2.NEW: Response: Asterix & The Big Fight
3.NEW: French Embassy Response, Dec 4th
Naeem Mohaiemen
[Originally posted Dec 1st, revised December 4th]
The French Ambassador said protesters' concerns are "objectionable and insulting". Bit foolish that, very undiplomatic language guaranteed to get everyone's hackles up. I spent too much time reading Tintin in my wasted youth. But a translated Tintin in Congo remained elusive until I found a bootleg copy in Nilkhet where Tintin is teaching African natives "Repeat after me, Belgium is your motherland". Rubber-lipped sambos. Yessa boss. Did King Leopold collect art as well? But Zafar Sobhan pointed out that I was making too tendentious a point to link
a) set of coins catalogued as "coins", with no specifics. inconsistent numbers ("50 silver coins, and 8 gold coins" at Dec 3 Bangladesh government press conference, "50 punchmarked coins" in one set of court records, "gold and silver coins" in another record, "93 punch marked coins" in the French inventory)
b) missing accession numbers (no accession number for large and extremely rare bronze statue the Vajrasattva, insured at 200,000 Euro) [UPDATE: This is wrong, there are accession numbers for everything, including this piece]
c) mismatch between number of pieces documented by the French photographer who catalogued the show, the number given in French embassy contract, and the number in Embassy's press release. incomplete descriptions, missing descriptions on the Bangladesh side. [UPDATE: The mismatches appear on Bangladesh side, not on French side]
d) insurance value of 4 million Euros, for a collection that dates back to 4th century BC. An international archaeological expert has since called this appraisal "financial fraud". 4 million Euro as per French press release of 25th September, 2.6 million Euro at Dec 3 Bangladesh government press conference. [UPDATE: French have since announced they are raising the insurance by 30%, but I haven't seen a final number reported.]
There's no doubt that some/many of the items in #1 were caused by incompetence of the Bangladesh side. This is also a legacy project from BNP time, so the chain of ownership is quite muddled. But if Bangladesh officials are incapable of protecting their own national heritage, what is the Musee Guimet's responsibility? Truth of the matter is, the bulk of the art looting from Bangladesh already happened from 1960-1990. Lot of people's frustrations are getting focused now, at the tail end. But often people get galvanized when the problem is made visible through unexpected shards of glass.
When the French Embassy makes a absolutist statement, protesters get further enflamed. The Embassy press statement released contained surprisingly undiplomatic language. I think "really lousy at their job" is a fair summary of some of the players involved. Some examples:
Kwame Opoku's statement on Afrikanet "Musée Guimet in Paris which incidentally also holds thousands of stolen/illegal objects from China and the rest of Asia" gets people nervous, even if that bountry was looted prior to Guimet acquisition.
True. Guimet director Jean-Francois Jarriage in the late 50's worked in the department of archeology in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). However, protesters talk about a relic casket that was taken to France for restoration during this period. I haven't seen any evidence linking Jarriage to this transfer, so not sure how much basis this is.
This is true. If you analyze it rationally.
Rational people should not be worried that the Guimet itself will steal or keep the artifacts (although lot of the protesters are). The issue here is about art robbery which is, as per references @ end, now the 4th largest form of crime in the world. Here two issues come in:
a. The overall budget for the show (including shonar bangla fashion show etc) whether adequate security can be provided for the show with that budget.
b. This is where the insurance value becomes crucial. If a 8 million Euro artifact is stolen from the show, and the entire show is insured for 4 million E (or 2.6 million E as per GOB today), you can see the problem.
It doesn't seem like anyone is interested in compromise. Possible the symbolic nature of this battle and the momentum of the movement (esp. in the absence of any other movements) is unstoppable. Compromise is unsexy and for wimps. We Bengalis have never been much for compromise anyway.
"We urge the French government and citizens, museum professionals, preservationists and all global cultural practitioners to demand that Musee Guimet immediately cease plans for the "Masterpieces of the Ganges Delta" show until each archaeological artifact in the Bangladesh collection has been examined, photographed, catalogued, appraised and insurance value set by an international panel of experts. Guimet must also take all due diligence steps to resolve the discrepancy between documents, number of items, accession numbers and all other issues that have given rise to questions about lack of transparency in the entire process."
"While we were originally open to the idea of showing the work at Musee Guimet provided the transparency issues were addressed, the recent actions of the museum has removed any semblance of trust in the organisation, and we are no longer willing to loan our prized possessions to an organisation with such standards of behaviour. The incident, originally restricted to the issue of an exhibition now appears to have created a general distrust in the French government amongst the Bangladeshi public."
Bangladesh gets such a very small share of international cultural attention. Our prevailing attitude is that any positive global attention is good. Especially after being hit by both flood and cyclone (two months apart) this year, some people may be yearning for some positive "image building". This has historically led to a broken-spine approach to European and Northern cultural institutions. The face-off with Musee Guimet seems to be an attempt to make amends but also runs the risk of running in an extreme other direction, teetering on xenophobia and histrionics.
Further Reading:
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1. A Pro-Musee Guimet POV: Asterix & The Big Fight]
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