Endangered Art right here in Philadelphia

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Endangered Art right here in Philadelphia

10 Sep 2015

Endangered Art right here in Philadelphia

by AFisher

A story I've been following here in Philadelphia concerns African contemporary art, artistic freedom and first amendment (maybe even second amendment) rights. As reported on Newsworks, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Daily Mail (UK) among other places, US Customs in Philadelphia has seized a sculpture entitled "War Throne" by the world-renowned Mozambican artist Goncalo Mabunda. They turned the work - which is constructed entirely of pieces of decommissioned weapons from Mozambique's seventeen year civil war - over to the ATF. The ATF ruled that it was an unlawfully imported weapon and has ordered it be destroyed. The collector who imported the work has filed suit to have the work released.

Mr. Mabunda's work comes out of a movement of artists in Mozambique, first organized by the Christian Council of Mozambique, which was written about in the New York Times back in 1999. As of then the Christian Council had collected 72,000 weapons from former combatants of the bitter civil war and asked the artists to make them into art, as a way to help Mozambicans come to terms with the years of violence and to show the world the progress since the war's end.

''We don't want to forget about the war,'' ... ''People have to remember what it was and see how it can be transformed, to give people hope and to confirm the new phase of peace and rebuilding.'

Mr. Mabunda's sculptures have been exhibited (without apparent issue) in galleries and museums all over the world, including the De Young Museum in San Francisco, the Museum of Art and Design (NY) and the Brooklyn Museum, where a work is currently on display. Mabunda's work was recently featured at the Venice Biennale.

In the last few years I have felt helpless as the world watched the Taliban blow up the great buddhas of Bamiyan, al Queda destroy the shrines and manuscripts of Timbuktu, and right now, ISIS destroying countless treasures of Palmyra and other sites of world heritage in Syria and Iraq. It is certainly not on the same scale, but it is very sad if we stand and watch our own government needlessly and ignorantly destroying artworks right here in "the cradle of our democracy".