College in China Loses Face Over Statues Depicting Donors as Goddesses

By Mary Hennock

The hometown of China's terra-cotta army boasts two new statues that are rapidly becoming famous, to the chagrin of the college that commissioned them.

They depict Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom, and Nuwa, a Chinese mother goddess, guarding the library of Modern College, an affiliate of Northwest University in Xi'an.

It turns out that helmeted Athena's homely features belong to Ms. Guo, a major donor who is the college board's chairwoman (and who, like many Chinese officials, was identified in news accounts only by her surname). Nuwa portrays Ms. Liu, another donor and board member. The statues have attracted ridicule from China's army of bloggers and tweeters, who hoot that they are proof of corruption, servility to donors, and disregard for academic standards.

Modern College has given no information about the two women's donations or the origin of their funds. Calls to the college went unanswered.

The Xinhua news agency reported that Athena's plinth was erected as "lasting commemoration of [Ms. Guo's] major contribution to acquiring land to build the university." Land sales are controlled by the Chinese government, so political connections remain a vital part of doing business.

"This is going too far away from the spirit of a university," said one microblogger, Cui Lifeng, on the Twitter-style?site Sina Weibo.

"Are the professors crazy?" asked another commenter. "It seems flattering their sponsor has outweighed common sense."

Modern College is an easy target in part because it is a third-level institution called a san ben xue yuan, a university affiliate that admits students with lower scores for higher fees. For instance, it charges liberal-arts majors $1,580 a year, whereas its parent university's fees are $611 for the same major.

Mr. Cao, director of the college's Cultural Office, was bullish at first: "Has anyone seen Nuwa or Athena personally?" the official China Daily newspaper quoted him as saying. "It is totally art."

Since then, the college has issued a statement saying officials there were "surprised" and "deeply regretful" about the controversy. They insist that there has been no "money worship" and that education donors' public-spiritedness deserves praise.

More peevishly, the statement explains artistic license to the uninitiated: "Saying where the face of a nymph comes from is not equal to saying that person is a nymph herself."

The 10-point rebuttal has helpful photos to prove that borrowing faces has an long, honorable lineage, including Raphael's portrayal in a Vatican fresco of his hero Leonardo da Vinci as Plato. "Plato was a real person with mustache in many sculptures. Da Vinci had a beard, so the historical image was completely changed, but no one criticized Raphael; they thought he made a masterpiece. Some people do not understand artistic creation," the statement says.

Nonetheless, the plaques on the base of the statues describing Athena, the college's "guardian spirit"?and by implication Ms. Guo?have been removed, according to Xinhua.

Source: http://feeds.chronicle.com/~r/chronicle/news/~3/zArpTugoYXk/

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