Post #509536 by SuperEight on Sun, Feb 7, 2010 2:02 AM

I remember as a kid going to an exhibit at the Bishop Museum on the last day. I remember ancient Hawaiian helmets and art pieces among the works that had been loaned by the British Museum and other mostly English collectors. As I remember sailors and some academics had originally acquired the pieces (through I imagine either theft or trading). The mostly Hawaiian docents were very teary eyed about the pieces going back to England and felt their heritage was leaving them. I told my dad that I felt bad about that but he told me that often people don't value what they have in their culture until someone else puts it in their own museum or puts a price tag on it. It was an interesting point.

I also know that a great deal of Hawaiian tiki's and other art works were destroyed as "pagan idol" when christianity took hold. Works of art are better off stolen and studied than burned. Remember the statues that the Taliban blew up? They actually asked that they be taken away and foreign academics pleaded that they needed to stay in their native country. Now they are dust.

And finally having spent some time in the tropics, I know that anything not carved in stone rots away with alarming speed. There is no way that ancient artisans thought of their works as permanent. Losing pieces might have been traumatic, but its not like they hauled away the Taj Mahal or parts of the Parthenon (which did happen) or something else built to stand there forever. They were an impermanent art form that were going to rot eventually and the artisans and the indigenous owners knew that. I am as sensitive as the next guy about the white man coming in and plundering the treasures of a people. But the plundering of some of these ancient art forms has actually led to the culture being recorded forever.