Friday, January 25, 2008

I don't talk about my career that much...

...but this is a really upsetting story about LA museums collecting illegally smuggled cultural artifacts.  I almost considered (and might still) going into cultural property law because of the far-reaching (and often ignored) effects of museums choosing the "curatorial" and "authoritative" value of an object over the human rights violations of this sort of "ownership."  When US museums professionals, who KNOW better, continue to accept objects with clearly fuzzy provenance, raiders will continue to loot and destroy important sites in developing countries for the much-needed money.  This cycle will forever destroy that culture's chance to restore, preserve, and collect their own history.  Now, this isn't saying that Western museums can't appreciate, display, or educate with the artifacts of other peoples---of course that's important to better understanding not only our own cultures, but also the thousands of others throughout time.  It's just that this way is not the way to do it.  We need to not only respect the integrity of other peoples, but also that of our own profession.

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