Wednesday, September 1, 2010

20100901.0827

This article brings up an interesting issue of ownership of a major artwork. Aside from the value of it being one of the recognized major works (I'll leave discussing what counts as "major" for another time), it does bear in on questions of plagiarism which I have discussed before. Since a new semester is starting soon, I'll likely be forced to deal with the issue again. Also, concerns of cultural management pop up.

To summarize from the article, David, lodged in Florence's Accademia Gallery, was held to belong specifically to Florence. Recently, however, Italian federal officials have claimed that the statue is the property of Italy generally and not of one of its cities, specifically. Others are making counter-claims, citing economic issues that the federal government dismisses. The issue of ownership, however, seems less important in popular imagination than the issue of access.

That last, that ownership is less important than access, seems to be a prevailing attitude among students I have had. There seems to be at work the ease of access is inversely proportional to the force of ownership, so that the easier it is to find something, the less important it is that someone actually has ownership of that thing. And while it is true that theft of ideas is not the same as theft of physical property (since taking an idea does not remove it from the place of its original holding, as physical theft does), the idea that ease of access equals diminished ownership means that idea-theft is increasingly not seen as theft by students, but is simply the use of a resource that is open to all.

I do not have any problem with using available public resources. Lord knows that I use them enough, myself. But I try to be responsible in that use, as do many people. A number of students, however, fail to see that use needs to be responsible. And it is not just in their papers that this is so; look at the subways and sidewalks in New York City, see the people cast their waste (not all of it discarded packaging) about themselves, and tell me that they are responsible. Hell, even in "Don't Mess with" Texas, litter lines the sides of the roads and highways.

Anyway.

As far as cultural management goes, Povoledo notes that resistance to new policies intended to increase access to cultural and historical fixtures "has been very vocal, both from within ministry ranks, as well as from members of the cultural intelligentsia who fear over-commercialization." This seems to me to be very much in keeping with ideas reported by Levine in Highbrow/lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (with thanks to Professor Jennifer Vaught for pointing out the source to me). In the text, Levine remarks that there was a major disjunction in the perception by the people of the United States as to what constituted "high" culture and who should have access to it. Efforts--largely successful, as it happens--were made to restrict access to such things as Shakespeare and Mozart to the upper socioeconomic strata; after the more-or-less solid appropriation of them, attempts to democratize access (largely through "we need to educate the masses" ideas) met with resistance as potentially destructive to the "real" cultural importance of things.

I am not convinced of that truth. For if it is the cast that the vast majority will not "get the point" (which is itself doubtful), assuming that a given percentage of the population at large will "understand" what is going on, allowing more people access will increase the number of those who are able to "get it."

I just hope that they think to credit their sources.

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