Chump of the Day

Monday, 5th January 2009

The National Gallery of Scotland needs to raise £50m to prevent the sale of Titian's Diana and Actaeon from being sold. The painting, part of the Bridgewater Collection, has been loaned to the gallery for decades but is now being sold by its owner, the Duke of Sutherland. Well, £50m is quite a lot of money. Then again, it's a pretty nifty painting (though my own tastes run a little later - to Caravaggio and Velazquez in particular).

Anyway, it's hard to imagine there being any discussion in France or Italy or Germany of the rights and wrongs of committing public money to the fund-raising effort. And while I have some sympathy with the notion that the arts should be self-supporting or rely upon private patronage, frankly I'd rather see the government lavish millions on the arts than on many (most?) other areas in which they currently squander billions.

None of that seems to really concern Labour MP Ian Davidson, however. In a display of provincialism startling even for a paid-up member of the West of Scotland Labour mafia, Mr Davidson told the BBC this morning:

"It is difficult to argue that this is part of Britain's cultural heritage when it's a picture by a long dead Venetian - it's not as if it's Jock McTitian...Very few people will ever have heard of Titian, many will have thought he was an Italian football player. What is the point of wasting this money in this way?"

Now there's an endorsement of the education system north of the border...

UPDATE: Mr Eugenides weighs in too.

Filed under: Labour (2131 more articles) , O Tempora, O Mores (186 more articles) , Scotland (497 more articles)

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marksany

January 5th, 2009 1:25pm Report this comment

I don't think the state should be buying art. My local hospital is full of modern statues and installations, which have cost thousands. They also have a campaign to raise funds for incubators for baby ICU. I have been a patient there with a serious heat condition and I found no therapeutic benefit from the installed artworks. £50mill will build two new schools. I agree there is lots of waste of taxpayers' money, but that is not a justification to waste more of it on art. I wonder how much a sell-off of publicly owned art (the vast majority of which is not on view to the public) could raise?

dearieme

January 5th, 2009 2:52pm Report this comment

What can you expect? He's from Jedhart. (Or do you prefer Jeddart?)

ndm

January 5th, 2009 5:50pm Report this comment

After saving the blue tit, Massie wants to dump the red tit and keep the Titian.

ndm

January 5th, 2009 5:54pm Report this comment

marksany might want to read Tyler Cowen:

We also find that a one-standard-deviation increase in amenities raises a hospital's demand by 38.4% on average, whereas demand is substantially less responsive to clinical quality as measured by pneumonia mortality. These findings imply that hospitals may have an incentive to compete in amenities, with potentially important implications for welfare.

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