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An exhibit about the wealthy Jewish Sassoon family is on view at The Jewish Museum in New York City through Aug. 13, 2023. Photo-illustration by Attributed to William Melville. Portrait of David Sassoon. Oil on canvas; 41 \u00bd \u00d7 33 in. (105.4 \u00d7 83.8 cm). Private Collection\/The Jewish Museum; Installation view of the Sassoons at the Jewish Museum, Kris Graves<\/p><\/div>\n
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An exhibit about the wealthy Jewish Sassoon family is on view at The Jewish Museum in New York City through Aug. 13, 2023.\u00a0<\/span>Photo-illustration by Attributed to William Melville. Portrait of David Sassoon. Oil on canvas; 41 \u00bd \u00d7 33 in. (105.4 \u00d7 83.8 cm). Private Collection\/The Jewish Museum; Installation view of the Sassoons at the Jewish Museum, Kris Graves<\/p>\n<\/div>\n By\u00a0Elizabeth M. Lynch About six miles south of The Jewish Museum in New York, where\u00a0an exhibit on the Jewish British merchant family, the Sassoons<\/a>, is on view until Aug. 13, lies Chinatown\u2019s Chatham Square. In the center of the square is a bronze statue of Qing Dynasty official Lin Zexu. The words \u201cPioneer in the War Against Drugs\u201d are carved into the red granite pedestal upon which he proudly stands, in recognition of his efforts to rid China of opium in the mid-1800s.<\/p>\n By the time Lin became a government official in the 1830s, an\u00a0estimated 10% of the Chinese population<\/a>\u00a0was addicted to opium (compare that to\u00a03.8% of the U.S. population<\/a>\u00a0that abuse opioids today, which we consider an epidemic).<\/p>\n The Sassoon family dominated the opium trade in China, and the exhibit honoring them displays numerous treasures and artifacts they were able to collect, thanks to their opium-fueled wealth. In an age where the Sackler family\u2019s name is being\u00a0removed from museum buildings<\/a>\u00a0because of its ties to the U.S. opioid epidemic, it is no longer appropriate to celebrate artifacts like the ones the Sassoons were able to collect because they profited from China\u2019s addiction without the full context.<\/p>\n The Jewish Museum does not hide the fact that much of the Sassoon family\u2019s wealth derived from opium, but it does not reckon with its consequences either.<\/p>\n The exhibit has a full-wall text that details the fact that opium was illegal in China. The importation of opium was illegal under Chinese law \u2014 with edicts issued in 1796, 1813, 1814 and 1839 \u2014 but British merchants defied the law and smuggled it in.<\/p>\n \u201cFor more than 60 years the sale of this drug was to form the principal source of revenue for the British Indian Empire in its relations with China,\u201d wrote historian\u00a0Jacques Gernet<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0A History of Chinese Civilization<\/i>.<\/p>\n This brief history is inadequate in capturing the full harm of what opium did to China. In addition to ruining individuals and families, opium led to inordinate amounts of corruption as well as a massive trade imbalance, exacerbating China\u2019s already weakened economy. The Opium Wars and the resultant unequal treaties brought China to its knees.<\/p>\n In 1839, the Qing emperor sent Lin Zexu to the city of Canton (today, Guangzhou) to enforce the law. Lin immediately seized and destroyed 20,000 cases of British opium and ordered the responsible British merchants to leave Canton. The British government retaliated, sending in troops to attack various ports in what would become known as the First Opium War.<\/p>\n As soon as the British sent in their formidable navy, the Chinese had no other option than to surrender and sign the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. Under the treaty, the Chinese government had to pay 21 million silver dollars to the British, open various ports to opium trade, and allow for British \u201cconcessions\u201d with extra-territoriality, meaning British law, not Chinese law, would govern the people of those areas. Before and after the treaty, British merchants like the Sassoons profited from the Chinese people\u2019s opium addiction.<\/p>\n While The Jewish Museum effectively humanizes the Sassoons, the victims of their wealth \u2014 the Chinese \u2014 are not given the same courtesy. The museum could have featured passages from diaries written by Chinese people fighting against the opium trade, or video interviews with Chinese historians discussing opium\u2019s impact. Lin Zexu himself kept a diary, and his 1839 letter to Queen Victoria, pointing out the immorality of the opium trade and asking her to stop it, is easily\u00a0accessible on Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even noting the price of some of the Sassoons\u2019 artifacts in terms of cases of opium and how many people\u2019s addictions that would have fed could have been a reminder throughout the exhibition \u2014 not just on one wall \u2014 of the Sassoons\u2019 true impact on China.<\/p>\n Increasingly, museums are choosing not to separate artists from their art, or collectors from their artifacts. Take for example, the current debate surrounding Pablo Picasso. The fact that Picasso was an abusive misogynist has long been ignored by curators; instead the focus has been solely on his \u201cgenius.\u201d While Picasso\u2019s artistic brilliance should be highlighted, artist and art critic Shannon Lee wrote in\u00a0The Picasso Problem: Why We Shouldn\u2019t Separate the Art From the Artist\u2019s Misogyny<\/i><\/a>\u00a0that \u201can artist\u2019s flaws ought to provide us with potential opportunities to revisit and re-contextualize their work.\u201d With each exhibit of an artist with a flawed or controversial history, curators and museum goers should be asking themselves who, if anyone, are this particular artist\u2019s victims, and whether or not they have a voice in the exhibit.<\/p>\n The Brooklyn Museum, in its current exhibit\u00a0It\u2019s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby<\/em><\/a>, is daring to do just that. Co-curated by comedian Hannah Gadsby, who became famous because of\u00a0her riff<\/a>\u00a0on Picasso\u2019s treatment of women, the show not only contextualizes Picasso\u2019s achievements, it also\u00a0showcases feminist artists<\/a>\u00a0who, in their works, play upon Picasso\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n For the Chinese people today and their diaspora, what happened in the 19th century is not an artifact of the past that should be glossed over as it was in\u00a0The Sassoons<\/i>. The Jewish Museum has\u00a0a proud legacy<\/a>\u00a0of pushing the art world forward but, by failing to fully revisit and re-contextualize opium\u2019s toll, it missed an opportunity to serve as a vanguard on how precisely museums should address the horrors of a collectors\u2019 wealth.<\/p>\n
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