The history of art is, to a great extent, the history of a robbery. The collections of the Louvre Museum in Paris, the British Museum in London or the New Museum in Berlin are full of pieces that were taken as booty or acquired under dubious circumstances, in the processes of expansion and conquest of the great powers of the world. To find out the origin of these pieces, where they are now and what their destination should be, TV UNAM premieres the documentary series the dispute of art (The Netherlands, 2021), by Hans Pool, on Tuesdays from September 5, at 7:30 p.m., with rebroadcast on Saturdays, at 6:00 p.m.
The first episode, The Parthenon Marbles, documents the debate between the governments of Greece and Great Britain over the marble sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens, which are currently on display at the British Museum in London. They were removed in 1801 by order of Thomas Bruce Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, who sold the collection to the English government and, to this day, Great Britain refuses to return them because it considers that the Athens Museum does not meet the necessary conditions. for its preservation.
The series continues on Tuesday, September 12 with the chapter luba’s mask, which analyzes the controversy between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Belgium over the famous sacred mask that belonged to the Luba people of Katanga and is exhibited at the Tervuren Africa Museum in Brussels, along with 100,000 other objects that they were taken out of the Congo at the time it was a Belgian colony. How did all these pieces get there? Shouldn’t they go back to where they came from?
The third chapter, which is broadcast on Tuesday, September 19, is dedicated to The bust of Nefertiti, the great relic of the Old Museum in Berlin. The Egyptians denounce that it was stolen and claim it for being an icon of their identity. The Germans argue that it was legally acquired and that it belongs to the world heritage, and not to the Egyptian one, and that they have a duty to preserve it and make it available to everyone. How did this magnificent bust end up in this German museum?
The chapter that airs on Tuesday, September 26, the kandyan canyon, recovers one of the most notorious art controversies of recent years. During the colonial days, when the Dutch East India Company operated in Sri Lanka, thousands of art treasures were looted. Some are on display in museums around the world and experts are trying to find out to what extent they were stolen or received as gifts. This is the case of the Kandy Cannon, a piece of gold, silver and rubies that disappeared during the war, in 1765, from a royal palace and appeared in a museum in Amsterdam.
During the month of October the series will deal with other pieces of art, such as Moctezuma’s plume on display at the Anthropological Museum in Vienna; the Sultan of Banjarmasin diamond, which was stolen from Indonesia by Dutch troops and is now on display at the National Museum in Amsterdam; the Beijing zodiac fountain, from which only two of the twelve statues that made up the fountain have been recovered and, finally, the sculpture dedicated to Gou, exhibited in the Louvre Museum and which the French government refuses to return .
Do not miss the transmission by the UNAM TV signal of the premiere of the documentary series the dispute of arton Tuesdays from September 5, at 7:30 p.m., with retransmission on Saturdays, at 6:00 p.m.
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2023-08-31 16:31:54
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