CAKE POLICE

Some rather striking remarks made by Jim Jarmusch in an interview with Alan Licht for this month's Wire:

"I was thinking a lot lately about museums being temples of capitalism in a funny way, and that art used to be in a context, in a place, you know what I mean? Like those Greek statues that were painted were an exterior... they were there for you to see in the context of a place. And then, imperialism looted those things. The first really Western museums are born of imperialist culture, they started in France or something. But it's not that old, having museums where art is isolated, you know. It's funny how art often was spiritual, as well. So I was thinking, what's the context of museums? I guess it's the religion of the empires, it's capitalist temples of looted shit that we've isolated and made worth a lot of money by removing it from its context, somehow."