The looting of art and cultural treasures over the centuries, by explorers, archeologists, soldiers and thieves, has become something of a cause celebre in museums around the world in recent decades.
Think of the outcry over the Elgin marbles in London, the Pergamon gates and Nefertiti’s bust in Berlin. Anyone who visits Angkor Wat should think about all those hacked-off friezes and Buddha heads.
The National Palace Museum is currently promoting a special exhibition of Tibetan Buddhist treasures that opens on July 1. The museum boasts that the show will include 130 artifacts from China, dating from the 5th to the 20th century, including many “lent” by the Potala and Norbulingka palaces in Lhasa and important Tibetan monasteries such as Sakya, Palcho and Tashilhunpo.
A senior museum official said the exhibit will “display the superiority of Tibetan art.” The museum Web site says: “No doubt Buddhism has become the flesh and blood of Tibetan culture,” adding that it hopes the exhibition will “bring about a better understanding of Tibetan history and culture.”
Left unsaid in the promotional materials is that most of the buildings at Sakya were razed during China’s Cultural Revolution, while Palcho was partially destroyed during the 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. Tashilhunpo lost two-thirds of its buildings at the hands of the Red Guards, although as the seat of the Panchen Lama it fared better than most.
Will there be any mention of the other monasteries that were demolished — like the great university at Ganden — the hundreds of thousands of scriptures that were burned, the monks and nuns that were killed, imprisoned or forced out of their orders — or of the repression of religion that continues in Tibet and Tibetan areas today?
The Beijing government and Chinese nationalists complain loudly about the looting and burning of the Summer Palace by British and French troops in October 1860 and the subsequent dispersal of its treasures around the world. An attempt to auction two bronze animal heads from the palace early last year was thwarted by “patriotic” Cai Mingchao (蔡銘超), who made the winning bid and then announced he had no intention of paying because they should be returned to China for free. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu (姜瑜) earlier made the usual noises about how “auctioning cultural objects looted in war time … offends the Chinese people and undermines their cultural rights.”
The silence from Beijing, however, is deafening when it comes to the destruction of cultural treasures and family heirlooms during the Chinese Communist Party’s march to power and the Cultural Revolution.
Promoting a show of Buddhist treasures from Tibetan monestaries is not like exhibiting the jade burial suit of Prince Liu Sheng (劉勝) unearthed in Sichuan or a terracotta warrior or two from Xian or the Beauty of Loulan from Xinjiang.
Beijing’s systematic efforts to crush the culture and religion of Tibet cannot and should not be ignored. The “Sacred Land Tibet — Treasures from the Roof of the World” show should not be seen as a celebration of an ancient culture and religion. It is a display of trophies from a government that has tried to eradicate the culture it purports to be presenting. It is akin to an exhibition of Torah, menorah and other items from sacked synagogues and Jewish homes organized by the Third Reich.
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