Washington, 30 June 2011
“Shipwrecked : Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds” scheduled to show at the Sackler Gallery, part of the Smithsonian, has been indefinitely postponed.
According to several archaeologists, these objects were obtained illegally. In 1998, local fishermen diving for sea cucumbers found a treasure dating back several hundred years off the island of Belitung in Indonesia. The objects are from the Chinese Tang dynasty of the nineteenth century and the boat is thought to be from the Middle East. James Delgado, a nautical archaeologist, explains on www.npr.org: “This shipwreck is one of the most significant shipwrecks to be found in modern times.” He added that “it is the only shipwreck to date that we have found which has direct archaeological evidence of trade between the Arab world and the Chinese world.”
The controversy is due to the fact not all the pieces have been returned to the Chinese authorities and many were stolen and sold on the Internet. Making profit from cultural heritage pieces is forbidden and incurs heavy punishments. An investigation has therefore been opened to find the objects and identify the thieves. The Indonesian government has engaged Seabed Explorations, a German recuperation firm to find the stolen works, which were subsequently bought by the Singaporean government for $32 million. The charter of the Council of American Maritime Museums in the United States, an organization of which the Smithsonian is a member, stipulates that members “shall not knowingly \[...\] exhibit artefacts which have been stolen\[...\] or removed from commercially exploited \[...\] sites.”