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China-Japan-Koreas
Dont steal from your commie dicktator
2004-08-18
Posted by:2%

#6  museums around the world substitute fakes for the real things all the time. There are lots of reasons for doing it, some even reasonable

Yep, leave the thinking about this to the experts, several of my professors were experts and had excellent collections of pre-columbian artifacts. Luckily I was quickly found-out and forced to desist from looking at the ground and perchance kicking me boot. I thank allen every day I was saved from a life of illegal collecting.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-08-18 6:06:45 PM  

#5  The value of art is entirely subjective.

As LeRoy Neiman and Thomas Kincaide have so amply proven.
Posted by: Zenster   2004-08-18 2:51:57 PM  

#4  News flash: museums around the world substitute fakes for the real things all the time. There are lots of reasons for doing it, some even reasonable. Intentional vandalism, theft, and just ordinary wear and tear from being exposed to people who touch and the lower humidity on display than in proper storage, plus routine cleaning. The racket involved in stolen art is almost legitimate at times: selling to an individual collector *on condition* that he never display the piece, and that the museum is still the "official" owner of it--for the box office draw.
The reasoning is, "does it really matter?", in that unless you could take the fake apart or examine it under a microscope, you really can't tell the difference.
The value of art is entirely subjective.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2004-08-18 12:03:14 PM  

#3  Because the cadres and Politburo bureaucrats had been planning to pocket the money for themselves, that's why, Zenster.
Posted by: Edward Yee   2004-08-18 2:57:28 AM  

#2  ...sentenced to death for stealing the artifacts he was meant to protect...

I guess they took it seriously.
Posted by: Rafael   2004-08-18 2:44:12 AM  

#1  This is what happens when you kill off all of your decadent bourgeois scholars. Now no one can tell the difference between a T'ang dynasty jade carving and a piece of worthless crap bought off of the Home Shopping Network. Does anyone wonder why Taiwan just laughs hysterically whenever China demands that they return all those antiquities the communists didn't manage to smash or burn during the "cultural revolution?"
Posted by: Zenster   2004-08-18 2:36:13 AM  

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