The Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, Budapest

by Zsuzsanna Renner, General Director of the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest.

The Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts was founded in 1919 by the company owner, world traveller, collector and art patron Ferenc Hopp (1833-1919) who bequeathed his collection of approximately 4,000 Asian artworks and his villa in Andrassy ut, one of the main boulevards of the capital, to the state for the purpose of establishing a museum and a centre for the research of Asian art. It was and still remains the sole museum of Asian art in Hungary. Ferenc Hopp purchased his art collection during the course of his voyages around the world, at world exhibitions and from art dealers in Europe. After the founding of the museum, works from other public collections in Hungary were transferred there, and the holdings also grew considerably through donations and purchases. To mark the 175th anniversary of the birth of Ferenc Hopp, the author takes a looks at his life and career and collecting trends of Asia art during the 19th century.

The Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, Budapest

Ferenc Hopp (1833-1919), 1882 (Photography by K. Koller)

by Gyorgyi Fajcsak, Director in charge of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, Budapest.

The celebration of the 175th anniversary of the birth of Ferenc Hopp, founder of the museum, offers a timely opportunity to take a look at the early history of the museum's Chinese Buddhist sculpture collection. The author quotes the museum's first director, Zoltan Felvinczi Takacs regarding Hopp's concept of art: `His theoretical education was rather of a scientific (geographical and ethnographical) nature. He approached art on the same basis; he was an advocate of the milieu theory and possessed a remarkable talent for understanding the role of material in the process of artistic creation'. Such views served as a basis for the trends in applied arts that held sway in the second half of the 19th century and, at the same time, there was a burgeoning interest in Oriental philosophy and religions. There was also a growing fascination with Asian art and collections were developed on the basis of trips to the East. Hopp visited China on three occasions, first buying souvenirs but later began to systematically build a collection of exquisite works of art. The author discusses some of the Buddhist works he acquired such as a set of four 18th/19th century gilt lacquered wood statues of Weituo; a Northern Qi stele of Maitreya with bodhisattvas; a ceramic tile of a seated demon from Xiuding pagoda and a Yuan period lacquer image of Guanyin.

Tile with seated demon From the Xiuding pagoda, near Anyang, Henan province Taizong period (627-50) Grey earthenware with traces of pigment Height 42 cm, width 35.3 cm (Inv. no. 5317)

by Gyorgyi Fajcsak, Director in charge of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, Budapest.

The author gives an account of how the distinctive collection of animal-shaped fittings, belt buckles, pendants and costume jewellery came to the museum: it was due to Otto Kummel, founding director of the Museum of East Asian Art in Berlin, that Zoltan Felvinczi Takacs, the first director of the Ference Hopp Museum, favoured early Chinese bronzes from the Ordos region. He felt that these particular objects might prove attractive to visitors to his museum and his acquisitions in the 1920s and '30s were a major addition to the Chinese collection. This material was considered a mainstream area of research during this period. Archaeological excavations of such objects in the Ordos region such as those conducted by the Russian Pyotr K. Kozlov in Noin Ula in northern Mongolia, came to the forefront of attention. It was on this basis of the ideas of scholars and art historians that Europeans began to collect such material.

Chariot yoke ornaments Northwest China/southwest Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, 5th/4th century BCE Bronze Height 7.7 cm, length 5.8 cm (Inv. nos L. 40. 1-2 )

by Tomoe Steineck, graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and works as an independent curator and art historian specializing in the ancient and religious art of Japan, in particular Shingon Mikkyo, and Buddhist art in East Asia. She is currently chief curator for the exhibition `Treasures of a Holy Mountain: Daigo-ji - The Secret Buddhism of Japan'

To celebrate the opening of the exhibition `Treasures of a Holy Mountain: Daigo-ji - The Secret Buddhism of Japan' at the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany (Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland) in Bonn on 25 April (until 24 August), the author addresses the challenges faced when mounting exhibitions that introduce foreign culture and art and explains some of the solutions implemented to promote interest and understanding of the most important Buddhist temple in Japan. The emphasis has been to explain the nature, function and status of the objects rather than give detailed analysis of the iconography. The discussion is illustrated with Heian period wood sculptures and paintings of the Heian and Kamakura periods, many of which have the status of National Treasure or Important Cultural Property.

Fudo Myoo, one of a group of Godai Myoo Kamakura period, 12th/13th century Hanging scroll, ink and colour on silk Height 185.1 cm, width 127.8 cm National Treasure

by Michaela Pejcochova, curator of the Chinese art collections in the National Gallery in Prague. She specializes in Chinese painting, most recently in works of the 20th century, and is currently working on a catalogue of the Prague collection.

The gallery's collection of 20th century ink paintings comprises 260 examples by great masters such as Qi Baishi, Pu Ru, Lin Fengmian and Huang Binhong and traditionalists active in Beijing in the 1920s and '30s such as Chen Nian and Jin Cheng. The exhibition of `Masters of 20th Century Chinese Ink Painting from the Collections of the National Gallery of Prague' from 30 April to 28 September and the publication of a comprehensive catalogue, has given the author the opportunity to examine the origins of the gallery's collection and to elaborates for the article the particular circumstances in which it was formed.

Mountain Dwellings in the Midst of a Bamboo Grove By Qi Baishi (1864-1957), 1930 Hanging scroll, ink and colour on paper Height 137.5 cm, width 44.5 cm (Vm 1445-1181/259)

by Sandy Ng, Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies in the School of Design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, specializing in modern Chinese art.

The author has selected highlights from the exhibition of `Masters of 20th Century Chinese Ink Painting from the Collections of the National Gallery of Prague' from 30 April to 28 September for her discussion on the developments of the 20th century, a period of extraordinary social, political and cultural upheaval. Featured are works by Huang Binhong, Guan Shanyue, Fu Baoshi, Li Keran, Xu Beihong, Wu Zuoren, Jiang Zhaohe and Guan Liang, all assembled by Vojtech Chytil during his repeated visits to China at the beginning of the 20th century.

Portrait of Liu Jingting Holding a Fan By Fu Baoshi (1904-65), 1943 Hanging scroll, ink and colour on paper Height 65 cm, width 37.5 cm (Vm 3040-1181/303)

by Clayton D. Brown, doctoral candidate in the Department of History and the Asian Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh. A more comprehensive treatment of Li Ji and further details on the Academia Sinica's dispute with the Freer gallery and Henan museum appear in his forthcoming dissertation, entitled Making the Majority: Defining Han Identity in Chinese Ethnology and Archaeology.

Li Ji is widely regarded as the father of Chinese archaeology for his role in directing the historic excavations of Anyang. The author reflects on his life and career revealing that his foreign training, collaborations, lectures and publications facilitated international appreciation of not only Anyang but also placed the development of Chinese civilization within a global context.

Li Ji, perched on the crate edge at far right, supervising the sorting of specimens at Anyang, Henan province (Photograph courtesy of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica)

Li Ji holding a painted potsherd during the third season of excavations at Anyang, Henan province, autumn 1929 (Photograph courtesy of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica)

by Lucie Folan, currently Assistant Curator of Asian Art at the National Gallery of Australia. She worked as a Project Officer at the National Museum of Cambodia, a position funded by Australian Volunteers International, for eighteen months from January 2006.

The National Museum of Cambodia has a new director - Hab Touch who brings with him an impressive, far-reaching and intelligent vision for the institution's future. Not only did he take on the challenge of managing an important national museum in a developing country, he set himself goals to improve documentation, display and professional standards in museums across Cambodia and in other parts of Southeast Asia. This discussion between Hab Touch and Lucie Folan gives an insight into the new dynamic phase that the museum is entering.

Reorganized displays in the museum's bronze gallery

The Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) was established in London on 15 March 1823 by a group of scholars and colonial agents headed by Sir Henry Thomas Colebrooke. According to its Royal Charter, the society's objective was to promote `the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia', an aim which it has pursued uninterruptedly ever since. It houses a library of around 80,000 volumes with a historical focus, mostly in the area of the humanities (its Chinese collection is on permanent loan to the University of Leeds), and has important collections of manuscripts, paintings, prints and drawings, personal papers, photographs, maps and coins, primarily donated by Fellows in the 19th century. Orientations talks to the society's president Anthony J. Stockwell, who is also Emeritus Professor of Modern History at Royal Holloway College, University of London, about recent developments and future plans.

The simurgh restores the child Zal to his father Sam From the Shahnameh of Muhammad Juki Herat, c.1440-45 Ink and gouache on paper Height 34 cm, width 22 cm (RAS Ms.239, f.16b)

Michael Palin, the sponsor of Ramesh Dhungel, who has been working on the Hodgson Archive, and Thomas Thornycroft's (1815-85) 1844 bust of Brian Hodgson (1800-94); the bust is a copy of the original marble made for the Asiatic Society of Bengal.

In her review of the exhibition catalogue Masters of Bamboo: Artistic Lineages in the Lloyd Cotsen Japanese Basket Collection by Melissa Rinne with Koichiro Okada, Nancy Moore Bess states that the authors have offered what no English-language publication has provided to date - extensive, well-documented information about the way in which apprenticeship, mentoring and training have influenced he styles of bamboo basketry in Japan. Lineage is at the core of traditional Japanese crafts, and the heart of the exhibition and its catalogue.

Flower Basket, Shimmering of Heated Air By Shono Shounsai (1904-74), c. 1969 Bamboo (madake), rattan and copper alloy; parallel construction Height 34.9 cm Asian Art Museum, Lloyd Cotsen Japanese Bamboo Basket Collection, 2006.3.836 © Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

John T. Carpenter provides a detailed critique of the essays by Rosina Buckland, Timothy Clark and Shigeru Oikawa in this elegantly produced volume A Japanese Menagerie: Animal Pictures by Kawanabe Kyosai which introduces 67 paintings, prints and book illustrations by the popular and prolific 19th century Japanese artist Kawanabe Kyosai. The volume focuses specifically on animal themes, and includes a number of previously unpublished examples. Nine paintings are from the British Museum; the rest are from the outstanding private collection of Israel Goldman.

Frogs Triumphing Over a Snake and Lizards By Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-89), c. 1879 Ink and colour on paper Height 36.9 cm, width 52 cm British Museum, Japanese Painting 1633 (1881.12-10.01848) (Photograph courtesy of The British Museum Press)

The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University has appointed the internationally recognized scholar Xiaoneng Yang as Patrick J.J. Maveety Curator of Asian Art. Yang comes to Stanford from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, where he has been Curator of Chinese Art since 1993. At Stanford, Yang will continue to work on exhibitions as well as the Cantor's Asian collection, which includes over 4,500 works. He will also teach at the university.
Martin Brauen, University Professor and Senior Curator of the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich, will take up the post of Chief Curator at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York with effect from June. Brauen, who was awarded a PhD in cultural and social anthropology at the University of Zurich in 1979, has over 40 years' experience in the field of Tibetan art, having organized his first exhibition in the field in 1968 at the age of 19 while still in medical school. At the Rubin, Brauen will organize and manage curatorial staff, direct exhibitions and publications, and oversee the development of the collection.
The University of Florida has announced that a dedicated Asian art wing is to be added to its Harn Museum of Art, to be built with funds donated by Dr and Mrs David A. Cofrin. The pledge of US$10 million is part of the university's `Florida tomorrow' capital campaign, which is in the third year of a seven-year effort to raise US$1.5 billion in private support for teaching, research and service activities at the university. The Harn's Asian art collection has grown dramatically in recent years - it includes nearly 1,300 Asian artworks, with Chinese art its greatest strength.
Kham Aid Foundation is offering a chance for anyone interested in helping to preserve Kham's sacred art to be a `volunteer art conservator' for a week. Participants in the programme, which lasts for fourteen days altogether, will join experienced conservators from Nepal and Tibetan students in six days of hands-on work repairing, cleaning or retouching Tibetan works of art, such as wall paintings that are several hundred years old. There will also be sightseeing trips to places of interest such as Kangding, Paomashan, Dorje Drak monastery, the Tagong grasslands and Tagong monastery, as well as the remote Trupa Lhakhang. The programme is limited to ten participants each time: Trip 1 runs from 24 October to 6 November, and Trip 2 from 7 to 20 November. The cost is US$1,800, including lodging, local transportation and meals. For further information visit www.khamaid.org/youcanhelp/artvolunteer.
Last January, in a gesture of goodwill between Mexico and Hong Kong, a replica model of an Acapulco Galleon - the San Francisco - was donated to the Hong Kong Maritime Museum. The model was built by artisans at the Secretaria de Marina, the Mexican Navy. Such galleons were armed merchant ships that sailed the recently discovered trade route between Asia, Europe and the Americas in the second half of the 16th and the early 17th centuries.

Anthony Hardy, Chairman of Hong Kong Maritime Museum Ltd with the Consul General of Mexico Mario Leal and his wife

In February, Sotheby's won trademark infringement and unfair competition cases against a Sichuan-based infringer, Sichuan Su Fu Bi Auction Co., Ltd in China.The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate Court recognized the Chinese version of the Sotheby's mark as an unregistered well-known trademark and a famous trade name. Notably, this recognition makes the Chinese version of the Sotheby's mark the only well-known trademark in the Chinese auction field, and one of the rare unregistered well-known trademarks in China.
Unknown to many, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the British Museum in London are the repositories of thousands of photographs of Tibet taken between 1920 and 1950 by an elite group of civil servants who went there as representatives of the British government. Now, more than 6,000 of these images are available to the public on the website The Tibet Album (Tibet.prm.ox.ac.uk), which will be officially launched this May. The project was conceived to explore the complex visual histories in the photographs, providing access for those interested in Tibet's recent history, as well as in the uses, practices and processes of photography and the ways in which Tibet has been represented by non-Tibetans.

Captain W. S. Morgan (mission doctor) and Sir Basil Gould (Political Officer for Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet) in full uniform at the Dekyi Lingka, the mission's residence in Lhasa, dressed in readiness for their second official visit to the Potala; from the British Diplomatic Mission to Lhasa, 1936-37 By Evan Nepean (1909-2002), 22 November 1936 Film negative Height 5.8 cm, width 9 cm Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford The Tibet Album (PRM 2001.35.200.1)

Jars China, Kangxi period (1662-1722) Porcelain with underglaze cobalt-blue decoration Heights 103 cm and 105 cm Bonhams and Butterfields' 'Fine Asian Works of Art' sale, San Francisco, 18 December 2007, lot 4368 Price: US$228,000 (estimate US$40/60,000)

Several factors make Hong Kong one of the most attractive venues in Asia for art fairs. There are no duties or taxes imposed for the import and export of art; the city has now become the third largest art auction market in the world and is home to more than 88,000 high-net worth-individuals. Not surprisingly, Asian Art Fairs Ltd, a collaboration between Single Market Events and Andry Montgomery Ltd, will be holding ART HK 08 from 14 to 18 May at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. The fair hopes to introduce Asian collectors to established and emerging artists from the West as well as to present new art from Asia and around the world to a diverse audience.
About a hundred galleries - selected from several rounds of vetting - are expected to participate, including legendary names like Marlborough Fine Art. Local galleries Hanart TZ, 10 Chancery Lane, Amelia Johnson Contemporary and Anna Ning Fine Art are also enthusiastically supporting this new fair. Katie de Tilley of 10 Chancery Lane believes that an event like this will be successful because Hong Kong has a strong group of collectors that have a universal interest in art. Her selection includes paintings by Simon Birch, a British-born Hong Kong artist, large works by sculptor Wang Keping and iconic works like Zhang Huan's Family Tree and Li Wei's Falls to Hong Kong.
Rossi & Rossi from London will feature works by Gonkar Gyatso, Nortse, Tenzing Rigdol and Tsewang Tashi. Fabio Rossi has observed the phenomenal growth of Asian contemporary art and the crossover interest it has generated, and believes ART HK 08 has the potential to become a major event in Asia.

God series - 6 By Gonkar Gyatso (b. 1961), 2008 Stickers and papercut on treated paper Height 76 cm, width 58 cm Rossi & Rossi

Prestigious dealers Yvon Lambert represent several leading contemporary artists at their galleries in Paris and New York. Among the Asian artists is Hong Kong native Tsang Kin Wah, who is known for his provocative silk-screen print works.
Zurich-based Galerie Kashya Hildebrand focus on developing an international group of young emerging artists. In his My Other Childhood series, Tianbing Li explores the impact of the one-child policy on the young in China today. Portraits of the artist with his imaginary brother are a reflection of his lonely childhood and his yearning for a sibling.
Emphasizing the aim of ART HK to encourage a more holistic understanding of art practices today, Dolores de Sierra Gallery from Madrid will show works by Zhang Xiaotao, Luo Brothers, Ma Liuming and Wang Jinsong, representing the range of contemporary practice in China from painting to photography, video and performance art.BR> Seoul-based Kukje Gallery will be introducing works by several Korean artists. Duck-hyun Cho's works reflect a sophisticated understanding of the formal nature of art and express a shrewd comprehension of art history and cultural hegemony. Ki-bong Rhee explores the relationship between object and space through relief-like works fashioned from plexiglass and mixed media.
aura gallery specializes in showing works by emerging Chinese artists. Artists who will be making their Hong Kong debut include Yin Zhaoyang, Luo Quanmu and Liu Wentao. Yin's historical portraits and landscapes deconstruct totalitarianism and interpret the powerlessness of people living under such regimes, while Luo's images possess a melancholic spirit that emanates from the artist and from Chinese culture.
Eslite Gallery from Taipei will be bringing the work of two prominent Taiwan artists. Paul Chiang's oil paintings exude a sense of spirituality while transcending the divide between the real and the abstract. Yuan Jai's brightly coloured paintings on silk reflect her lineage and heritage. Galerie Grand Siecle, also from Taiwan, will be showing works by Jao Jui-chung from his Dust in the Wind series.
Beijing-based Red Gate are showing works by six artists: Zhou Jun, Sheng Qi, Liu Qinghe, Guan Wei, Su Xinping and Jiang Weitao. With the exception of Zhou and Jiang, who held their inaugural shows with the gallery last year, the others have been part of the Red Gate stable for many years. Coming from the generation which was at the forefront of the Chinese avant-garde movement and having completed their formal education in the 1980s, they are representative of a more mature generation of art practitioners in China.

CCTV By Zhou Jun (b. 1965), 2008 Photograph Height 200 cm, width 120 cm Red Gate

Fabien Fryns of F2 Gallery in Beijing will show works by Chinese artists Sheng Qi, Feng Zhengjie, Hung Liu, Yin Zhaoyang and, from Los Angeles, the Clayton Brothers.
Shanghai's Eastlink Gallery are showing a wide-ranging body of work that reflects the diversity of their artists. Ranging from performance to painting, and sculpture to new media, their display will represent the complexity of artistic practice in China today. Works featured are by Guan Shi, He Saibang, He Yunchang, Huang Yan, PERK, Qin Yifeng, Shu Yong and Yang Zhichao.
Artists showcased by Mori Gallery from Sydney include Susan Norrie whose video installation HAVOC deals with a man-made catastrophe in East Java. Sangeeta Sandrasegar's work draws on her Australian-Malaysian-Indian heritage. Her Theatre of the Oppressed is a series of cut-outs comprising heavily patterned backdrops cut from bright foil paper and figures falling out of them made from black-painted watercolour paper, giving the contrasting effect of soft velvet with reflective foil.
Also from Sydney is Gallery Barry KeldoulisThe Shape of Between video shot on the Ganges at Varanasi is almost an exploration of the `Eastern' multi-point perspective within the `Western' single-point perspective of the camera.

The Shape of Between By Jess MacNeil (b. 1977), 2006 Digital video 12 mins 59 secs Gallery Barry Keldoulis

Since setting up his eponymous gallery in New York in 2000, Sundaram Tagore has established a reputation as a dealer, collector, curator and scholar who truly understands the nature of the worldwide forum that represents artistic practice today. The profile of the gallery has risen steadily through its participation in influential international fairs and also through the cultural activities it organizes. With the opening of two new spaces - in Beverly Hills in February and in Hong Kong, on Hollywood Road, later this month - Tagore's internationalist vision for his business is made even more tangible. Orientations speaks to Tagore about his plans for Hong Kong and for the future.

Sundaram Tagore

In 1988, Grace Tsumugi arrived in London to further her studies having just graduated with a degree in English and American literature from Seijo University in Tokyo. Twenty years later she is celebrating the opening of her new gallery, Grace Tsumugi Fine Art, at 8 Duke Street in St James's. Tsumugi reminisces with Orientations about her journey.

Grace Tsumugi Fine Art

by Naeem Mohaiemen, artist working in Dhaka and New York. His work can be viewed on shobak.org.

It begins softly, with an agreement to host, in fall 2007, `Masterpieces of the Ganges Delta: Collections from the Bangladesh Museums' at the Musee Guimet in Paris. There is considerable excitement in the archaeological community, because many of these fragile masterpieces have never been shown inside or outside Bangladesh. In fact, large parts of this collection were excavated by a French-Bengali joint expedition over the last four years. The region is associated with dynasties going back to the 4th century BCE, and Paharpur is identified as one of the oldest Buddhist monasteries in the subcontinent (on UNESCO's list of protected monuments). The 188-piece collection that is to be loaned is dominated by Buddhist, Hindu and Jain artefacts, and a smaller section of Islamic material.

Cover of the catalogue for the exhibition `Masterpieces of the Ganges Delta: Collections from the Bangladesh Museums'

The Guimet's website announces: `Bangladesh possesses an immensely important cultural heritage, this arising from the fact that the eastern half of Bengal has been one of the richest cultural regions of the Indian world.'
From an auspicious beginning, a year later we are witnessing a culture meltdown, with public protests, stolen artefacts, a cancelled exhibition, strained diplomatic relations, a sacked minister and a dead ambassador. A slow-motion train wreck, and the end still not in sight.

Bubble, bubble

The press greets the initial news positively. Then, as the news spreads to a wider group, unease begins. Bangladesh's distinct art history is more relevant here than the specifics of the Guimet transaction. The country has long been one of the most vulnerable targets for art theft. With tissue-thin borders with India and Burma, virtually no enforcement, and a series of corrupt governments, stealing art objects is quick and easy. Official collaboration is also part of this mess, as corrupt museum and government officials are often bought off to look the other way. A former museum director even served time in jail on allegations of smuggling.
When the 1977 Ad Hoc Committee on the Return and Restitution of Cultural Property to the Countries of Origin (ICOM) carried out a case study of countries that had lost part of their cultural heritage, Bangladesh was one of the countries identified. In Museums of Bangladesh (Dhaka, 1987), Firoz Mahmud and Habibur Rahman alleged that national heritage items were seized by Chittagong customs as they were being shipped out in the personal effects of diplomats. During New Year's parties, a drunk expatriate is heard bragging about labourers he hires to dig out artefacts which he carries away in his luggage.
A group of citizens files a lawsuit blocking the Guimet loan. Protest letters start appearing in newspapers. The lawsuit gets stymied but another lawsuit is filed. In the gap, the shipment is sent to the airport, intercepted by the national intelligence agency, and sent back to the museum. Things are getting serious.

Mercury Rising

The local press goes on the warpath: `Guimet can't be trusted.' What's going on? Isn't it Americans everyone loves to hate? The French embassy makes undiplomatic comments: `objectionable and insulting'; `It is time for the few opponents to this event to recognize they are a tiny minority and act accordingly.' The mercury shoots up. Now the protesters are joined by a larger group of anthropologists, photographers and bloggers.
Some of the issues protesters bring up include inconsistent inventory numbers, missing accession numbers, dubious paperwork, etc. Some of this is the result of incompetence on both sides, but it takes months to clear up the confusion (in a series of increasingly disorganized press conferences).
The substantial sticking point is the insurance value for the collection - initially reported to be `€1 million, then `upped to €2 million and then doubled to €4 million through custom bonds' (French embassy statement). An international archaeological expert has since called this appraisal, for a collection dating back to the 4th century, `financial fraud'. In the face of continuing protests, there is a 30 per cent increase in insurance value. Mission creep.

Showdown

The court battle is Byzantine, as befits a British-legacy legal system. A Thursday decision by the higher court makes it legal for the artefacts to go abroad. Time is running out, the show is already late. On Friday, delivery trucks arrive at the museum. This is a tactical error on the French side. Street protest trumps all other dialogue. Some protesters scale museum walls, rocks are thrown at the trucks, a man is arrested, the trucks roll out to the airport.
The blog world goes nuclear. Silent spectators are now outraged. How dare the French? Nuanced arguments are pushed aside -everyone understands arrests. The high-handed manner of the embassy, the miserly compensation to Bangladesh (twenty copies of the catalogue are to be sent to five participating museums!), talk-show battles - all of it hardens positions. Local supporters of the show are called `French lackeys', the debate fractures along nationalist lines. In a letter to the French government, protesters write: `Recent actions of the museum have removed any semblance of trust in the organization, and we are no longer willing to loan our prized possessions to an organization with such standards of behaviour.'

Guimet as Signifier

The Guimet controversy is a crucible - people see culture battles made solid in headline events. Much harder to resonate when talking about collections built up before decolonization. The Guimet is taking on the burden not only of its own history (especially the acquisition of the Louvre's Asiatic collection), but also acting as a signifier for a whole set of colonial/postcolonial museums' bounty of illegally acquired artefacts.
Kwame Opoku's statement on Afrikanet that the Guimet holds `thousands of stolen objects' and news about the Louvre refusing Turkish demands for return of two Ottoman tiles are among protesters' other worries. They point to the 2002 `Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums' which the Louvre has signed - it can be used to argue that if an artefact is `in danger' in its home country, the museum can keep it for safekeeping. Of course the Guimet is not the Louvre, but it all starts blending into one in the rhetoric.
In one of the blog debates, Paris-based theorist Brian Holmes interjects: `There's something all-too neocolonial about the shiny, refurbished, spectacular Musee Guimet and the booming tourist economy into which it fits, where visitors take such exquisite pleasures in thousand-year antiquities without any particular concern for the present-day cultures of the former European colonies. When the official reps don't show a little respect while getting the goods out today, then the veneer cracks and lots of bad memories can rise to the surface ....'

Lady Vanishes

On the day of the Muslim Eid festival, legal battle finally exhausted, the second shipment is sent to the airport. At 1 a.m., French embassy officials complete all customs formalities and the government videotapes proceedings. The French leave the airport and at 2 a.m., representatives of Homebound Delivery count the crates again and discover one has vanished. Joint Forces seal off the airport.
At 6 a.m., I'm woken by an SMS from one of the protesters: `crate is gone'. The city wakes up a little later and goes ape-shit. Airport guards, museum officials, Air France Cargo workers are arrested and then released. Trucks are stopped at the Indian borders. The Culture Ministry holds an emergency meeting. The empty crate is eventually found floating in a pond. Missing are two valuable pieces: a terracotta statue and a bust of Vishnu.
A slow-motion script plays out. The police recover what they claim are `smashed pieces' from a local garbage dump. Supposedly the thieves got `scared'. Eventually, some local art goondas are arrested. These small-time operators managed to penetrate the `high-security' airport? Somehow, I don't think so....

Aftermath