There was a story today about the decay of Imelda Marcos' shoes and clothing in the National Museum in Manila.
So much of this interests me:
I remember Imelda Marcos as beautiful and her husband's dictatorship in the Philippines as cruel and corrupt. I remember the shopping trips of the 1980s as she came to America and bought her way across Manhattan. I remember the People Power Revolution of Corazon Aquino. And of course, I find her worming her way back into politics in 2010 House elections incomprehensible.
The culture of shoes is one that I stand (hee hee) on the outside of. Part of me is the sturdy practical shoes that don't hurt my feet; part of me wishes Birkenstocks came with sparkly bows. I cannot comprehend the fashion because I get stuck on how much my feet would hurt and how clumsy I would be. I love that there is such a focus on footwear though as an aspect of our cultural and personal expression.
The issues of collection (not acquisition) are also interesting to me. On the things abandoned: "Also listed were 508 floor- length gowns, 888 handbags and 71 pairs of sunglasses. The final tally on Imelda's shoes was 1,060 pairs, less than the 3,000 originally reported." (1987; You can't read more unless you're a Time subscriber.) Putting much of the collection on display was politically important for Aquino and they were taken down when Aquino stepped down in 1992, symbolic of moving on from the immediate politics of rescue. The museum still has 765 pairs that are on display, part of maintaining that history of the Philippines dictatorship for national memory. But the bulk of the collection was moved in 2010 when the Manila's National Museum had problems with termites, humidity and mold in the palace where they were kept. Facilities are a major issue for museums: how much can you keep on display? how much can you afford to store? how much does it cost in terms of labor, effort, and time to move from storage to display to storage? When museums take on objects that they cannot support in their facilities (storing or displaying them off site) the issues are multiplied: what does security look like? transport? daily care?
The issues of conservation are fascinating. Shoes aren't necessarily made of leather any more. Plastics and polyurethanes have really different problems as they begin to degrade: they discolor, crack and break as they lose flexibility, even turning completely to powder. (See the Getty site for a good overview). Barbie dolls (and shoes sometimes) use PVC (polyvinyl chloride) and this becomes sticky over time, attracting oil and dirt in a way that can be stabilized but not reversed. Some mold can be removed; some can't. The water damage here was extensive. So it leads to questions of "what do you save? what do you toss?"
How do you balance historical value against collection and conservation issues? How do you sell history? (could/should the Philippine government legally have sold anything they weren't displaying? would opinion have allowed it? would the pittance they would have made have offset the expenses of preparing them for sale and shipping etc.? would it not have been unethical to sell collections for any other reason than for buying new collections?)
Just some thoughts.
Fascinating thoughts. Some general thinking-out-loud (though it may be naive, as I haven't thought or read about most of this stuff before):
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised and intrigued by the idea that they put a lot of the collection on display, rather than just some of it. My first reaction was that if she had 1,060 pairs of shoes, you probably don't need to display (or even keep) more than a hundred of those to convey the impression of Lots Of Shoes. So it makes me wonder about what has historical and/or artistic value; in a really big collection, is everything worth keeping? If not, then how big does a collection have to be before you start pruning? And, as you discussed, what do you do with the stuff that you prune?
As for selling stuff, I would have assumed that they would auction it off; seems like the auction system has mechanisms for preparing for sale and shipping and such. And I would have thought that the value would go up because of the provenance (if I'm using that word right)--that is, that a pair of Imelda Marcos's shoes would be worth a lot more than the same shoes before she owned them. But then again, it wouldn't have occurred to me that selling the stuff might not be legal and/or might not be in accordance with popular opinion; good points.
I guess embedded in my previous paragraph I've got an implicit paradigm that stuff owned by the family of the former dictator is an asset of the state, to be disposed of however it likes, including for fundraising purposes; which paradigm is at odds with the paradigm that stuff owned by the family of the former dictator is a historical museum collection with important cultural value, and thus possibly (as you noted) unethical to sell. Interesting.
I gather that there was a legal issue in that these were "personal" items, as separate from the bank accounts. I don't really understand why bank accounts can be seized but there's a different ruling on mink, etc. Abandoned property issues; don't really know the details.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think the auction thing could work if you don't flood the market with objects. And of course, I don't know what provenance adds to a pair of used shoes. The market is whatever some schmuck will pay...