Message from rterry
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Last weekend a few of us from the Torrance group attended the lecture by Princeton curator of Asian Art, Cary Liu, at UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. It is hard to know into which "thread" this belongs, but a short discussion is perhaps okay in this museum section.
The lecture was titled "Recarving China's Past". The focus was on particular tombs/shrines found in north, central China. Slides were shown, both from the initial discovery and from a few weeks ago which showed the archelohical site sompletely submerged under water. This image really struck me -- how can such historical treasures be so neglected? Trying to piece together a culture's history is guesswork (of course based on some evidence) yet as Cary Liu suggested in his lecture, established beliefs do change. His findings are challenging the conclusions on the Wu family shrines which scholars have interpreted and even created a 3D computer mock of what it looked like. The stones are housed in buildings near the site and the slides shown were the first public viewing of these artifacts.
In Liu's reflection on his research at the site he said that it is like falling leaves ... as you begin to gather them, more appear. In this case he is refering to characters carved on the stones. Rubbings were made which caused the stones to keep disintergrating (the rubbing process is very hard on the stone). It appears as if characters appear later ... he suggests that perhaps characters were added by scholars ... He remarked that "scholars think they are sages and entitled to change the text". An interesting concept to introduce to our students to open their minds to the concept of history being an evolving and altering set of "facts" and to always be open to discovering new ideas.
Rubbings are "art frozen in time" since the stones keep disintergrating. The value of using such artifacts to teach the concept of history eroding as we live is worthwhile to explore further with students. No two rubbings are the same ... the person making the rubbing will emphasize a different part of the artifact, not even intentionally, but naturally this is the case. Again, a good concept to illustrate to students the interpretative aspect of "recording" history.
This was a worthwhile afternoon spent at UCLA. Thanks Clay for the invite!