Synthèse, Art Restitution, notion places and forms of power

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a great many things.. and therefore become dangerous for them and their political system. Yet, some people decided groups together against the massacre. They were called Monument Men. The book written by Robert M.Edsel, explain the story of men and women from thirteen different nations who fought together to save as much of the culture of europe as they could during combat. The author shows in his book the real political power of art and the nazis’s censorship policy applied against that.

II/ CULTURAL POWER

Art restitution has also an important cultural power, it represents the past, the present and the futur of the world history. People used art to understand what happened in the past… Futhermore, works of art are used in education. With art thes is no return and that’s why it’s possible to move, show, share.. some works of art. This is what Mr. Oldman did.

In the video « The oldman collection : Maori art in London » we can learn that Mr. Oldman has always been passionate about travelling and for pacific art. He collected antifacts for 50 years and decided to share his passion in an exhibition in London.

The Oldman collection had a huge success and it shows that art has an important cultural power beacause for exemple thanks to tis man, thoursands of people had the ooportunity to discover an culture from other territory and thus discover a small part of the world.

But Art also created some cultural conflicts because of colonization for exemple. Ghanaian artefacts are one of the most popular art restitution conflict. In 1874, the british conquered Ghana and stole many artefacts. Yet, today Ghanaians can’t have it back because of a vicious circle in the british law and it generate a big conflict between those two colonies. Europeans consider that they belong to humanity, and not just to Ghanaians, on the contrary, Ghanaians want to have it back because it’s a part a their culture.

III/ ECONOMICAL POWER

Art restitution represents a big economical power all around the world. Whereas many works of art are exchanging all around the world, and there is also clandestine trafic called the black market. It brings a lot of money and because of these trafic, there are many stolen works of art.

This black market is a real problem for museums and the report from CBS Sunday Morning entitled « When half a billion dollars’ worth of art vanished » explain it. The video tells how and why this museum in boston was robbed of several millions dollars of works of art.

However, except the black market, art restitution is a big part of world economy. People from all the world travelled and paied in order to go to famous museums and learn about other culture.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, we can say that art restitution is used as a counter power today because it covers all the fundamental aspects that make up our life on Earth, the politic, the culture ans the economy. So art restitution is a huge part of our civilisation and has a enormous power on the wolrd.