, Narayan Khandekar, Anthony Sigel, and former interns Ige
Verslype and Scott Homolka. I am grateful to Robert Mowry, Melissa Moy,
and Anne Rose Kitagawa of the HUAM Department of Asian Art. Finally, I
would like to thank the anonymous reviews of International Journal of
Cultural Property, Francesca Bewer, Julie Hollowell, Robert Mowry,
and Anand Pandian for their attentive and thoughtful readings of this
article.