A slideshow connected to a lecture on Art and Cultural Heritage Looting and Destruction available at Art History Teaching Resources (http://arthistoryteachingresources.org/), written by Rhonda Reymond.
2. Themes:
•Destruction/iconoclasm and the erasure of culture
o due to ideology, neglect, or disregard for the object.
•Looting and the appropriation of objects
o for purposes of propaganda and economic gain
•Restitution, repatriation, reconstruction,
and artistic interventions
3. At issue: contestation of power over objects of cultural heritage
What objects have been held by various cultures and rulers
as being imbued with power?
Who has chosen to co-opt, usurp, or destroy particular works,
and for what reasons?
Who has obtained objects in the hopes of transferring a civilizing
aura
and promoting their cultural enrichment and status?
What objects have been subject to iconoclasm, and why?
What economic considerations might be present, and what are
the ramifications of the sale of culturally significant objects?
When has the destruction of those objects been a harbinger of or a
corollary to the destruction of an entire culture?
17. Eugène Peytier, Mosque in the
Parthenon, 1815. (Mosque built
after 1688, demolished 1844)
The Parthenon, 447–432
BCE, Athens, Greece.
18. Before and after the earthquake in Nepal, 2015
Wilderness Battlefield National Military Park, Virginia
19. Icon of the Virgin Hodegetria,
last quarter of the twelfth
century CE.
Icon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy,
1350–1400 CE.
20. Apse Cross, after 740 CE, Church
of Saint Irene, Istanbul.
Folio 67r, Chludov Psalter, c. 850–
875 CE (with detail).
21. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The
Preaching of St. John the
Baptist, 1566.
Pieter Bruegel the Younger,
The Preaching of St. John the
Baptist, 1601–4.
22. Dirck van Delen, Iconoclasts in Church,
after 1566.
Images of the Beeldenstorm of 1566
Frans Hogenberg, Iconoclasts in
Church), after 1566.
23. Johannes Bosboom, St. John’s s’
Hertogenbosch, 1836.
St. John’s Choir Screen, Victoria &
Albert Museum, London.
Pieter Jansz Saenredam, Sketch of St.
Johns Choir Screen, 1632.
24. Pieter Jansz Saenredam, Sketch (left, 1632) and painting (right, 1646) of St. John at
s’Hertogenbosch.
51. English news article reporting on Hitler’s speech at the opening of the
Degenerate Art Exhibition, 1937.
52. Cover of the Degenerate Art
(Entartete Kunst) exhibition
catalog, 1937.
Lines to see
exhibition
53. Visitor to the Degenerate Art Exhibition, 1937.
http://vp.nyt.com/video2014/03/12/26854_1_degenerate_wg_16x9_xl_bb_mm.mp4
54. Hitler touring the Degenerate Art Exhibition, 1937.
“Nehmen Sie Dada ernst!”
(Take Dada seriously),1937.
55. Hitler in the “Room of
Horrors,” 1937.
“Hitler Hates Modern Art,
Approves Nudes,” 1937.
(Forbidden art on left;
Approved art on right)
56. Collection of paintings by Hitler,
Army Center of Military History.
Hitler, Neuschwanstein Castle.
Hitler, The Courtyard of the Old
Residency in Munich, 1914.
57. Raphael, Portrait of a Young
Man, c. 1513–4, Czartoryski
Collection, Kraków, Poland,
Lost.
58. Monuments Women at the Jeu de Paume
(Left, Rose Valland; center, Edith Standen). Left, Standen; right, Valland.
66. “We wish to state that from our own knowledge, no historical grievance
will rankle so long, or be the cause of so much justified bitterness, as
the removal, for any reason, of a part of the heritage of any nation...”
Wiesbaden Manifesto
68. Center, Nazi art dealer
Hildebrandt Gurlitt.
Henri Matisse, Seated
Woman, found in the home
of Hildebrandt Gurlitt’s son,
Cornelius Gurlitt.
69. Franz Marc, Horses in Landscape and Christoph Hans, Couple, found in Gurlitt’s home.
(Two of 1,500 works found in Gurlitt’s home)
http://www.lostart.de/Webs/EN/Datenbank/KunstfundMuenchen.html
70. Three of the thirty vigango from the Denver Museum.
76. CyArk was founded in 2003 to ensure heritage sites are available to future
generations — while making them uniquely accessible today — with the mission of
using new technologies to create a free, 3D online library of the world's cultural
heritage sites before they are lost to natural disasters, destroyed by human
aggression, or ravaged by the passage of time.
Siege of Lachish–Assyrian, digital 3-D copy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcLwoa19kLw#t=40
http://projectmosul.org
Project Mosul, Assyrian Lion,
digital reconstruction.
83. “There is no choice between protecting human lives and safeguarding the
dignity of a people through its culture.
Both must be protected, as the one and same thing — there is no
culture
without people and no society without culture.”
Irina Bokova, Director General of UNESCO (2013)
