Li explains that though it might not be a pivotal event in American history books, the real-life theft is “part of the general body of knowledge” she had growing up as a Chinese American. It centers on the repatriation of “what the West stole”-12 zodiac statues pilfered from China’s former Old Summer Palace by British and French colonizers during the Second Opium War. In addition to aiding her book research (“It’s nice to be able to walk around a museum and track things like, ‘where are the security cameras?’”), she credits her experience as a tour guide with helping her to “think about the role of museums in preserving history, and how museums take an active role in the cultivation of what we remember and what we observe.” Author and Stanford medical student Grace D. Li-currently a third year medical student at Stanford University-works as a tour guide at the campus’ Cantor Arts Center. Li writes in her new novel about a fictional art heist, Portrait of a Thief: “What is art but another way of exerting power?” Were they looted or rescued-or both? Who do they really belong to? As Grace D. The affair is a centuries-long point of contention between the nations of Greece and England, who have spent the intervening years requesting and denying their return, respectively. The items, now known as the Elgin Marbles, were later sold by Elgin to the British crown and currently reside in London’s British Museum. In the early 1800s Lord Elgin, a British ambassador, removed sculptures and other cultural artifacts from Athens’ Parthenon.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |