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Article: One culture's junk is another one's treasure.
- Article from:
- Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL)
- Article date:
- December 30, 2004
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Chicago Tribune. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Michael Kilian
NEW YORK_In many parts of America, it was tradition for farmers who plowed up hard objects in their fields to pile the objects on the boundaries as stone walls.
Over the last 20 to 25 years, farmers in China have established a quite different tradition. They'd take the objects they plowed up, put them in FedEx boxes and ship them to art galleries in New York.
"That has been a desperately serious problem since 1980," said James C.Y. Watt, chairman of the Asian art department at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. "From 1980 to 2000, there was a torrent of stuff coming out of China. Farmers can hardly plow a field ...