Screaming Mummies and Stolen Paintings: Is this why people collect human remains?

(cross posted on Property of an Anonymous Swiss Collector)

Lately I have been on a art-crime reading kick. Nothing fancy, just popular non-fiction about art theft in my lighter or lazy moments. Such reading makes me feel like I am working (even though I am not) and gives me various things to think about.

Last night I was reading about what seems to be the constant (and often successful) push for versions of Edvard Munch's The Scream to tumble into the stolen art abyss. Everyone seems to be stealing The Scream all the time. Dare I say it calls out for theft? I dare! I keep thinking about the next step in such art thefts and I guess that is the greatest mystery of them all: how can anyone possibly sell off The Scream? Who buys that?! This, of course, is where the "Dr No", directed theft for a secret private collector idea comes in.

I know, I know, people like that can't possibly exist: they are the stuff of novels and kind of crappy films. Yet, if I evaluate prominent art theft on a work by work basis, I imagine that The Scream has just the right tone and mystique to appeal to those master criminals of infinite resource out there. The Scream is the kind of piece desired by those who don't plan on sharing their art collection. It is internal....private. It is an angsty piece for your solitary, self-serving billionaire.

I have to admit, I've never really liked The Scream. Munch just isn't quite what I am looking for. There is something enchanting about his quite edgy 1894/95 Madonna (stolen along with The Scream in 2004), but I think my experience of emotion just does not match Munch's (probably for the best, yeah?). Yet I was instantly interested when I read that there is some evidence that the main figure in The Scream was inspired by Munch's viewing of a Peruvian mummy. "Oh! Yes!" said I.

Gauguin's "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" (Which is in the MFA? I should go look I suppose) has a possible Peruvian Mummy-inspired figure too. Gauguin felt that this painting should be read right to left and the mummy figure is the left-most (last) figure: to quote Gauguin "an old woman approaching death appears reconciled and resigned to her thoughts". The artist vowed to commit suicide after the completion of this painting (his masterwork) but he stuck it out for a few more years, dying in 1903 of a syphilis, alcohol, morphine overdose triple threat.

So how did this happen? Ancient Peruvian death as an image of modern angst by the fin de siècle suicidal artist set? I don't actually know. I have no idea.



Well, maybe I do have a bit of an idea. I sort of see two strains at work here. The more obvious is the sort of call of the non-Western in the emerging art movements of the late 19th and early 20th century. We all know antiquities and non-Western cultures played their part: your Cycladic figurines and African masks in Picasso... the moment that Matisse realized that Polynesian folks are awesome. Yet I always thought this was a bit cringe-worthy: placing a Western veneer on something else to make it palatable. In 2005, in an exhibit at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, I saw a Maori cape made out of Cambridge scarves. It felt like something that needed to be said.

The second strain is our pan-human curiosity about death. Mummies are death defiers. By simply still existing, they violate the rules of human existence and, thus, seem to hold some sort of secret about the human condition. Skin retracts when it desiccates (is that a word?), mummies tend to look like they are screaming (see a whole archaeology.org article on the topic of screaming mummies), various ancient Peruvians made mummy bundles that often had hands near faces, and BAM you have a dead body that knows the great unknowns of human existence and seems to be horrified by the enlightenment.

In a previous blog entry, I expressed some shock that people actually collect South American mummies. Yet, now that I think about it, perhaps that is not so shocking. If these bodies meant so much to Matisse and Munch that they based the focal points of their masterworks on them, someone else is going to see that. Chalk this blog entry up to trying to understand.

The Cerebroteca: Brains in jars for learning? For fun?

I've been to Lima four times, but only twice did I leave the airport and only once was I there for more than 12 hours. Under those circumstances it shouldn't be a surprise that I have only visited two of Lima's many museums.

The Inquisition Museum: Yes.

The first that I visited was the Museo de la Inquisición y del Congreso . On a bus somewhere in the deserty bit of expanse below the Andes after 3 months in Bolivia and while consulting my Lonely Planet I exclaimed "I didn't know that Lima had an Inquisition Museum." My companion, without missing a beat, said "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition". The museum was great, exactly what I wanted it to be: a grotesque menagerie of wax models in shackles and things. I would have been heartbroken if the museum took itself seriously.

It looked closer on the map

The second museum I visited was the Museo de la Nación which was amazing, yes, but exists as kind of a blur in my mind. See I had this bright idea that we were going to walk to the museum. Somewhere along the way a couple of teenagers who clearly were only looking at the color of my hair rather than the fact that I was wearing clothing from the Bolivian black market that was stained and full of holes, tried to mug me. That is the only time anything like that has happened in my entire life. One grabbed my male friend, the other started punching me in the face and pulling on my canvass bag. A bag that contained less than two American dollars, my battered and blonde-headed passport, and that Lonely Planet. My glasses flew off, I was dragged along the sidewalk, and I didn't let go. My companion got free, socked the guy one and then the kids ran off (my friend's Lebowski-esque comment "F**k'n amateurs").

I was literally and mentally a mess at that point. Sadly, this led to a moment I still regret. I am mortified just thinking of it. This was all broad daylight and near me was a Peruvian guy who had been walking down the street. The moment I recovered my glasses I lobbed a massive, semi-incoherent Spanish assault on him for doing nothing. In the middle of my huge "Thanks for letting me get beat up in front of you", I noticed that he had not been ignoring me. He was flagging down a police car...sigh. I was so rattled. I didn't even apologize to him. Anyhow, we took a cab to the museum (I INSISTED on going at that point) and I did what I could to mop up my blood in the bathroom near the lobby.

All of that was a build up to this: I just found out that Lima has a brain museum. That is right, at the El Museo de Cerebros Humanos en Perú (also known as the Cerebroteca!!), an interested visitor can marvel at around 3000 diseased and preserved brains. While other locations have more specimens than the Cerebroteca, those places aren't open to the general gawking public. In Lima, brains in jars are for everyone.

I wonder about these museums of the grotesque. Are they truly teaching tools or are they simply an odd day out for those in search of a cheap and gross thrill. I've been the the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons and, I can tell you, I was there for the gross thrill. I learned that one can put a human face in a jar and that is about it. There is something just off about a display of, well, freakish things. Have we really come very far?

But then again, I do think of museums as entertainment spaces more than learning spaces. Did I go to the Inquisition museum to learn? Well yes, a bit, but I really went there for the contorted wax dummies. People are entertained by brains in jars, that is just how it is. I'd consider going there should I find myself in Lima anytime soon.

UNESCO Status: Is Delisting an Effective Deterrent? Also, Herbie Hancock.

The UNESCO World Heritage List. It has existed for decades. It contains nearly 1000 sites and areas. It has a pretty snazzy (and useful) iphone ap. I've worked full-time at a World Heritage Site and have visited something like 100 of them. Consciously (nerd). Yet the World Heritage List remains a sort of mystery to me. Having never been on the inside of World Heritage List discussions or politics (only on the outside, reading records and evaluations, etc.), I still find that I don't fully understand the sway of the thing.

Hancock Rockin It for our Heritage

Recently it was announced that the United States was going to have to defund UNESCO due to a legal chain reaction started by UNESCO admitting Palestine as a recognized state party. To quote the Washington Post there was "a legal requirement to cut U.S. funds to any U.N. agency that recognizes a Palestinian state". That means a loss of $80 million a year to UNESCO. My first thought when I heard that was "that is insane" (re: the US automatic requirement to defund). My second thought was "that is brilliant" (re: Palestine's decision to go the UNESCO recognition route first. A sneaky and nifty way to force hands.)  There was so much chatter about this issue, and it happened right when I was submitting my dissertation, that I lost track of it. I can say that Herbie Hancock wrote a pretty nice op ed in support of the US funding UNESCO. That is Herbie Hancock, creator of such intangible pieces of our heritage as "Rock It". You better believe I linked you to the 9 minute live version with extended scratch intro.

But what does having World Heritage List inscription abilities really mean? Word on the street is that Palestine is going to be trying to list Bethlehem which, if true, seems like another brilliant move. Sure Bethlehem is a complicated, multi-period area, but it is a site that feels Christian-y. Smart. But what is next? Lets be honest, UNESCO is just a stepping stone for Palestine.

Quando Juanica y...Chan Chan?

So what is the appeal? It sounds like being on the World Heritage list is a decent amount of work and there is the potential to be moved to the World Heritage in Danger list or to be taken off the list entirely. Getting put on the danger list is seen as shameful. Being de-listed is seen as semi-devistating. Yet take Perú as an example. The site of Chan Chan has, apparently, been on the World Heritage in Danger list since it was inscribed in 1986! Why? Because Chan Chan is made almost entirely out of adobe and, you know, slowly melts. Machu Picchu was almost put on the Danger list this year, but in the end it wasn't for some reason. And that is an interesting point: there is almost an unwritten, pre-Danger List list and Machu Picchu is on it. Will Machu Picchu be "dangered" this year? Only time will tell.

Another site that has been on the unwritten pre-Danger list for a few years now is the site I work at: the glorious and wonderfully controversial site of Tiwanakau, Bolivia. For as complete a record as I could scrape together of its current woes, see Ch. 7 of the now approved dissertation. Since mid 2009 we've heard it all: it is being defunded; it is being de-listed; it is being put on the Danger List; all or any of those will happen if x, y or z doesn't happen; all or any of those will happen if x, y, or z DOES happen. I've taken a two month break from reading the Bolivian papers on this issue, but a peek two days ago shows that everything is in exactly the same place: the museum is falling apart, everyone is mad at everyone else, and if something doesn't happen, UNESCO is going to act.

Elbe Valley looking impossible!

The cynic in me wants to point out that things have been weird at the site since 2005 and I have the photos to prove it: why did it take until 2009 for UNESCO to show up? And this gets me back to the main thought of this post: what does it really mean to be taken off the UNESCO World Heritage List? This is such a rare occurrence and only two out of nearly 1000 sites have ever been delisted... it just happens that I have been to one of the two before the delisting: The Dresden Elbe Valley. The other delisted site, the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in Oman, doesn't really count since the government of Oman wanted the site delisted and worked towards it. Forget that. Lets talk about Dresden.

The last time I saw the Elbe Valley was in 2006 and the Elbe was showing its stuff, flooding like mad as my train sped from the Czech Republic into the Dresden train station (which, itself, had been ravaged by flooding a bit before). It was snowy and lovely and it was delisted because a bridge was built. Bridge up, Dresden off. I like that "DRESDEN ELBE VALLEY" is actually crossed off on the UNESCO website. European newspapers and some German surveys portrayed this as totally lame and embarrassing but there you go. It happened. Are any fewer people going to Dresden? Has anything changed? I really don't know.

Seville's Pelli Tower, you decide.

News is that another European UNESCO site, old Seville, might be stricken from the list. If a tower is built, UNESCO might act. But note how the article talks about it: Seville sites might be axed from the list, might go on the In Danger list or, maybe, nothing at all will happen. They are currently sitting squarely in the pre-Danger unwritten list like Tiwanaku. Yet as we saw with Dresden, they might just take Seville off. If so, what does that mean for Seville? I would really like to know.

This doesn't cause a site to be delisted.

It is hard to judge based off of one delisting, but I wonder if UNESCO is more apt to axe a European site than a site in the developing world. They have always faced a lot of flack for what most people see as a Western bias in their list. Bamiyan was never delisted, even after the Buddhas were 'sploded by the Taliban. To quote a 2011 assessment of Bamiyan:

"The heritage resources in Bamiyan Valley have suffered from various disasters and some parts are in a fragile state. A major loss to the integrity of the site was the destruction of the large Buddha statues in 2001. However, a significant proportion of all the attributes that express the Outstanding Universal Value of the site, such as Buddhist and Islamic architectural forms and their setting in the Bamiyan landscape, remain intact at all 8 sites within the boundaries, including the vast Buddhist monastery in the Bamiyan Cliffs which contained the two colossal sculptures of the Buddha."

Yet a bridge and a tower could cause a European site to be delisted. I'm not saying that is wrong, I am just saying.

So there it is folks, just some musings. I would love to read a post de-listing report out of Dresden if anyone knows of one not in German (I can do English or French).