The Age, May 31, 2005
Artefacts or fiction?
The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery's acquisition of Chinese antiquities may not be all it seems. By Jane Rankin-Reid.

[image] This horse head from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), is from the Wong's collection.
Although the Tasmanian Government will add $4 million to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery's annual budget over the next four years, the institution is in danger of becoming a target for dodgy donations according to well-placed art experts.

Several years ago, TMAG director, Bill Bleathman, received a call from Perth-based retiree, Professor Shui Wong, offering to donate his 250-item collection of Chinese antiquities. Bleathman accepted and began dedicating scarce resources to suitable exhibition displays, a CD-ROM and a comprehensive catalogue of the Wong's collection, to be published by TMAG later this year.

Tasmanian Minister for the Arts, Lara Giddings, called the donation "the most significant donation of Chinese art in Australia in the last 10 to 15 years". But within the tight-knit coterie of nationally prominent professional Chinese antiquities experts, questions about the true merit of the Wong's holdings have surfaced. Asian art curators from several state art galleries are also understood to be skeptical of the historical attributions of a number of the ceramic objects and vessels donated.

Fearing political reprisals, none of Australia's best-known Chinese art experts will comment publicly, but several observe that with no specialist professionals on TMAG curatorial staff, it is highly unusual that the institution did not actively seek the opinion and assistance of mainland state art gallery curators.

Although TMAG initially believed the Wong's gift of Han, Song, Yaun, Jin and Tang dynasty ceramics and artefacts to be "priceless", one professional Chinese art expert believes the collection may actually be worth closer to $12,000, with many objects of little value for museum-quality display. When records of the Wong's donation were recently removed from its website and online collection database, insiders claimed TMAG had quietly concluded that less than 30 per cent of the donation was of genuine merit.

A historian formerly based at the University of Hong Kong, Professor Wong emphasises his expertise in authenticating Chinese art in his introduction to TMAG's Wong's Collection brochure. "Our skill in verification grew with the advance of time," he writes. Although he's the principle author of TMAG's upcoming illustrated book on his own collection, it's completely unknown to any of the Federal Government's registry of Chinese art experts contacted. Unusually, the gift was made outside the Federal Taxation Incentive for the Arts' established donation criteria.

When pressed for names of independent professional experts who've authenticated Wong's donation, the Minister for the Arts office said it was "inappropriate to disclose individual reference points for the museum other than to say that uniformly all people contacted had the highest regard for both the collection and the donors".

But if mainland state art galleries must actively cultivate advice of experts on all their collections, why has TMAG exempted itself from similarly scrupulous international museum standards of research in this instance?

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Arts/Artefacts-or-fiction/2005/05/30/1117305555017.html?oneclick=true

__________________

with kind regards,

Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

http://www.chinaresource.org
http://www.fluktor.de

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