Art students ponder ravaging of treasures

What are my art students to think now? We have looked with reverence at ancient images created some 3,000 years ago in Mesopotamia: images such as the “Sumerian Golden Harp” with its intricate playful lapis lazuli inlay work and joyful, exuberant design; have marveled at the delicate gold and lapis “Billy Goat in a Forest.” The students were enthralled by “The Standard of Ur,” an intricate lapis inlay with limestone and shells depicting a victorious army of soldiers, their commanders and their vanquished in an ongoing visual record of an ancient battle, complete with careful detail in uniforms and armor. We wondered how and why peoples 3,000 years ago created such artworks, trying to find the common thread that unites humanity in its creative efforts.

On our annual Boston trip to visit the Museum of Fine Arts, they experience the care and expense lavished on ancient art treasures from around the world, carefully housed and protected, guarded from eager fingers wanting to explore the ancient worked surfaces. Throughout the firsthand evocative but concrete experience they gain greater understanding of all peoples.

Now my students, as well as the rest of the world has, have witnessed the mindless, rapacious plundering of some of mankind’s most priceless artistic and historical treasures from their home in the National Museum of Iraq.

The lack of foresight by our government to ensure the protection of the priceless records of humanity’s history stored in the National Museum of Iraq caused outrage and foreboding through the world, and confusion in students of art history in the art room of a little school in Maine. The plundering and pillaging is a wound inflicted on all.

My young students will very soon be empowered adults. They have sustained a wound of doubt and uncertainty as to what is really important to those who hold power in our current society. The founding fathers of this country reached back thousands of years to Greece, another “old” country, for the prototype of democracy that is the foundation for our own form of government, expressed in our precious Constitution.

If we disregard the history of human endeavor and creativity discovered through art and inventions and, as some in power would, brush off their destruction as “necessary untidiness” of war, we dishonor the intent of our country’s fathers to clearly articulate reverence for the creative power of each individual. That creativity is the shimmering thread that ties the artists and artisans on the banks of the Tigris 3,000 B.C., to the Greek artists and statesmen of 300 B.C., to the founders and architects of our country and, finally, to the busy students in the art room of an elementary school on the coast of Maine in the year 2003 A.D.

My students now wait for news, and will applaud the recovery and restoration of the world’s ancient treasures to the National Museum of Iraq.

Margret Baldwin teaches art at the Blue Hill Consolidated School.