Venezuela Vice Minister of Culture proposes the return of ancient artifacts
The Venezuelan vice minister of Culture, José Manuel Rodríguez, president of the Institute of Cultural Heritage, suggested to the heads of institutions belonging to the National Museum in a private meeting that the collections of African art, Egyptian art and China pottery be returned to their places of origin. None of these collections are the result of theft or looting the assets of other countries.
The collection of Egyptian art was purchased by the Venezuelan state through the Museum of Fine Arts from the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The collection of China pottery was donated to the MFA by Henrique Otero Vizcarrondo and the African art collection was donated to the Museum of Science.
At the meeting, Rodriguez had circulated an unsigned working paper that read: “Let’s remove from the princes of capitalism the concept of culture as an aesthetic fact. Only then will they be able to value the manifestations that have significance and pertinence to the people from every village, every hamlet and every neighborhood of our cities (…) Those princes insist that art museums have been abandoned. To them we say: The museums are not in danger, neither the works they contain. They have have simply ceased to be the referents of national culture and thus they will lose the sacred character they now enjoy. ”
An official of the National Museums Foundation, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, said: “The measure is serious because it is attacking a heritage that has served as a formation tool for several generations of Venezuelans who can not only acquire knowledge of the artistic sense of the men and women of those places in the world but also of their history, especially their culture. The collections are central to a museum and this threat poses a dismantling of the museums. It’s not the wrong idea to reach the community and relate them to the arts, but there is a confusion that becomes unhealthy: a work of art is not just an aesthetic fact, it transmits knowledge. It is not only a matter of looking at a beautiful dish, but to learn the Chinese culture through this china plate, learn from the Egyptian culture through the codes in their hieroglyphics, which we can see directly, and learn African culture and its relationship to our culture through one of those masks.”
Milagros Gonzalez, who recently resigned from her post as curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, said the Egyptian art collection is valuable on this side of the sea, but certainly not for Egypt.
“The Cairo Museum is after foremost works, like the bust of Nefertiti, but the pieces in this collection are very poor compared to theirs, which also happen to be crammed in their exhibition spaces. This collection is important to this side of the world and makes more sense being here. The same goes to the Chinese ceramic collection, which has only items that were made in that nation to be sold to the West, so I doubt that they, with all their heritage, would be really interested in having this modest collection. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this is that China wanted to be seen by the West through these pottery.”
Translated from Amigos de la Egiptología
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