On his recent excursion to the Far East, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) “signed an historic cultural exchange agreement” with China’s Palace Museum that will bring several hundred art objects from that Museum’s collection to Virginia. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts will reciprocate by allowing portions of its collection to be displayed in China. From the official press release, one gets the impression this is about tourism, expanding the Virginia brand and education. Never mentioned, either in the release or in Virginia’s notoriously incurious press, is why Virginia is signing deals with a dictatorship that has locked-up up one of its most prominent modern artists for “economic crimes”: Ai Weiewei.
Fortunately, the media world is a wide one, and others have noticed.
Ai Weiwei, who designed the “Bird’s Nest” stadium that played a starring role in the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, has long spoken out against the Chinese government. He’s been harassed, detained and even arrested in the past. But in April of this year, as he was arrested “on suspicion of economic crimes.” His whereabouts are unclear, but what is clear is that the regime is working him over to elicit “confessions” of his guilt. The concern some have shown for Ai Weiwei hasn’t sat well with the Chinese government:
…China was “unhappy” with foreign support for the artist, adding: “The Chinese people also feel baffled – why do some people in some countries treat a crime suspect as a hero?”
Perhaps because we tend to identify with those who oppose tyrants?
Ai is hardly alone in feeling the whip of China’s dictators:
Ai is one of dozens of artists, lawyers, activists and bloggers arrested or gone missing in recent months in one of the worst spikes in repression in more than a decade and a presumed attempt to prevent the kinds of uprisings that have taken place across the Middle East and North Africa…
One would expect Virginia — which proudly displays Sic Semper Tyrannis on its flag — to be more than sympathetic to the artist’s plight, and to that of all the others who have been disappeared by the Chinese government. Alas, no.
When asked about the cultural exchange agreement and the Ai Weiwei situation, Virginia Museum Director Alex Nyerges told Modern Art Notes that the two matters were unrelated:
…it hasn’t become a policy question for the board at all. On a practical level in terms of the staff, certainly Ai Weiwei’s arrest was a topic of conversation, but quite simply our partnership and relationship with the Palace Museum has nothing to do with the Ai Weiwei situation whatsoever.
We’ve signed on with a memo of understanding for a long-term exchange. We’ve concluded it’s a relatively straightforward approach by our two institutions. By continuing this relationship, we are helping to bridge the gap of understanding and appreciation between China and America, whether we’re talking Chinese culture in general, and Chinese art in particular. For every misconception there is about China in our country, there are an equal number of misconceptions in the US. We think the good that comes of this outweighs any other consideration.
In some ways, this is a very Richmond response: it’s bloodless and devastating at the same time. It also reeks of appeasement.
Wall Street Journal theater critic Terry Teachout has a far different take that both Nyerges, who will oversee the exchange, and McDonnell, who inked the deal, should consider:
It strikes me that instead of being “cautious” not to “impose” American values on a foreign culture, the museums of America should acknowledge that they have a unique responsibility to speak out on behalf of Mr. Ai. They are, after all, trustees of the cultural heritage of mankind, which makes them by definition guardians of the universal values of civilization. Yet most of them are carefully looking the other way while China thumbs its nose at those same values by unlawfully imprisoning an artist. That’s not caution, it’s cowardice.
“I believe that no matter what happens, nothing can prevent the historical process by which society demands freedom and democracy,” Mr. Ai wrote on his blog in 2009. (The blog has since been shut down and its contents purged from cyberspace by the Chinese government.) Perhaps. But his captors are both ready and willing to prevent him from making art. Are America’s museums as willing to stand up for an artist whose life may be on the line?
That is particularly true of Virginia, proud Virginia, the home of patriots who risked their lives to fight tyranny and whose ideas on freedom and liberty continue to inspire people across the globe – including China. Recall that in 1989, protestors in Tiananmen Square read aloud from Thomas Jefferson’s writings, and displayed Patrick Henry’s famous words, “Give me liberty or give me death” on a bed sheet.
In contrast, if the commonwealth’s political class is unwilling to utter even a mild protest on behalf of those who suffer at the hands of dictators — because it might somehow hamper our ability to boost tourism or bring jobs and investment to Virginia — then that political class is more morally bankrupt, and cowardly, than I dared imagine.
A symbolic start would be for Nyerges, McDonnell and others to sign the Guggenheim’s petition calling for Mr. Ai’s release. Will it influence the Chinese government? Doubtful. But even a small signal of protest aimed at China’s dictators, particularly from those whose political ancestors include Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson would be welcome.
The only thing they risk is a few tourist dollars…far, far less than what Ai and his compatriots have already sacrificed to bring a glint of political freedom to their country.
