FROM THE EDITORS

Free Tom DeLay and Some Cultural Borrowing

By SC and WSS

Click to see full size
Cover by Caroline Hu
Cover

It's Asia Art Week again in New York City, which means that the Armory building and all of the geriatric-chic art galleries on the Upper East Side will be crawling with impotent white people who pimp out Chinese culture to add something exotic to the interior design schemes of their Gramercy Park stink holes.

This week anyone willing to shell out can find the right Shang dynasty wine vessel to complement their drapes. Time magazine estimates that over 220,000 tombs in China have been raided in the past seven years, and thousands of priceless artifacts have been illicitly smuggled out of the country. The antiquities market is booming, and no one wants to be the wet blanket who asks where all this great stuff actually came from.

Tomb raiding is a dangerous enterprise often conducted by impoverished farmers risking suffocation and cave-ins to make a few extra bucks. Archaeologists spend years meticulously cataloging the exact location of every object in situ in order to gain a full understanding of their significance. Tomb raiders, on the other hand, work with the sole aim of getting as many objects from the tomb and into the hands of art dealers-who make far more than a few bucks-as quickly as possible. But who would think that Asia Art Week would facilitate the rape of another culture so blatantly. And anyway, who has time to worry about the details of so-called "cultural property" when there's so much Dawenkou ceramic bric-a-brac from the 4th century BCE to collect?

When US customs officials intercepted a marble panel freshly looted from a tomb in northeastern China and destined for Christie's in 2000, the prestigious auction house received little more than a slap on the wrist. Such finds are rare, but only because US customs seldom makes any effort to investigate the origins of 10th century pottery. After all, there are terrorists and marijuana dealers on the loose.

The Chinese government has recently asked the United States to restrict the importation of artifacts suspected of having been stolen or looted. Such barriers to the US market, China hopes, would discourage further looting. Under a 1983 law, any country can ask the United States to restrict imports on cultural property, but China's situation is complicated by the fact that they have not met some stipulations of the law, which requires a certain level of internal enforcement.

Opponents of this legislation argue that such an agreement would have a negligible effect on tomb raiding since only 4 percent of all internationally auctioned artifacts are directly sold in the United States. Japanese auctions, along with the increasingly rich Chinese market, account for a much larger percentage of the total goods sold. A consortium of top museums in America has come out against the import ban because it would essentially exclude American art institutions from getting their hands on Chinese cultural artifacts (for research purposes of course) and deny the American public the opportunity to experience China firsthand (from home).

But this isn't what Asia Art Week is about. The annual consumer orgy is about divorcing ancient ritual objects from their sacred origins and marketing them as decorative mantle pieces. It only speaks to the gross commercialization of American museums that they would rather expand their holdings than protect sites for future study.

Although the number of items auctioned off in America may be relatively small, the New York Times reported that the percentage of looted items that eventually end up in the United States is significantly greater. A commitment by the United States to do something to halt the trade would set a resounding precedent for art markets worldwide. While China needs to curb looting within its borders, the international community also needs to let the yuppies know they can no longer decorate with impunity.

Get a clue, people: The same Asian flair is available at a fraction of the cost at Pier One.

-SC & WSS

As If You Care

By JHB and NWM

Smoking dope and watching the pontiff die in real time I couldn't help but remember it. My grandfather in his kitchen chair, pipe in teeth and his TaB Cola in a glass. My boy, he said, This is TaB Cola. The Pope drinks TaB. With gin. I enjoyed a Beefeater and TaB with him overlooking the Piazza San Pietro years ago. Years ago indeed.

And now here with the televised prayers of the millions, I can nearly taste the intravenous Beefeater and TaBs as they run their swansong course through JPII s waning kidneys as the nuns shuffle about dropping some sort of Catholic Davens. It is these women, and their Swiss Guard minutemen, who will be left after La Papa has passed along, to present to the next Patriarch the hidden wealth of the Vatican live dodo birds and unicorns, Guttenbergs, Inca Gold, the bullets that killed JFK, and the very last of the TaB vending machines.

Presently my grandfather and his trusty go-to man for God look down upon us all, from the heavenly lucidity of the eternal saccharine high. They clink their glasses and rattle ice cubes, talking global politics on a frequency not picked up by my television, and on Sundays, I hope, they submit their prayers for our living, diet souls.

-JHB & NWM

Ephemera

Tom DeLay looking sad

How can you indict a face like this?

Back to Top

the college hill independent

http://www.theindy.com