October 19, 1999
CONTENTS:
- query: digital recording
- Russia's monuments endangered by lack of funds
- Taiwan: cultural institutions suffer serious damages
- Emergency Power Requirements
- Stemming the Antiquities Flow (worldwide problem: the boom in the looting of ancient objects)
- The Right to Destroy Great Art, Scholar details the clash between private property values and public interest (book review)
Does any of our subscribers have experiences with digital recording
of CCTV images? I do need information about products, software,
complete systems, pros and contras, costs, legal (privacy)
matters, etc. etc.
thank you in advance,
Ton Cremers
Russia's monuments endangered by lack of funds
By BILL GASPERINI
KIZHI ISLAND, Northern Russia (October 16, 1999 1:06 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - It is considered one of the greatest wooden buildings ever erected, and it has more onion domes than Russia's famous St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square.
Built entirely without nails during the reign of Peter the Great in 1714, the Church of the Transfiguration on this remote island, some 500 miles north of Moscow, has hundreds of aspen shingles covering its 22 domes.
Yet over the years, this church has become a symbol of neglect and has turned into one of Russia's most endangered cultural monuments as the country grapples with a severe economic crisis. Millions of people, from Siberian coal miners to teachers to army soldiers, routinely go for months without pay because of budget shortfalls. Many of the cathedral's spruce logs are rotting or being eaten by insects. Its interior was gutted in the early 1980s by Soviet restorers, who also erected a gigantic indoor metal frame and dismantled its priceless iconostasis (a partition decorated with icons; the most holy part of the church). Before that, a different researcher tested the strength of its walls by firing a bullet at it. "This church is one of the most important in our national heritage, yet it's undergone decades of abuse," says Yuri Piskunov, an engineer from the Vyatka Technical University in central Russia. "And it's now our task to save it."
For years, debate has swirled in scientific and cultural circles about how to do that. A number of proposals have been discussed, including one drawn up by Piskunov, that would replace the interior metal frame with an all-wooden one in a $2 million, five-year project. Other experts say the church must be rebuilt log-by-log, or an exterior metal frame built to prevent it from falling down. This would essentially destroy its aesthetic value. But Russia's tight financial situation has relegated cultural institutions to the bottom of the to-do list. Less than half of the promised budget allocated last year to the Ministry of Culture was delivered.
"We do what we can with what money there is," says Irina Markina, head of the department of preservation at the Ministry of Culture. "This is the reality we face. Things are getting a bit better, but very slowly."
The Transfiguration Church is the centerpiece of a collection of historic wooden buildings located on Kizhi Island, originally a ritual site in pre-Christian times. Another nearby chapel dates back to the 14th century.
The buildings were declared a World Heritage Site in 1990 by UNESCO - the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, which oversees funding for sites in need of preservation. They are also on a list of the world's 100 most endangered monuments drawn up by the World Monuments Fund, based in the United States. Kizhi Island isn't the only cultural site in Russia facing challenges. Even in Moscow, which receives the lion's share of all foreign investment in Russia and is undergoing an unprecedented building boom, restoration work can take years because of delayed funding. On the other end of Red Square from St. Basil's Cathedral, the purple-red brick building of the State Historical Museum reopens section-by-section as renovation continues. The museum first closed in 1986.
In another part of town, Moscow's most important art museum, and one of the most famous in Russia, the Tretyakov Gallery, also had to shut its doors for almost 10 years. It reopened with great fanfare four years ago, complete with a new underground lobby sporting shops and a small cafe. Despite its stature, the Tretyakov has also been squeezed by the budget crunch.
This resulted in a mini-crisis when police guarding the museum threatened to go on strike because their salaries had not been paid. "We should have paid them out of the funds which we never received from the government," says Lidia Lovleva, the Tretyakov's deputy director.
"We made a direct appeal to Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who made sure there was no strike," says Lovleva, referring to Moscow's popular mayor. Often mentioned as a future presidential candidate, Luzhkov has become famous for raising money from corporations and newly rich Russians for pet projects, most notably the reconstruction of a cathedral in Moscow, which was inaugurated last year.
The sight of new buildings going up in record time in Moscow has caused resentment among those struggling to find money to restore existing buildings elsewhere in the country, such as the Kizhi church. "Businesses and wealthy people are always ready to donate lots of money to highly visible projects in Moscow, for it helps boost their profile," says Galina Korobova, the deputy head of the preservation department at the Ministry of Culture. "But Kizhi is too far removed to bring any such return."
Some museums, including the Tretyakov Gallery, have started to reach beyond government-supplied funding. In the Tretyakov's case, support from foreign corporations and one of Russia's largest oil and gas companies has allowed the museum to publish new catalogs and mount special exhibitions.
Such strategies weren't even dreamed of during Soviet times, when state funding was almost limitless. Perhaps the biggest testament to this - at a time when state funding was almost limitless - is the elegant 18th-century palace of Tsarskoye Selo near St. Petersburg, one of several imperial palaces that were rebuilt almost from scratch after they were destroyed during Nazi occupation in World War II. Now, the Versailles-like palace is also forced to adapt to the "new" Russia. Administrators have begun selling more souvenirs such as T-shirts to supplement funds from the government. They've also turned to another unique resource: handicrafts made of Baltic amber by the team of restorers working on the palace's legendary Amber Room, where wall paneling and furniture made entirely of amber disappeared with the retreating German troops in 1944. Skilled craftsmen have now finished a good portion of the room. But they also suffer from a backlog of unpaid salaries. This situation should change soon, however, since the German government recently pledged to help fund the final stages of restoration with a special grant.
Back at Kizhi, no such unexpected help has appeared, despite a direct appeal to President Boris Yeltsin when he visited the island two years ago during his summer vacation. "He came, saw the church, and promised that more money would be forthcoming," says Tatiana Vahrameeva, the federal architect of the Kizhi monuments. "Despite the time that has passed, we're still hopeful that he'll fulfill that promise." While corporate sponsors aren't stepping forward, some hope has come in the form of indirect support from George Soros, head of the Soros Fund, a philanthropic foundation that assists projects throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The fund helps finance a special school to train carpenters who will do the restoration work. Soros also says the fund is interested in helping set up a national trust organization to support cultural institutions around Russia, an idea that comes from the director of the Yasnaya Polyana museum-estate of the writer Leo Tolstoy, several hours south of Moscow. But the core problem remains: Until Russia overcomes its current economic crunch, funds for culture will be sparse, making the maintenance and restoration of many historical landmarks and institutions difficult.
(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society
From: "Dorit Straus" Dorit_Straus@aceusa-ins.com
Subject: Taiwan: cultural institutions suffer serious damages
I have received the following communication from the executive curator of the Chang Foundation in Taipei, Taiwan :
"Taiwan has experienced a serious earthquake that cost a tremendous disaster in the mid-Taiwan area. Many cultural institutions suffer serious damages and could spend years to recover. By helping these institutions recover within a shortest period of time, and also strengthening the concept of risk management on earthquake, we urgently feel the need to invite experienced professional of this area to provide their knowledge to us. It could include case studies of some museums recovered from earthquake disasters, i.e. recovering plans executed by the museums. Other issues such as what risk management procedures the cultural institutions could take to minimize the damages caused by earthquake. It would be very kind if you can recommend someone whose professionals can suit the needs of our present situation.... "
If anyone in the museum community can provide assistance- please forward it to : Ms. Kui-ying Liao Executive Curator Chang Foundation no.63 Sec 2 , Jen Ai Road Taipei, Taiwan
telephone 886-2-23569575-7
fax 886-2-23569579
Thank you,
Dorit Straus
Assistant Vice President
Art Culture & Entertainment
ACE USA
1133 Avenue of the Americas
32nd Floor
New York, NY 10036
212 642-7852
212 642- 7801 ( fax)
From: William A. Heidecker heideckerwa@worldnet.att.net
Subject: Emergency Power Requirements
(abbreviated)
To produce electricity, a generator and a motive power for the generator are needed. Because we assume that the need for an emergency generator is because normal electric power is not available, an e A rule of thumb is such that diesel is better for large engines and gasoline or LP-gas is better for smaller engines. (That's why automobile engines tend to use gasoline while large trucks tend to u Another problem common to all internal combustion engines is exhaust gas. All internal combustion engines produce carbon monoxide, an axphyxiant, which needs to be exhausted to the atmosphere in such Advantages and disadvantages of Diesel, Gasoline, and LP-gas fueled internal combustion engines.
++++++++
complete message is available on-line at:
http://museum-security.org/99/power-outage.htm
++++++++
Stemming the Antiquities Flow
THE ITALIAN government's request for U.S. help in protecting its cultural heritage by cracking down on the import of antiquities is a reminder of a worldwide problem that technology has made worse. That problem is the boom in the looting of ancient objects, whether from illicit excavations, burglarized museums or plain vandalism. Italy wants the United States to impose import bans on a broad category of objects -- everything from statuary to coins -- dating from before the 4th century A.D.
A request for such import restrictions is an admission that Italy, like many art-rich countries, cannot adequately police its sites at home. High-powered and easily available metal detectors and undersea salvage equipment long since tilted the worldwide balance toward looters and away from the usually inadequate security provided at cultural sites outside major cities. The profit to be made from an avid and growing collectors' market has drawn in international organized crime groups, with their yet greater resources for circumventing law enforcement at the source. Requests for restrictions -- which are evaluated by a State Department advisory committee -- are fairly common, but the breadth of the Italian one is new and has drawn criticism from many in the legitimate art market. (The committee is free to grant a narrower version of the request.) Italy is far from the most victimized country in this regard -- places such as Cambodia, Tibet and Eastern Europe suffer more comprehensive looting -- but Italy is exceptionally rich in antiquities. Its laws also give a firmer basis than the laws of other nations for recovering artifacts under international conventions, because a 1939 law declared all Italian cultural patrimony to be the property of the state, making it easier to classify looted objects as stolen property.
But the reason to curb looting is not merely legal. Knowledge of past civilizations and prehistory, in great measure drawn from archaeology, is far from complete; important finds continue to fill gaps and lead to revision of long-held theories. But the scientists with their improved methods cannot stay ahead of the looters with theirs. Museums in the past decade have shucked their earlier reluctance to look closely at provenance and have begun returning objects and refusing to buy questionable ones. The art trade is moving that way too, but far more slowly. Import controls aren't the whole answer, but they can be a useful tool in speeding things up.
c Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
The Right to Destroy Great Art,
Scholar details the clash between private property values and public interest
REVIEWED BY Kenneth Baker
PLAYING DARTS WITH A REMBRANDT
Public and Private Rights in Cultural Treasures By Joseph L. Sax
University of Michigan; 245 pages; $32.50
Joseph L. Sax never recounts a real instance of anyone ``Playing Darts With a Rembrandt,'' but his book is full of stories that dramatize how, when it comes to important cultural property, American law favors the rights of private owners over the public interest. ``Ownership of physical things, in contrast to intellectual property, is conceived of as private and unqualified,'' writes Sax, who is professor of law at UC-Berkeley. ``(T)hat conception enables owners to exercise unbridled power over owned objects, whatever the loss to science, scholarship or art.''
Offsetting this belief is the sense that we all have a stake in the fate of irreplaceable artifacts and documents that might significantly affect future generations' understanding of their own history. Luckily, many art collectors see themselves as custodians of treasures that have social as well as market value, and eventually donate them to institutions or make them available to scholars. Sax pays them the compliment of pointing out that such collectors ``assure we will not be limited by official taste.''
Sax's prime example of the opposite type is the spiteful Dr. Albert Barnes, who assembled America's greatest private collection of early French modernist painting and then denied almost everyone access to it because museum professionals had ridiculed his personal theories of art and education. Not until 40 years after Barnes' death in 1951 were his treasures seen outside the Barnes Foundation mansion in suburban Philadelphia.
Not just artworks and manuscripts get squirreled away, but also telling documents of science, jurisprudence and political history. ``A never-published manuscript, replete with edits in Einstein's hand, . . . was undiscovered until 1987, when it was sold at auction to an anonymous owner who kept it behind closed doors until it was put up for sale in 1996,'' Sax writes. ``Though it is said to have laid the groundwork for Einstein's general theory of relativity, it had never been available to scholars or the public.''
Sax uses case histories to sort out the competing claims of private and public interest in cultural material. Among them are incidents of patrons or owners destroying artifacts, artists and writers destroying their own works, and ``authorized biographers'' or other scholars treating discoveries as their personal property, even if they never produce their promised studies.
The most outrageous case of the latter may be that of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which Sax considers in detail. In spite of laws and professional ethics that should have prevented it, a coterie of specialists kept the most revealing portions of the ancient documents to themselves for decades after their discovery in 1947. The most notorious case of ``cultural vandalism'' is the destruction of the Diego Rivera mural in Rockefeller Center in Manhattan in 1933. The Rockefeller family commissioned Rivera, a world figure in art known for his radical politics, to make a mural for the new RCA Building. Its theme was to be hope that progress would transcend America's Depression woes.
Characteristically, Rivera worked into his complex composition a portrait of Lenin, which was more than the Rockefellers -- with the possible exception of Nelson -- could tolerate. When Rivera refused to efface Lenin, the family paid him his full fee and had the mural obliterated, literally overnight.
``The Rockefellers can only be seen as `cultural vandals' if the community's interest in preserving the achievements of genius is understood to be more important than (those achievements') role in advancing the political or religious agenda of the owner or patron,'' Sax writes. ``That is exactly the position the modern world has taken; it is, ironically, the great triumph of the decontextualization of art.''
More problematic cases are those such as the portrait of Winston Churchill by the renowned British painter Graham Sutherland. Knowing that her husband hated the portrait, Lady Churchill destroyed it after his death. A photograph of the painting in Sax's book makes the Churchills' feelings understandable, but it also stirs regret that we will never see the work firsthand. Sax's purpose is not to settle but to clarify the ways in which private and public interests clash over cultural patrimony. His book has two effects. It awakens the reader to the variety of cultural circumstances that bring private and civic values into conflict. And it heightens one's respect for the potential of the law -- or of legal thinkers such as Sax -- to resolve such conflicts reasonably.
Kenneth Baker is The Chronicle's art critic.
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