Golden Boy's Operation

Golden Boy is a happy little statuary fellow only 30 in. tall, and nobody knows exactly how old he is. He has a plump, round belly, is full of grace, and in a perpetual state of adoration. When anyone picked him up he would jingle faintly as if things were rattling around inside him. Since Golden Boy was made in China in a period when temple priests liked to fill their statuary with symbols, Director Richard E. Fuller and Associate Director Millard Rogers of the Seattle Art Museum grew more and more curious about what was inside. When X rays confirmed that there was more to Golden Boy than met the eye, Dr. Fuller's curiosity became unbearable. He decided to operate.

One day last week in the museum's basement, surrounded by museum staffers and Chinese and Japanese scholars, Director Fuller placed the wood boy face down on an improvised operating table and made his incision with a sharp, small-bladed knife. Ultraviolet examination had shown that Golden Boy had already undergone an operation, and Fuller cut along the old, virtually imperceptible scar.* He cut carefully through a top layer of paint (probably put on 700 or 800 years ago), then through a layer of gesso, a layer of lacquer, one of bronze and finally of the statue's original gold. After 30 minutes he lifted out a 2-in.-by-4-in. rectangular section of the boy's back and poked inside with a pair of tongs.

He pulled out many things: crumbling papers with writing in Tibetan and the rare Lan Cha type of the Indie alphabet, raw silk, strips of colored cloth, a chain of silver emblems, a bronze mirror, a faded silken bag made up in the shape of a human stomach containing a bewildering collection of pieces of metal, woods, seeds and beads.

Analysis rapidly disclosed that the written material consisted of charms and prayers; the other objects were symbols, principally of the five oldtime Chinese elements or forces essential to life (fire, water, air, wood, metal). But no document was found to show when Golden Boy had been fashioned, though rough chisel marks on the wood were typical of techniques used in the 10th and 11th centuries. From the statue's contents, the scholars concluded that the first operation was probably performed some 300 years ago by Tibetan monks, who installed a new set of innards.

Museum Director Fuller decided to place Golden Boy on special exhibit with the hole in his back and his innards laid out for all to see. In time he will be patched together again with glue and adhesive putty, and will be touched up to look just as good as old.

* Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art owns a similar statue that shows scars of four operative incisions. Its innards, if any, were removed before the Met got it in 1942.

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