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How can you not notice if people break an arm off a statue? Are you blind?
just like with modern abstract painting, saobi friend, some sculptors leave off an arm or two and call it modern abstract sculpture. What are we to do?
How can you not notice if people break an arm off a statue? Are you blind?
Oh, sorry, this was kind of an art joke.
I guess you need me to explain.
Many ancient Greek statues survive but are missing arms - one or both. A visitor to a museum to the Met is going to see statues that are either armless or whole. I think if you broke an arm off an ancient Greek statue and the next day asked the visitors to the Met if they noticed anything amiss in the room, they would say no.
I wish I could go back in time, and meet the American and British and French and Austrian looters of these artifacts of my home country, and stand in front of their caravans, shout at them in the middle of the Gobi Desert: "Halt! Put down your lootings before you pass!"
I must admit that this is a very grand and very comprehensive Art Museum, and is maintained very professionally, and is definitely "world class".
I went there with my parents when they were visiting New York, and paid the full ticket fares, which I realized later that it was not necessary. The ones I visited were:
1) Ancient Battle Armor from England
2) Classical paintings from Europe (both in the Middle Ages and Rennaissance), I saw the famous Van Gogh self portrait
3) The Chinese wing, with a mini garden (built by a museum in China and sent to the US as a gift), with some not-so-famous Chinese paintings.
4) The semi-outdoor hall, with big statues made by Reconnaissance sculptors like Michelangelo and Bernini.
However, most of its goods from the Chinese wing (the porcelains) were looted and stolen by the Western forces during the Opium War and the Boxer rebellion after the defeat of the Qing Dynasty. I admit that they were kept in very good condition, but this cannot excuse the barbaric act of the invasion of China and the looting of its historical artifacts. These artifacts belong to a Chinese museum, not an American one.
So from a scholastic point of view, I respect the Museum of maintaining the Chinese artifacts in good condition, but from a nationalist and a political view, I must condemn them, as imperialists, as invaders, as looters, as pillagers.
I wish I could go back in time, and meet the American and British and French and Austrian looters of these artifacts of my home country, and stand in front of their caravans, shout at them in the middle of the Gobi Desert: "Halt! Put down your lootings before you pass!"
While I agree that anything that was looted by anyone should be returned to the home country, I am not sure that the Chinese stuff at Met was looted - I believe it was mostly bought by private parties and donated or sold to the museum. There were some questionable ways of acquiring Egyptian material, but I am not aware of such problems with the Chinese. Barbaric act of invasion of China by Europeans? When?? Not to my knowledge. The only (limited) invasions of China in the whole recorded history that come to mind were those by Mongols in the Middle Ages, and Japanese during WW2. Neither invaders were Europeans.
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