Time to start saving Stonehenge
The signs are hopeful that enough funding will be found to save Titian's Diana and Actaeon for the nation. That is a triumph for art and for the National Galleries in London and Edinburgh. To fail to find the £50m to keep this great painting in Britain would be pathetic.
But keeping the painting will also be a triumph for a certain idea of what "art" is. If a piece of our cultural heritage happens to be indoors, to be an oil painting, the money will be found to keep it in this country. And yet the very word "saved" is of course mere rhetoric in this case.
It would be a stupid nation that let something so marvellous leave its
shores. But what is it to be "saved" from? Its worst fate, in all probability, would be to end up hanging in Washington's National Gallery instead of ours. It would still be cared for and almost certainly still on public display – we'd just have to travel further to see it.
Yet in the very year that Britons have rallied round to keep this painting on our soil, we have once more dismally failed to save a monument that cannot be exported elsewhere, at any price: Stonehenge. Only we can look after Stonehenge, and yet we are failing. This year started with the collapse of plans developed over many years to improve the dismal conditions in which the site is currently maintained: the government decided it was not going to reroute roads just to improve the view of some lichen-covered old rocks. Later in the year, Unesco threatened to censure Britain for its betrayal of Stonehenge and other historical monuments including the Tower of London.
It is a parable of our time that saving the Titian has become a national crusade, while the deterioration of Stonehenge owing to traffic damage is allowed to go without protest. Nobody seems ashamed to be criticised by Unesco...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
But keeping the painting will also be a triumph for a certain idea of what "art" is. If a piece of our cultural heritage happens to be indoors, to be an oil painting, the money will be found to keep it in this country. And yet the very word "saved" is of course mere rhetoric in this case.
It would be a stupid nation that let something so marvellous leave its
shores. But what is it to be "saved" from? Its worst fate, in all probability, would be to end up hanging in Washington's National Gallery instead of ours. It would still be cared for and almost certainly still on public display – we'd just have to travel further to see it.
Yet in the very year that Britons have rallied round to keep this painting on our soil, we have once more dismally failed to save a monument that cannot be exported elsewhere, at any price: Stonehenge. Only we can look after Stonehenge, and yet we are failing. This year started with the collapse of plans developed over many years to improve the dismal conditions in which the site is currently maintained: the government decided it was not going to reroute roads just to improve the view of some lichen-covered old rocks. Later in the year, Unesco threatened to censure Britain for its betrayal of Stonehenge and other historical monuments including the Tower of London.
It is a parable of our time that saving the Titian has become a national crusade, while the deterioration of Stonehenge owing to traffic damage is allowed to go without protest. Nobody seems ashamed to be criticised by Unesco...