On Friday, 5 October, the SOAS Southeast Asian Art Academic Programme (SAAAP) published the September edition of its Newsletter. There are interesting pieces by students, alumni, and staff members describing some very exciting past work and future plans. It is unfortunate that this Newsletter is marred by two articles that reflect the kind of regressive thinking that have led to scandal after scandal at the Alphawood Foundation-funded Programme. Both articles are written by Dr. Peter Sharrock.
Dr. Sharrock is SAAAP’s Communications and Outreach Manager, its official representative to Southeast Asia’s governments, universities, museums, and heritage bodies. He is a member of the Alphawood Scholarships Committee and Co-editor of the Newsletter. His writings should thus be taken as official representations of the Programme.
(1) On page 9 of the Newsletter, Dr. Sharrock describes his understanding of speeches over the summer by former directors of Singapore museums on the history of Singapore’s museums. Dr. Sharrock writes:
“This new focus on identity was to lead to Kenson Kwok founding the Peranakan Museum, celebrating the lives, arts and tastes of the ‘hybrid’ culture of the local born Chinese community speaking a creolised Malay inlaid with Hokkien words. This sparked a ‘Me too’ movement as people across the island, including the Prime Minister, identified themselves as being Peranakan.”
Thus the article likens Singaporeans taking pride in their heritage to sexual assault victims joining the #MeToo movement. A question for SAAAP, SOAS and the Alphawood Foundation: Do you think this is appropriate?
(2) On page 17 of the Newsletter is Dr. Sharrock’s review of the catalogue to “Angkor: Exploring Cambodia’s Ancient City,” an exhibition held at the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) from April to July 2018. His review begins,
“Singapore’s ACM countered the decolonising tide this year and staged a lavish exhibition of more than 100 artworks loaned by the Musée Guimet, Paris. It records and celebrates the way France fell in love with the art and architecture its archaeologists began discovering in the forests of Cambodia in the late 19thcentury.”
He goes on to present the catalogue as depicting French colonial engagement with Cambodia in glowing, romanticised terms. He notes the influence on European audiences of Louis Delaporte’s “splendid” 19th-century sketches, which include “scenes of statues being carried down rivers on rafts on their way to Parisian collections.” He closes his review with a put-down of the ACM, remarking that although the catalogue’s Foreword states that “the ACM’s mission is to explore encounters and connections between East and West from an Asian perspective,” in Dr. Sharrock’s view, “the perspective in this event is decidedly European.”
Dr. Sharrock’s review presents an utterly distorted picture of the ACM catalogue. The review is an affront to SOAS’s Southeast Asian counterparts in Singapore who have intelligently put together a fascinating critical view of the colonial relation to ancient Southeast Asian art.
It should also be noted that the Decolonising movement is not about erasing colonial history: quite the opposite, it is critical inquiry into how colonialism has shaped conceptions and frameworks that have affected the understanding of and approach to many subjects of knowledge, such as Angkorian sculpture.
Dr. Sharrock’s review is another expression of his colonialist approach to Southeast Asia. That he highlighted the sketch of the removal of Cambodian cultural heritage to France is a reminder that earlier this year, Dr. Sharrock encouraged and facilitated SOAS’s acceptance of an unprovenanced — and thus potentially looted and/or trafficked – Thai antiquity as a gift from Dr. Sharrock’s friend, for whom SOAS then arranged a US tax deduction. Dr. Sharrock has also previously ignored the rights of Southeast Asian students by rigging the awarding process for the Alphawood Scholarships and deployed a colonialist view of Southeast Asian art to launch spurious attacks on the work of academic colleagues at SOAS. Despite all this, Dr. Sharrock retains platforms on the Alphawood Programme and the teaching staff of the Department of the History of Art and Archaeology. This is no doubt related to Dr. Sharrock’s friendship with Mr. Fred Eychaner, whose fortune funds the Alphawood Foundation, SOAS’s largest donor.
