Saturday University: Lost at Sea

A fierce three-headed serpent and a mysterious female deity were among the nearly two dozen 12th-century stone reliefs from Central Vietnam that lay unseen at the bottom of the Arabian Sea for nearly 120 years. Almost 5,000 miles away in the South China Sea, blue-and-white ceramic bowls, plates, and jars rested in the hold of a sunken ship off the coast of Vietnam for more than five centuries. Preserved like time capsules under the sea, these shipwrecks contained artworks that were excavated in the 1990s by marine archaeologists, sold at auction, purchased by individual collectors, and then donated to the Asian Art Museum.

By tracing the pathways of these objects, from Vietnam to the ocean floor to San Francisco, Dr. Natasha Reichle, Associate Curator of Southeast Asian Art at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, asks questions about how artworks enter museum collections. What does the provenance of an object reveal? What can art salvaged from the sea tell us about trade and the colonial enterprise? Who is entitled to centuries-old artworks recovered from shipwrecks? Should they even be excavated, or should vessels and their contents be left in situ for future generations?