crunch time

Victims of ignorance, stupidity, and religion.

I've been extremely busy working on my final script for the docent training (due next week). I still have three papers left to research and can't finish, and thus finalize, the script until then. Some of us trainees met today with our respective mentors (veteran docents of the museum, these women have been volunteering for a decade, if not two or longer, and my god, they work their asses off!) to go over our scripts and talk more about the process and get updated on the details of the exhibits (some pieces have been removed on loan or for some other reasons).

I don't know how contemporaneously familiar you are with the art world but in the past couple or so years there have been some high profile scandals involving ancient artifacts stolen from their respective countries of origin (particularly the Mediterranean and the Middle East).

There has been a serious crackdown on some of the world's most prominent museums, including The Metropolitan in New York, and The Getty and The L.A.County Museum of Art here in L.A. The Pacific Asia Museum, where I'm training and volunteering, was also raided this past week by authorities searching for stolen art objects that may have been gifted to the museum with or without the benefactor or curator's knowledge of them being hot. There have already been arrests and questionings of directors and curators in other museums because of this mess, as well as the arrests of certain art gallery owners and dealers.

There's a further complication. Some of the claimants of the controversial objects are the governments in countries like Saudi Arabia. They want their stuff back. But that area of the world is incredibly volatile with religious fanatics bent on destroying anything that is not of the Islamic faith. They've already annihilated some of the oldest, most important and beautiful sculptures of Buddhism and will never stop, not even to admire them before setting the bombs and wrecking balls, all in the name of their faith. How fucked up is that?

In which case I find it extremely ironic how these countries want their things back - and yes, rightly so, I must agree - but there is no guarantee those works of art will remain safe from harm once they're returned, and returned from museums where they're treated very well and are kept as safe as a newborn baby. Yes, even the world of art has been sucked deep into this whole war with Iraq and Afghanistan and crazy terrorists.

Exciting, ain't it?! And people say the art world is boring. Plebeians, the whole lot of them! LOL!