Oscar Holland,
Auction house cancels controversial rhino horn sale
CNN 23rd November 2018:
International auction house Bonhams has canceled an upcoming sale of rhino products amid mounting pressure from environmental groups, it was announced Friday.
The auction, which was due to take place in Hong Kong next week, would have featured more than 20 antiques carved from rhino horn, including a vase, a hairpin, a pouring vessel and a variety of drinking cups.
[...] An online catalog for the sale, which had been titled "Exceptional Chinese Rhinoceros Horn Carvings from the Angela Chua Collection," has been removed from the auction house's website.
Girling also announced that Bonhams would join the likes of Christie's in barring rhino horn items from its auctions. [...] Conservationists, including Humane Society International, are now mounting pressure on auction house Sotheby's to withdraw rhino horn items from one of its upcoming sales.
Angela Chua was not contacted for comment. But the catalogue, and the collector's justification for putting together the objects in the first place are
available online here. You can see and criticise how the collecting history of these objects is presented, and how the objects themselves are narrativised.
1 comment:
Poor rhinos. I find photos of dead rhinos so upsetting, I cannot look. How could this woman even hav e such things in her house? Beggars belief, doesn't it?
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