Word: museum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Those eager to delve further have been rebuffed. When some Shanghai writers proposed a Cultural Revolution museum in 1986, Beijing said no. The leadership apparently fears that any thorough investigation would quickly run to criticism of the current regime and so must be prohibited. The outer boundaries of permissible complaint in China have been set. Anything may be criticized except that which really matters: the right of the party to rule. To today's leaders, the experience of the past demands a straitjacket on political dissent and helps explain why Deng so feared accepting the Tiananmen demonstrators' demand for free...
...surface, then, totalitarianism in Beijing seems no more oppressive than a constant low-grade fever. Underneath, though, the town seethes. Even the silence is telling. Herded by their supervisors to the military museum's "True Story of Tiananmen Square" exhibit, those I see viewing it are stone-faced. Politically reliable cadres are everywhere, but so are wry smiles, especially when people see a giant blowup photograph of the man who defied a column of tanks, with a caption saying he had been spared because of the army's humanity...
MASTERWORKS OF LOUIS COMFORT TIFFANY, Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Washington. Some 65 of the renowned glassmaker's most vibrant lamps, vases and windows. The ultimate glass act! Sept. 29-March...
...that argument, Native Americans answer that 1) most of the unearthed Indian bones lie moldering and unexamined in museum basements; and 2) little if any data gathered from their study are shared with the descendants. According to Suzan Shown Harjo, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, the only bit of information the Smithsonian ever imparted to her group was that their ancestors ate corn. "We could have told them that anyway," says Harjo, citing the accuracy of Indian oral tradition...
Returning Indian remains to the proper heirs is not always easy. What contemporary group, asks David Hurst Thomas of New York City's American Museum of Natural History, can speak for a tribe that no longer exists? "If we find things from 10,000 years ago," he says, "it becomes tricky." Another potential problem: misidentified remains of one tribe might be returned to descendants of a group that was historically its mortal enemy. Beyond that, scholars note, tribes varied widely in their treatment of the dead; for some, the spirit left the remains, while for others, the spirit is still...