Recently, SOAS announced that on 4 November, it will begin taking applications for the 2017-’18 Alphawood Scholarships. I sent a letter to the Chair of the Board of the Alphawood programme to outline concerns and raise several questions of interest to potential applicants to the Alphawood Scholarships. The text of the letter is below. (PDF version is here.)
24 October 2016
Dr. Tamsyn Barton, Chair, Project Board, Southeast Asian Art Academic Programme, SOAS, University of London
Dear Dr. Barton
SOAS recently announced that beginning 4 November, applications will be taken for the 2017-’18 Alphawood Scholarships. These scholarships, thanks to the generosity of the Alphawood Foundation, provide one of a very few sources of funding for Southeast Asian students seeking to study in the UK. It is therefore highly concerning that SOAS has, so far, failed to both account for the abuses of the past in this programme and to prevent their recurrence against future applicants.
The Alphawood Foundation’s £15 million gift was intended “to advance the study and preservation of Buddhist and Hindu art in Southeast Asia,” as SOAS announced when it received the donation in November 2013. During the subsequent two years, the Alphawood Scholarship programme invited Southeast Asian students to apply for scholarships to study Southeast Asian art, with no restriction on historic period. In late 2015, however, senior officials at SOAS apparently decided to limit the programme to art “in antiquity.” This was an unexpected and sudden decision. No public announcement was made at the time.
Nonetheless, those managing the Alphawood Scholarships at SOAS decided to immediately implement the restriction of the programme to “antiquity” on a retroactive basis against students. First, in February 2016, two postgraduate students in Southeast Asia who had been awarded Alphawood Scholarships in 2015 were pressured by SOAS staff, including Prof. Anna Contadini, one of SOAS’s most senior administrators, to change their research topics because they planned to study modern and contemporary art. The students voiced their anxiety over the possibility of losing their scholarships publicly on social media. I raised this unfair treatment with the Director of SOAS, and the next day, she confirmed that the two students would be awarded scholarships of equivalent value. However, the Director offered no apology to the two students for the stress caused to them.
Subsequently, the SOAS Students’ Union filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request for emails and other data related to the Alphawood programme. The emails obtained revealed unethical activity which we raised with the Director of SOAS. For example, in January 2016, the Chair of the Scholarships Committee, Prof. Anna Contadini, emailed members of the Committee, “scholarships on contemporary art should not be awarded” – even though applicants had been invited to apply for contemporary art study, and none were informed of the new limitation of the programme to “antiquity.” During the application review period, Dr. Peter Sharrock, one of the Committee members, wrote in an email how he would ensure that no contemporary art applicants would be accepted: “There are 10 contemporary art applicants in the 51 MAs. I’m marking all 10 low because they do not fit the Alphawood restriction to classical Hindu-Buddhist art. I hope we will contain them appropriately.” Other emails show his efforts to collude with another Scholarship Committee member and to promote evaluation criteria that would disadvantage modern and contemporary art candidates. Unsurprisingly, all of the 17 applicants with backgrounds or interest in modern/contemporary art were rejected for scholarships.
Had SOAS established new scholarship criteria and publicly announced that these would be applied to the review of future applications, that would be proper and fair. However, what actually occurred is that new evaluation criteria were secretly put in place and retroactively applied against already-filed applications.
It is alarming that Prof. Anna Contadini is still the Chair of the Scholarship Committee and therefore in charge of the awarding process for this latest round of Alphawood Scholarships. Dr. Peter Sharrock also surprisingly retains his place on the Committee.
There is also the question of what definition of art “in antiquity” was used by the Scholarship Committee members in considering applications. In March 2016, several weeks after the scholarship award process, an external review of the Alphawood programme was undertaken. The reviewer remarked of her interviews with the SOAS staff, “In probing the question of what ‘antiquity’ actually meant in the SE Asian context, I got several different answers.” Separately, the FOI request revealed that as of 6 May 2016, several months after the decision to restrict to “antiquity”, the Deed of Gift had not yet been amended. Despite the lack of either a clear definition or a documentary basis, or ethical consideration of retroactivity, the Scholarships Committee applied this vague remit against applicants.
On 15 April 2016, without announcement, SOAS made live the webpage for the 2017-’18 Alphawood Scholarships. It refers to “ancient to pre-modern” art. But this fails to provide the needed clarity. What “pre-modern” means in the context of Southeast Asia is highly debatable, as there is no common understanding of when the modern period began in different Southeast Asian cultures; it cannot be merely equated to the beginning of colonialism.
The very premise of limiting the programme to early historic periods is troubling in several ways. It unfortunately echoes a colonialist paradigm of Southeast Asian societies as civilisations whose glories are long gone; this must be especially vigorously questioned at a place like SOAS. Also, it raises a question which goes to the heart of the Alphawood programme: can “ancient to pre-modern” art be understood without constant awareness and critical engagement with the material of the past as interpreted in the present? Museology and the study of heritage – emphasised by the Alphawood programme as target areas for support – focus precisely on present-day engagement with the art of the past. Much contemporary Southeast Asian art also grapples with the region’s art historical heritage. The Alphawood programme states that its objective is to “preserve” the “ancient to pre-modern” arts. In Buddhist and Hindu cultures, ancient art objects, and art objects arising from ancient traditions, are often re-used, renovated and/or repurposed through the ages to the present. Given the traditions of the production and use of Buddhist and Hindu art and architecture in Southeast Asia, the line between “ancient” and “modern” is not necessarily clear. Moreover, an understanding of how the art objects are integrated into living Southeast Asian societies is necessary in order to understand what heritage means to local cultures. Such an understanding is surely prerequisite to carrying out the preservation of heritage which the Alphawood programme aims to support. Has the Board of the Alphawood programme thought through the dimensions and impact of the restriction?
Without a clear, public statement from SOAS as to what “ancient to pre-modern” means, scholarship applicants will simply be taking a shot in the dark as to what Scholarship Committee members expect. The absence of this basic level of transparency exposes applicants – once again – to potential abuse.
To close, here is a list of questions which the Board of the Alphawood programme should answer for the benefit of those students considering applying to the Alphawood Scholarships:
(1) Why is Prof. Anna Contadini still the Chair of the Scholarships Committee and Dr. Peter Sharrock still a member of the Committee? Given their evidenced unethical treatment of students, how can future scholarship applicants have any confidence that their applications will be considered fairly?
(2) SOAS has never apologised to any of the students harmed by the retroactive application of the unexpected decision to limit the Alphawood programme to art “in antiquity”. When will this overdue apology be made?
(3) What if another secret decision is taken by SOAS to restrict the Alphawood Scholarships again, to say, exclude Myanmar or Singapore? Can you provide assurance to candidates that their applications will be considered according to your publicly stated criteria?
(4) What is your definition of “ancient to pre-modern art”? Do you include in it ephemeral arts, such as manuscripts and textiles, which are part of ancient traditions but typically studied through recent examples? What about temples that are ongoing places of worship and have been renovated through the centuries?
(5) What are your criteria for evaluating applications relating to curatorial, museological, artistic, and heritage studies?
(6) A number of modern and contemporary artists of Southeast Asia have engaged with artistic heritage; present-day communities integrate arts of long tradition in their daily worlds. Such arts can only be understood through engagement with both the ancient and the contemporary. Are ancient arts used by Southeast Asians in the present included?
(7) Emails from the previous Alphawood Scholarship review process show that two types of candidates were arbitrarily rejected: (1) applicants who expressed an interest in studying contemporary art and (2) applicants with prior experience in contemporary art. How will you evaluate applicants to the 2017-’18 Scholarships who have experience or prior interest in modern/contemporary art but would like to study ancient arts? Will they be summarily excluded, as before?
I thank you for reading this letter and eagerly await your response. Prospective applicants to the Alphawood Scholarships, and those who advise and write references for them, also seek clarification, and deserve it soon, as the application window opens in two weeks. Also, as you well appreciate, the Alphawood programme is an internationally-recognised flagship programme in Southeast Asian Studies. The answers to these questions will be of great interest to the global community of scholars, museum professionals, government officials and others involved in the study of Southeast Asia.
Kind regards,
Angela Chiu, PhD
Research Associate
Dept of the History of Art & Archaeology
cc:
Baroness Valerie Amos
Director of SOAS
James McDonough
Executive Director
Alphawood Foundation
