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Apr 26, 2011
Controversy over Sentosa group's $40m Tang artefacts
Experts urge Smithsonian Institution to cancel planned exhibition
INDONESIAN fishermen stumbled on a 9th century shipwreck off the coast of Belitung Island in 1998.
Its cargo consisted of rare treasures from the Tang Dynasty (618-907), including vessels of gold and silver, lead ingots, bronze mirrors and spice-filled jars.
The discovery confirmed the existence of a direct maritime 'Silk Road' from China to beyond the Persian Gulf during that era.
The Indonesian government got German engineer-turned-treasure hunter Tilman Walterfang's firm, Seabed Explorations, to recover the 1,200-year-old artefacts.
In 2005, more than 60,000 artefacts from the collection were acquired by Sentosa Leisure Group for US$32 million (S$40 million).
They have been on display at the Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures And Monsoon Winds exhibition at Marina Bay Sands' ArtScience Museum since Feb 19.
The exhibition, which ends on July 31, is jointly organised by the Singapore Tourism Board, National Heritage Board, Asian Civilisations Museum and the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.
After Singapore, the treasures will go on a world tour. For the United States stop, the artefacts are scheduled to go on display at the Sackler gallery early next year.
The collection of artefacts, titled Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures And Monsoon Winds, is currently being exhibited at Singapore's ArtScience Museum. --ST PHOTO: BRYAN VAN DER BEEK
NEW YORK: The Smithsonian Institution is facing mounting calls from archaeologists to cancel a planned exhibition of Chinese artefacts owned by Singapore's Sentosa Leisure Group.
Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures And Monsoon Winds is on at Singapore's ArtScience Museum until the end of July.
Critics say the artefacts were mined by a commercial treasure hunter and not according to academic methods, a practice that many archaeologists deplore, equating it with modern-day piracy.
In a letter dated April 5 to Mr Wayne Clough, the top official at the Smithsonian, a group of archaeologists and anthropologists from the National Academy of Sciences wrote that proceeding with the exhibition would 'severely damage the stature and reputation' of the institution.
In recent weeks, organisations including the Society for American Archaeology, the Council of American Maritime Museums and the International Committee for Underwater Cultural Heritage, as well as groups within the Smithsonian, have also urged Mr Clough to reconsider.
The exhibition was conceived by the Singapore side and Mr Julian Raby, the director of the Smithsonian's two Asian art museums: the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.
The Smithsonian will hold a meeting today to hear from critics. A final decision on whether to proceed with the exhibition will likely be made late next month, a Smithsonian spokesman said.
The exhibition date at the Sackler Gallery is tentatively set for spring next year.
The probable historical importance of the shipwreck, which was discovered by fishermen off Belitung Island in Indonesia in 1998, has only inflamed the debate.
The ship, believed to be Arab, was filled with a cargo of ninth-century Chinese ceramics and gold and silver vessels. Its discovery suggests that Tang China had substantial sea trade with the Middle East. Scholars had previously thought the trade routes were primarily over land, along the Silk Road.
The exhibition 'brings to life the tale of Sinbad sailing to China to make his fortune', Mr Raby told The New York Times earlier this year.
Archaeologists, however, say that because the shipwreck was commercially mined within a period of months, rather than the many years a more structured archaeological excavation would have taken, much of the information it might have provided has been lost.
Although a 2001 Unesco convention outlawed the commercial trade in underwater heritage, Indonesia has not ratified it and allows commercial mining of shipwrecks as long as a firm is licensed and splits its finds with the government.
The company that salvaged the Belitung wreck, Seabed Explorations, is run by German engineer Tilman Walterfang.
In an e-mail, Mr Walterfang said that when fishermen first discovered the shipwreck in early August 1998, the Indonesian government, fearful of looting, ordered Seabed Explorations to begin an immediate round-the-clock recovery operation. It started within days.
Although Mr Walterfang eventually brought in a pair of archaeologists, including Mr Michael Flecker, who wrote two journal articles about the ship, he conceded that, from an academic standpoint, 'the overall situation would, without doubt, be described as 'less than ideal''.
Seabed Explorations sold most of the 63,000 artefacts recovered to Sentosa Leisure Group for US$32 million (S$40 million). The company is the private arm of Sentosa Development Corporation, a statutory board under the Ministry of Trade and Industry. It manages several attractions on Sentosa island. The Indonesian government kept slightly more than 8,000 pieces from the ship.
Mr Flecker argued in a 2002 article that the purist approach of archaeologists is not practical in developing countries like Indonesia, where governments are poor and the risk of looting is high. Under those circumstances, he said, archaeologists and commercial salvagers should cooperate 'to document those sites and the artefacts recovered from them before too much information is lost'.
NEW YORK TIMES
Critics say the artefacts were mined by a commercial treasure hunter and not according to academic methods, a practice that many archaeologists deplore, equating it with modern-day piracy.
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