Displaying items by tag: object

From a human perspective, there’s no such thing as an objective object. Anything that comes to a person’s attention — a rock, a tree, a dog, a painting, another person — will evoke ideas, feelings, memories and fantasies. Every object tells a story.

Depending on where you live, some objects speak more resonantly than others. If New York City is or ever was your home, you’ll find numerous such eloquent items in “A Brief History of New York: Selections from ‘A History of New York in 101 Objects,’ ” a small jewel box of an exhibition at the New-York Historical Society.

French lawyer Pierre Servan-Schreiber may have been unable to stop the sale of artifacts belonging to Arizona’s Hopi tribe, but he did gift one object back to the indigenous group. Servan-Schreiber worked pro bono to halt an auction of 70 Hopi masks at Paris’ Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou auction house but was ultimately unsuccessful. The auction garnered $1.2 million despite the legal feud and opposition from people such as Robert Redford.

Amidst allegations of misconduct, the French auction house maintained that the artifacts had been acquired legally from a French collector. However, the Hopis asserted that the masks were ritual and spiritual objects, not meant for selling as art objects.

Servan-Schreiber bought an object known as a “Katsinam” for $9,000. He told the New York Times that, “It is my way of telling the Hopi that we only lost a battle and not the war.” Relatives of the French singer Jules Dassin also acquired a Katsinam at the auction and plan to return it to the Hopis later this year.