By Sue Morrow Flanagan
April 4, 2005–“Tibet: Treasures from the Roof of the World” was a coup for the museum world. The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art of Santa Ana, California, worked with Tibet’s Bureau of Cultural Relics and the staff of Lhasa’s three central cultural institutions to bring to the US more than 100 Chinese, Indian, Nepalese, Mongolian and Tibetan sacred and ritual objects. The exhibition spent the early part of 2004 at the Bowers, then moved to the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
For the first time, treasures from Lhasa’s Potala Palace, the 300-year-old Vatican of Tibetan Buddhism, from the Norbulinka Summer Palace and the six-year-old Tibet Museum are being seen outside Tibet. And although it is just a glimpse of Lhasa’s remaining glory, this exhibition dazzles the viewer with gold, silver, rubies, pearls, turquoise, jade, red coral, rare silks and paintings swirling with kings, gods and demons; even a bejewelled, golden cup made from a human skull.
Everywhere, the exhibition has been greeted with protests and demonstrations. On this third leg of the tour, an alliance of the Students for a Free Tibet, the Tibetan Women’s Association and the Tibetan Youth Congress has denounced the exhibits as stolen “art from Chinese-occupied Tibet”.
One of the most politically significant items on display is the seal of the fifth Dalai Lama. Caron Smith, the Rubin’s chief curator, describes the seal and two similar seals in the exhibit as “a transfer of respect and power between China and Tibet”. The seal is one of several objects shown in films across China as evidence that Tibet was always an integral part of China. In the past century, thousands have died over how these sacred works of art have been interpreted, says Robert Barnett, a lecturer in Tibetan Studies at Columbia University. It is perhaps not surprising that museum staff have been obliged to ply their diplomatic skills with Tibetan demonstrators on their doorstep. Peter Keller, the Bowers president, shakes his head: “I’ve never seen artifacts become this political, this sensitive.”
The battle has intensified at the Rubin. Protesters have created a parody website purporting to be the Rubin site and attacking the interpretation of the collection as Chinese propaganda. Although the site acknowledges that the Rubin’s interpretations of sacred objects are an improvement on earlier showings, Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, sees collusion between the four museums and China’s government. “They know they are participating in a propaganda exercise. They are allowing themselves to become a platform, part of the Chinese strategy.”
Lawyers representing the Rubin were at one time said to be investigating unauthorised press releases on the museum’s letterhead. But while frowning on internet “trickery”, Smith responds with a mix of exasperation and humour: “We believe in free speech. Let barking dogs lie.”
After watching the Bowers and Houston exhibitions draw fire, the Rubin has tried to defuse tensions by leaving out the Chinese-prepared catalogue and simplifying artifact interpretations. Smith sees the exhibit as a chance for the Tibetan diaspora “to see parts of their culture that, unless there were museums preserving it and museums exhibiting, would be unavailable”.
But for Tethong, the protest is a cry of rage. In a meeting before the opening, Jeff Watt, another Rubin curator, urged protesters to set aside their differences and simply feel proud of the display of their heritage. Tethong responds angrily: “If Russia had won the cold war and taken over your country, then took the Declaration of Independence on a worldwide tour, how would he feel?”
Yet the protesters and Rubin officials are both eager for the public to see the exhibition. “We are not telling people not to go and see the exhibit,” Tethong says. “But it is damaging if the average person sees it with no mention of the problems. See it, but know what you are seeing.” Nor are the protesters critical of Tibetans in Tibet who are working with the Chinese to see that their heritage is preserved. “Our issue is not with them,” Tethong says.
In a letter to the Bowers, the Dalai Lama welcomed the exhibition for revealing the magnitude of Tibet’s artistic traditions. “Despite the wholesale destruction that has taken place in Tibet in recent decades,” he wrote, “some works of art have survived. I hope that such efforts will contribute to saving Tibetan culture from disappearing for ever.”
In the late 1950s, more than 6,000 monasteries and temples with more than 500,000 monks and nuns existed across Tibet. Some monasteries such as Ganden were cities in themselves; some were more than 2,000 years old. By the late 1970s, only eight monasteries were said to remain. Since then, Barnett notes, more than 1,600 monasteries and sacred sites have been rebuilt through Chinese government or private efforts. Dawa
Draba, vice-president of the Tibet Museum, claimed during his visit for the exhibition’s opening that: “The Chinese government has given important attention to [restoring] the cultural relics that were destroyed at that time.” China claims to have spent $36m (£19m) on renovations, with another $40m for further restoration of Potala Palace, Norbulinka Palace and the Sakya Monastery. Yet the US State Department, in its 2004 country report on human rights practices, says many monasteries have never been rebuilt or repaired, while others have been only partially repaired.
For the museum community, the exhibition tests the limits of the newest code of ethics set by Unesco’s International Council on Museums, which discourages members from acquiring objects from an “occupied territory”.
However, it has no specific guidance for materials on loan from such a territory.
Despite the depredations of the past – what the Dalai Lama has called “cultural genocide” – the thrust of China’s strategy now appears to be on bringing economic growth and trade to Tibet with expanded freedoms. The focus is less on objects than on controlling the meaning behind the objects. “It blurs the lines,” Tethong maintains. “We believe the
Chinese occupation is going to end. The empire they are holding on to is just not sustainable.”
Smith agrees that “divisions between the Chinese and Tibetans are no longer distinct”. However, she says: “You’re not going to undo Chinese control in Tibet, but it’s up to [the Tibetans] to perpetuate Tibetan culture. It’s very important for all Tibetans to espouse the culture, to preserve and support it.” She sees China and Tibet as part of a great melting-pot created by centuries of war, with an assimilation beginning to happen. That may be so. But the melting-pot in which Tibetans find themselves is a crucible not of their own making.
*’Tibet: Treasures from the Roof of the World’ is at the Rubin Museum of Art, New York, until June, then at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum*
