Word: museume
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...Taliban's dynamiting of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan in March 2001 was only the most dramatic expression of their mission to obliterate all "idolatrous" images from Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past. They also destroyed 2,500 other cultural artifacts from Kabul's National Museum of Afghanistan, many of them priceless. But thanks to the heroic efforts of curators, they didn't get it all. Hidden Afghanistan, a traveling exhibit that recently opened in Amsterdam's Nieuwe Kerk (New Church), gives a tantalizing glimpse of Afghanistan's stunningly diverse cultural legacy, and tells an engrossing tale about how these remnants...
...just as Afghanistan's geography invited cultural influence, so too did it draw a sequence of invasion and conquest that has put the country's heritage in constant peril. The Taliban's destruction of art was the culmination of years of catastrophe visited on the National Museum, and the extraordinary story of how the surviving art got here is as much part of the exhibit as the art itself...
...National Museum first opened its doors in 1922, and by the time the Soviets Union invaded in 1979, it had some 100,000 objects on display. But many of its treasures were plundered in the course of the ensuing war against the Soviet invaders, which left two million dead. In the years following the Soviet Army's withdrawal in 1989, what remained of the museum's collection survived further looting, a direct rocket attack, fire, a collapsed roof and resulting snow damage. The victorious Taliban had every interest in completing the destruction...
...downs. There was a time when he symbolized modern art for a whole generation. In the years right after World War II, his work epitomized a kind of modernist humanism for an era that was both forward-looking and war-weary. He had hugely successful exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Venice Biennale, where he received the main prize for sculpture. The British Council began exporting his work all around the world, and the U.S. in particular responded to him strongly. He became the go-to guy for every American arts center, college...
...prices by flooding the market with the work of as many artists, new or old, as the market will bear. But how many of those artists have international staying power? "Globalization has persuaded collectors that local Asian artists will become globally important," says the director of the Singapore Art Museum, Kwok Kian Chow. At the same time, the critical literature with which the long-term importance of those artists may be evaluated is, in many cases, nonexistent. "There is a need for a parallel development of museums and art historical knowledge. That will balance the market somewhat," Kwok says. That...