The Holy Grail, or the Canton Cup?
It’s been an interesting week for heritage, not least due to the new Heritage Bill for Wales being released for public consultation. However one of the most interesting heritage related headlines to leap out from the pages this week was one to read ‘Christian icon Joseph of Arimathea could be buried in Cardiff’. The word ‘could’ is a fascinating one. Nero 'could' have confided in his beloved pet rat in times of crises, Silbury Hill 'could' have been constructed to act as a landmark to the finest Neolithic restaurant in all of whatever Avebury was referred to as back then, and forks 'could' be used to eat soup, of course none of them did, were or are, but if you were committed enough, then you could make a case for them. Therein lays the greatest danger of Joseph of Bute, as we should presumably now call him. The things we ‘could’ do with our heritage are fairly inexhaustible, especially if you want to put ethics and reason to one side. The article above goes on to tell readers that this is ‘our’ (Welsh) heritage. Is it though? Is it really? Okay, lets for one minute take off our rationale hats and swap them for our money making hats: Crook #1 ‘If we want to attract visitors to Cardiff, why don’t we just tell everyone that Joseph of Arimathea is buried here?’ Crook #2 ‘Good point, we can’t prove it, but that doesn’t matter.’ Crook #1 ‘Another good point, because we can’t prove a lot of things, but we can still say they happened right?’ Shortly after we can expect the Cardiff City sightseeing bus tour to suddenly call in at the burial place of Owain Glyn Dwr (conveniently buried directly under the pub of the same name, so ‘they’ say), metal shavings reputed to have splintered from Excalibur itself (new to the Origins gallery in the National Museum) and the final resting place of Madoc’s hat, washed up in Cardiff Bay. If you don’t take an ethical position on anything, we really could say and sell anything we wanted to about Welsh history. Does this sound a little extreme? Perhaps, but the other story to catch my attention this week might make us think about this issue for a little longer. China and the £58m Jibaozhai Museum, which was recently forced to close its doors to the public following a scandalous revelation that the majority of the artefacts displayed, were cheap fakes. Some wonderful quotes from the senior museum staff suggest that ‘some’ of the 40,000 objects were real, but not many. It would appear that this ‘institution’ has come to embody the very worst of museum corruption and deceit – morals and museum ethics have no place here, as the development of an attractive product seems to have consumed everyone involved. International condemnation and general mockery followed shortly after the story broke. So, with China in mind, let the cautionary tale of the museum that got caught out for misleading all of its visitors be a reminder. We certainly could say all sorts of enticing things about Welsh history and its connections to the world, indeed we can do that perfectly well with our legitimate and proven historical narratives, but let’s leave Joseph of Arimathea where he belongs, wherever that might be: it is certainly not in Cardiff City centre. We do not need to pretend, or need try to dupe anyone else into thinking anything other than that, and were we to do so, we would deserve the exact same scale of international mockery and derision faced by the Jibaozhai Museum does now.
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Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, Welsh heritage is winging its way around the world in the name of culture and, perhaps more pressingly, economics. ‘Wales, Land of the Red Dragon’, the title of the new exhibition to be hosted in China’s Three Gorges Museum, is the latest in a series of Welsh Government led efforts to develop trade opportunities on the back of cultural programmes. Following in the footsteps of National Museum impressionist art collections farmed out to all corners of the United States, and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, trade delegations and conservators alike have packed their bags and shared a taxi to a foreign destination, all in the name of enhancing the Wales brand abroad. Many in the museums and heritage sector back home in Wales might raise an eyebrow though, as during a time when the museums and, in particular, art sectors are being squeezed to the point of oblivion in places (look no further than Newport’s art gallery), the very same resources which are being used to sell Wales, are suffering back in Wales. Whether we consider the fate of temporary art exhibits in Newport following a few years on from the use of ‘Welsh’ art collections to woo the American markets, or we dwell on National Museum collections being presented to potential partners in China at a time when jobs and wages are being trimmed in the very same institution, the message is conflicting. The Welsh heritage resource has certainly been identified by the current Labour administration as having the potential to aid in the fostering of foreign relationships, but it remains unclear whether or not, be it at national or local government level, this promotional position will have any meaningful long term effects for the heritage being used. It is difficult to imagine any cultural institution having too many qualms with being made use of on the international stage for the promotion of a nation. Yet those same institutions might question whether the commitment to the Welsh heritage resource is being matched at home in terms of funding and legislative priorities. At the same time, can we question what version of Wales will be put forward to Chinese audience? The National Museum website talks of telling the Welsh story in full, but bolds the periods of ‘Roman occupation to the English conquest’. Will China see a vibrant contemporary Wales, or a Wales trodden on by repeated visits from aggressor states? Remembering the Dazu rock carving exhibition that visited the National Museum from China shortly before the 2011 referendum on Welsh law making powers, it was an exhibition stunning in quality of content, but disappointing in terms of scale – it was a very small exhibit for all the fanfare it received. Will Wales’ contribution be similar in scale? If so, how effectively will it represent the ‘unique character of Wales’? Or will this instead be an exercise in object display? The exhibition in the Three Gorges Museum in Chongqing officially opens tomorrow, and feedback will be awaited with great interest. |
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