I don’t think Germany gets to reclaim “looted” art.
$35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII
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Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> Is Italy, a country 200 years old, the heir of ancient Rome? This is an interesting question. The answer is hard to pin down precisely, but sometimes when there is a change of governance the culture continues to exist. For instance, if something was produced in Japan before World War II, Japan remains the heir even though a new constitution is now in place. Similar with something produced in Moscow during the Sovie…
I think it’s a reasonable criticism that often the immediately “right” thing is in fact fraught with unintended consequences, and when there’s intense societal or cultural pressure to do the immediately right thing without thinking of those consequences, you could end up in a worse position than you began.
Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is it a moral crime to simply appreciate a painting, even though it was stolen hundreds of years ago? Yes. Because your enjoyment deprives the ancestors of the people who actually created it. Try personalizing this to see if it resonates. There's a quilt that has been in your family for centuries, with each family member adding a patch. At some point, your house is burglarized and the quilt is taken. Hundreds of ye…
And for that matter, if the people it was stolen from decided it wasn't worth preserving who are you to decide they're wrong? It's the height of colonial arrogance to assume we know better, that we can value the works of other cultures better than they can. That our enjoyment is more important than their history and self-determination .
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Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "moral crime" (a term the previous poster used, not me) is in knowingly patronizing something that houses stolen goods, not in whether you enjoyed them or not. 'Enjoyment' was just the example the previous poster used, the same would hold true if they had said 'hatred' instead of 'enjoyment'. If you come over to someone's house, and watch whatever is on their stolen TV, it doesn't matter if you're enjoying what's…
Oh okay, I'm in the clear then. I only visit the museums on the days they're open for free to the public.
> I only visit the museums on the days they're open for free to the public.
Right on, I hear ya. If museums want my money, they can break into my house and steal it, like they stole their artefacts.
Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII
#125Back at home, Young had a problem: She was in possession of a looted piece of ancient art. She couldn't keep it. She couldn't sell it. And giving it back to its rightful owners was a lot harder than it sounds. “At that point, I realized I was probably going to need some help,” Young says. “I was probably going to need an attorney.” So she hired a lawyer in New York who specializes in international art law, Leila Amin…
> I don't really understand why it would be hard or complicated
Why would you expect a priori to understand? Or have you dealt in the past with a meaningfully comparable problem, and found it easy and simple?
Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Museums shouldn't be full of looted treasures, museums should be full of treasures of the culture who built the museum. It is an injustice that any significant artifact is not in the custodianship of the culture it belongs to and when the infrastructure is in place to preserve the items, they should be returned to the community they came from.
To what modern-day culture do Roman artifacts belong?
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Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
She's an antiques dealer. It's her job to buy old things and sell them for more. That's why she was in Goodwill. I think she likely wanted a payout. Also the terms of the deal are confidential. If she didn't get a payout, I don't see why they would be confidential.
Getting a payout seems fair. I doubt the Germans paid anybody when they took it from Italy.
Like all of Europa, Germany and Italy have thousands of years of history together. You are using nationalist terminology that is not even 200 years old to try to grasp 2000 years of history.
At the time king Ludwig I of Bavaria acquired that bust, the nation you identify as "Italy" didn't yet exist. And that was in the early modern. For most of the medieval age, the small territories that today are within southern germany and northern italy were vassals of the same empires.
And while europa sure was almost constantly at war with itself, there was also a lot of trade going on. Who took that bust from whom and if they paid with coin or sword is most likely lost to time.
Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII
#128> She was in possession of a looted piece of ancient art. She couldn't keep it. I don't understand. Museums in the West are full of looted ancient art [1]. Why are they allowed to keep it, but this woman cannot keep this one item? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/learning/should-museums-r...
The Louvre is basically all looted art from Napolean's wars.
The building itself has passed hands numerous times through questionable means. Should the Coup of 18 Brumaire count as Napoleon stealing the entire country, Louvre included? What of the subsequent Bourbon restoration; another crime or merely a rectification of the first? And what of the Charter of 1815? Or the second Bourbon Restoration?
Or is all of that legitimate because they all spoke French? (Remember, Napoleon was a Corsican!)
Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
So to sum it up this exchange: Person1: A You: This sounds like B, which is fallacious. Person2: A You: Again...this sounds like B, which is fallacious. Me: No one is claiming B You: I never said anyone claimed B. I said this sounds like B. Sound about right?
> Sound about right? Yup, with the added bit: If you're not claiming that A is like B, then what's the point of you bringing up A to the discussion, at all?
When an object is stolen from a cache which was otherwise destroyed, 1) that is by definition a statistical anomaly, and 2) it may contain information from a time/place that is otherwise irrecoverable, which could make it valuable.
Between these two facts, I think it would be way weirder if everyone quietly ignored the historical record of a specific artifact just because it was stolen. Imagine walking through a museum with a tour guide who is able to give mounds of information about every piece on display, until you ask them about a certain bust, and they say "oh we don't talk about the history of that piece" and you say "why not?" and he says "because it's not relevant".
Be honest, what you're actually saying is, "this information isn't relevant TO ME."
Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately a lot of the old art in the world only exists because by modern reconing it was stolen. Consider the fabulous collection at the palace museum in Taipei. Much just like it was destroyed in the cultural revolution.
Again... > That sounds like an a posteriori justification for stealing, like saying "see, that building ended up being bombed, so it's a good thing I stole all these Ukrainian paintings from the country last year". The logical fallacy here is using one unrelated bad event to justify another unrelated bad event. Taken to its logical conclusion, this argument would be that we should constantly keep looting art left and…
I guess, as much as I do hate theives, sometimes I can appreciate that I have benefited by their past work through my enjoyment of the arts.