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The Belitung Shipwreck Symposium

Prior to the presentation of “Secrets of the Sea: A Tang Shipwreck and Early Trade in Asia” at The Asia Society, in New York, from March 7–June 4, 2017, The New York Center for Global Asiais working with the Institute of Fine Arts, with support from the NYU Center for the Humanities and The Asia Society, to organize a symposium, on 4 March, 2017. The symposium will focus on the ninth-century context of the Belitung shipwreck in the Java Sea, Southeast Asia, and more broadly on Indian Ocean trade, on the ship’s 1998 excavation, and on controversies that prevented its contents from being displayed at the Freer | Sackler Galleries, the Smithsonian’s Museums of Asian Art, in 2011.

We call the symposium, “The Belitung Shipwreck: History, Archaeology and Capitalism,” because controversies arose from the excavation of the shipwreck by a private company, which sparked politically effective objections by American archaeologists to US government sponsorship at the Sackler exhibit. Belitung Chinese porcelains and metalwork have since been on display at the Singapore Museum of Asian Civilizations.

Ref: http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/SW-CulturalHeritage/excavation.asp
and http://traffickingculture.org/encyclopedia/case-studies/biletung-shipwreck/

 March 4, 2017 

Time: 9 – 5 pm

Location: NYU

Global Asia Program