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- Mar 9, 2002
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Which is why I made the point of differentiating between art and artefacts. Paintings and sculpture tend to be self-contained, and as such provide their own context (indeed, in the case of landscapes it could be argued that in many cases they were meant to be viewed elsewhere.) What I'm getting at here is whether or not locally significant artefacts and antiquities should, in the best of possible worlds, be displayed and maintained in their native context.theyithian said:I've seen many pictures of Van Gough's works in art books, online, and on TV, but the museum in Amsterdam blew me a way. Ditto Salvador Dali. Ditto Whistler.
I quite agree - I haven't been to Egypt, or Easter Island, but I have been to the British Museum a number of times. Then again, the proximity issue does matter - I can get to London in under two hours, but for a lot of people in Northern England and North Wales, let alone Scotland and Northern Ireland, a day trip to London isn't really a practical option, unless they fly - so the cost or no-cost of entry to the museum is a moot point. OK, it's more accessible than, say, the Giza complex, but then no-one's seriously contemplated re-siting that to somewhere more convenient to curious Westerners*. As you say, you've seen Egyptian grave goods both in situ and in London - how did the experiences compare (not making any rhetorical points here, I genuinely want to know )?I've seen countless presentations, images, websites etc. about the valley of the kings and the grave-goods of the pharaohs (for example), but seeing them inches away (in both London and Egypt) was an incalculably different (and more illuminating) experience.
Similarly, the sheer scale and imposing nature of the Easter Island ancestor-figures was simply unappreciable before i saw one in the British museum. To visit one in-situ would be the best all round but that's simply not an option for the vast majority. Free entry to the British museum is.
Again, I quite agree. I think if anything museums are more important today than ever before, as a point of physical contact in an increasingly abstracted world. What I'm saying, though, is that many museums hold artefacts that in the past were safer and more accessible there than in their place of origin, but that nowadays cheap travel and a host of other advances (not least various cultures now taking their own history seriously) have made these arguments less conclusive. For a start, I totally agree that until very recently the Elgin marbles were still a lot safer over here than bolted back onto the Parthenon - however, the Greek government have recently completed the Parthenon Museum, and are presently in the process of transporting and conserving the remaining marbles from further damage (also worth bearing in mind is that conservators at the British Museum themselves did a lot of damage to the London-held marbles in the 30's, in a misguided attempt to clean them with caustic materials....)If the public rely on the discovery channel, CD-ROMs, and coffee-table books for their experiences of artefacts, we are certainly selling our most precious treasures cheap. These are 2-D ersatz imposters by comparison.
The experience does not compare.
Museums Rock.
I'm not saying for one minute that there's any clear-cut rules or views on this. As usual there's huge swathes of grey-shades - I'm just interested to hear what people think.
*they'd have to surgically remove Zahi Hawass for a start, who as we all know owns the Valley of the Kings, and in fact wants to copyright bits of it.