[/caption]Per a recent article in the New York Times re the ongoing fulminations of the Egyptian Minister of Antiquities, Dr. Zahi Hawass, demanding that Nefertiti be returned to him, by John Tierney of November 16, 2009, referring to the position of the director of our own Art Institute of Chicago, James Cuno:
“As the director of the Art Institute of Chicago, Dr. Cuno has his own obvious motives for acquiring foreign antiquities, and he makes no apology for wanting to display Middle Eastern statues to Midwesterners.”
““It is in the nature of our species to connect and exchange,” Dr. Cuno writes. “And the result is a common culture in which we all have a stake. It is not, and can never be, the property of one modern nation or another.””
The Renaissance, wherein the west climbed out of the dark ages into the light, would not have happened without a serious examination of the Greek and Roman antiquities. It is time for the inheritors of past empires to stop feeling guilty for the wrongs committed in history. Sending Nefertiti to Egypt from the newly rebuilt Neues Museum in Berlin, (which is, by the way, in its own right, a remarkable story of rising out of historical ashes) is in no way a return to a rightful owner, nor does it in any way expiate old sins.
We must all enjoy and learn from our collective histories, not stake out specific territories of ethno-centric meaning. Down that path is cultural isolation, down that path is the destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan, for instance.
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