Frozen in Plastic
Museums are often filled with stiff oil paintings of wealthy white folks in their finest clothing or angelic statues of plump naked goddesses. After listening to Sharon Waxman talk about her new book “Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World” on an NPR piece, I started to contemplate the concept of art museums. Waxman’s book looks into the world of stolen art and where the art belongs. She brings up questions such as, “Should a stolen artifact from an Egyptian tomb, which now resides in the Louvre, be returned to Egypt?”
At the end of our walk through the Musee d’Orsay I came upon this sculpture covered in plastic. There were renovations going on, so I assume this plastic was helping to protect the work. I was blown away by how beautiful the plastic was over the piece. There was something about the way the covering added another layer to the stillness to the carved scene, as if it were a block of ice freezing the woman reaching for the standing man.