Speaker Profile | Combating Cultural Racketeering and Increasing Responsible Cultural Exchange

Date:2022-05-15

The Second Dialogue of the China-Europe-America Museums Cooperation Initiative: Protection of Our Cultural Heritage will be launched on May 19. The second session of the dialogue will focus on “Combating Cultural Racketeering and Increasing Responsible Cultural Exchange”. Leading figures in the arts, civil society, and government will discuss how museums can find opportunities in the challenges posed by the illicit antiquities trade, using their platforms to educate the public, build bridges between cultures, and right past wrongs.

 

The event will be held on Zoom at 15:00 on May 19 (Beijing Time). Audience should register in advance via the link below.

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LuKzCPuzRHOmBLdpt0Dg8A


Speaker Profile


Alex Fan

Alex Fan is an art Collector and expert on art history. Since 2009, Alex and Vivian Jia have been devoted to protecting and collecting art treasures around the world, including important historical jewelries, European court treasures, Himalayan art, Dunhuang posthumous papers and historical manuscripts. In 2018, Alex and Vivian curated an exhibition themed “Yinian: Dunhuang Xie Jing” at the Guanshanyue Art Museum of Shenzhen. It displayed 4 long scrolls of Xie Jing from Tang Dynasty that were discovered in the Dunhuang Library Cave. From 2019 to 2020, their exhibition Awaken: Royal Jewellery Arts from Renaissance to the 20th Century was on display in Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning. The exhibition features 160 pieces of historical jewelry and royal treasures from over 20 countries and regions spanning 400 years, including the gold leaf from Napoléon’s crown and the collections from the French Bourbon Dynasty.


Tess Davis

Tess Davis, a lawyer and archaeologist by training, is Executive Director of the Antiquities Coalition. She oversees the organization’s work to fight cultural racketeering and also manages the day-to-day operations of the institute’s staff in Washington, DC, as well as programs overseas. Since 2013, Davis has been affiliated with the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, at the University of Glasgow. She came to Scotland from the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation where she was Executive Director until 2012. Davis has been a legal consultant for the Cambodian and US governments and works with both the art world and law enforcement to keep looted antiquities off the market. She writes and speaks widely on these issues. After graduating magna cum laude from Boston University with a Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology, Davis earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Georgia School of Law. She now serves on the Board of Directors at the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and the Advisory Boards of Heritage Watch and the Ocean Foundation. She is admitted to the New York State Bar. In 2015, the Royal Government of Cambodia knighted Davis for her work to recover the country’s plundered treasures, awarding her the rank of Commander in the Royal Order of the Sahametrei.


Maxwell L. Anderson

Maxwell L. Anderson, former president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, served for seven years as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, followed by almost thirty years as the director of five art museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Dallas Museum of Art. His efforts to deter museums from acquiring unprovenanced antiquities dates back some 35 years; in 1987 as director of the Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta (1987-1995), he inaugurated a series of loan projects displaying unpublished antiquities from the storerooms of some of the world’s leading museums in London, Paris, Rome, Mexico City, and elsewhere, advocating alternatives to buying objects from the illicit trade. Anderson is a Distinguished Consulting Scholar in the Office of the Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He is the author of dozens of articles and books, including Antiquities: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press 2016), and was knighted by both the Italian and French Republics.


Vernon Rapley

Vernon Rapley is the Director of Cultural Heritage Protection and Security of Victoria and Albert Museum, taking charge of security and visitor services. Before turning to art, Rapley investigated major crime cases at the Metropolitan Police. He really got to know the V&A in 2004, when there was a spate of thefts at major London museums. Supported by the V&A, the Yard set up the London Museum Security Group. Rapley took a turn as guest curator earlier in 2010, when he organised a Scotland Yard-curated display at the museum on fakes and forgeries.


Chhay Visoth

Chhay Visoth graduated from the Faculty of Archaeology in 2012 and he graduated his Master in Education from Pannasastra University, Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 2017. He worked for APSARA Authority in Siem Reap for 5 years before he moved to work at the National Museum of Cambodia (NMC) for another 5 years. After earning experience in the education and administration section at the NMC, he was appointed to be the Director of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts in early 2014. At the beginning of 2020, he was promoted to be the Director of the Department of Museums and the National Museum of Cambodia.  


Marco Biscione

Trained as an anthropologist (University of Rome, London School of Economics), he was curator at the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico in Rome (1983-2002). He moved to Brussels as seconded national expert in Culture at the European Commission -DG Education and Culture (2002-2006) and later on at the Council of Europe - Direction for Culture and Cultural Heritage (2009-2010). Director of the Civic Museums of Udine (2010-2014), Director of the Museum of Oriental Art in Turin (2015-2018), he was appointed as first Director of the new M9- Museum of the XX century in Venice (2018-2020) the first great multimedia museum in Italy. He was also member of the board of judges for the European Museum of the Year Award.


微信图片_20220515150748.png

Click on the picture to watch the video of Tess Davis and Chhay Visoth


This event is co-organized by the China-Europe-America Global Initiative, the Academy of Contemporary China and World Studies, and the Antiquities Coalition, with strategic partners including Yi Tsai and East Langkun, and media partner Tencent Video.

WeChat

Copyright ©2022 China-Europe-America Global Initiative  All Rights Reserved.