tehmina.org

Recently, photographs of mine were used for ambiguous commercial purposes without permission. They were used for a university prospectus. With universities transforming more and more into Big corporations, I am on the one hand cynical about the indiscriminate use of pretty pictures to sell university degrees as commodities, especially when the images in question bear little direct relation to what is being offered. On the other hand, I live in hope that at some point soon universities with their student body will grow out of its contractor-client relationship and return to something that resembles the shared experiencial aquisition of wisdom from student and scholar alike, with the university authorities acting more like an alma mater than Chief Executive. And so images like mine, that were made for research - to understand more about the thing that was photographed - will become symbolic of the university’s desire to attract keen scholars to the institution. But I digress.

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It’s time to get less precious about making promouncements and devolve to comment and observation. For many years now, I have enjoyed reading the heritage news website Global Museum. It is the only vaguely representative news website for museum, archaeological and other heritage-related stories, serious, funny, weird and fascinating that I know of. In today’s edition for example, I read about the ban on the potential sale of a portrait of the late Chinese president Mao Zedong despite the Chinese government decaring it officially ‘30% wrong’. In the same edition, a story about the Natural History Museum introducing teleworking technology to enable emplyees to work remotely. How enlightened. You’ll enjoy this if you get bored of the doom and sensation that is permeating even the most serious news broadcasts on radio and TV these days.