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The
Politics of Culture
The
furor over looters ransacking Iraqi antiquities
parallels the concern driving the
Commonwealth's own efforts to preserve its past
and extend it into a new future.
The
past week, more than most, has been filled with
symbols, remembrances, history, culture and
religion. Religious celebrations, such as Passover
and Easter, of course, are familiar observances
across the world against backdrop of events thousands of
years ago. Even more remarkable is the
attention paid to more episodic cultural
matters, from the looting of art and artifacts in
Iraq to, here in
the Commonwealth, the new statute of Lincoln in
Richmond and a hundred-million dollar commitment
to Capitol Square preservation.
Consider
the politics of culture for a moment. Presidential
advisors didn't resign in Washington,
D.C., over the pace of military operations in
Iraq, the uneven medical attention for the wounded, or
the
shortages of food, water and electrical power.
They did resign in protest over the failure of
American troops to keep looters, pillagers and
plunderers out of Iraq's
National Museum of Antiquities. The attention
worldwide to cuneiform clay tablets, vases and
statutes illustrates again how deeply
historical and cultural continuity, often
presented as a luxury item tangential to real
issues, still resonates with people at all levels.
Even while the headlines of intolerance, violence
and cultural deprivation half a world away are
compelling, on a calmer, deeper level, they also
capture why one of the most important steps taken
by the General Assembly this year is the
authorization of up to $118 million in bonds to
preserve and extend the life of the Capitol in Richmond.
Gov.
Mark R. Warner signed the authorization,
which along with private donations and
public-private partnerships, is to modernize and
remake Capitol
Square
over the next four years, with remarks about
preserving the "centerpiece of democracy in
the commonwealth, the centerpiece of democracy in America…."
The
Capitol
building itself is considered one of Thomas
Jefferson's architectural masterpieces. There is
world-class art and statuary inside, such as
Houdon's statute of George Washington.
Work to be done on adjacent buildings from the old
State Library to the Washington
and Finance
Buildings
will ensure that
Capitol
Square
remains a center for histories still to be
written.
The
goal of completing renovations and modernization
by 2007, the 400th anniversary of the
Jamestown Settlement, created some urgency among
Commonwealth leaders this year. The General
Assembly can be commended for acting despite
severe budget restrictions. Citizens can only hope
that this renewed commitment might expand
preservation, library, music and art education in
public schools and other cultural initiatives that
have suffered from budget reductions in recent
years.
And
finally, there
was the dedication of the statue of
Abraham Lincoln at the Tredegar Iron Works and
Museum along the James
River
in Richmond.
Controversial only to strangers to modern Richmond, the statue
reflects on the moment at which the President of a
divided United
States
pondered in the capital of the Confederate States
of America
just how the states could be
united again in the
wake of war.
Much
of us is what we know, much is what we imagine and
much is what we express. But part of us is what we
remember and what we keep for others to remember. Virginia's
Capitol may not be an antiquity, but with the
proper care, it could become one. And
Lincoln's
visit to
Richmond
after the fall of the city
is as much a part of our history as the events
that precluded a visit before then. Not to
have had the statue of Lincoln
in
Richmond
would have amounted to an advance plundering of
history through the pretense that the presidential
visit never happened.
Current
events in Iraq,
meanwhile, bring back equally tragic remembrances
of the Taliban rulers of
Afghanistan
two years blowing up the massive, ancient Buddhas
carved into the side of a cliff at Bamiyan with
rockets and mortars in an effort to rid the
country of what they called idolatrous and
un-Islamic representations of the human form.
Despite pleas from archeologists, museum curators,
scholars, governments and UNESCO, Taliban
government officials also actually walked through
the National
Museum
in Afghanistan
in November 2001 inspecting objects, then
destroying about 2,750 with stones and axes. These
enemies of ancient things, it turned out, also
were linked to enemies of the future, as events of
September
11, 2001
proved.
One
museum director commented at the time that the
Afghan relics targeted by the Taliban were
"not theirs to condemn and destroy" in
an attempt "to eradicate the very identity of
a people and a major chapter in the history of
mankind." Relics, symbols, design,
architecture, music and art are the strands of
culture that bind people together and define
societies. By giving us a glimpse of our roots,
antiquities project us into our future. That means
greater, not lesser Virginia preservation efforts over time.
--
April
21, 2003
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