Is Britain Loosing Its Passion for The Past?

                                              Is Britain loosing its passion for the past?

Whatever be our other failings, we as Brits always prided ourselves for our respect for old tradition, history and the past in general. Tourists to Britain were always impressed at how well its historic monuments and artefacts were preserved giving them a feeling of going back in time. The auctioning of two masterpieces of art from the Victorian era comes as a jolt to this image that we have acquired in the eyes of the world. The art objects in question are Bondage a picture by Ernest Normand and the Sea Maiden by Herbert Draper both flamboyant examples of Victorian erotic art. Both were auctioned by the Royal Cornwall Museum for 1 million pounds each through Christies of London. The Chairman of the Royal Institution of Cornwall (RIC) has justified the sale as a hard decision taken to raise badly needed funds for the upkeep of the museum.

This however is not an isolated development, elsewhere in Southampton the City Council tried to sell Rodin’s famed Crouching woman sculpture and Alfred Munnings’s oil painting “After the Race” much for the same reasons. A major outcry however stalled the sale at the nick of time and the council ended up raising money through a lottery grant.

While it is commonplace for commercial business to mobilise critically needed funds through the sale of a part of their assets, it is altogether a different thing with museums and art galleries. These are custodians of a country’s cultural heritage and discharge an important social responsibility of up keeping and exhibiting these priceless treasures to generations to come. They can simply not treat their collections as some merchandise that could be sold odd to meet maintenance or other expenditure.

In he United States the Association of Art Museum Directors passed a law that forbids the using of funds raised by selling art objects for the upkeep or day to day running expenses as a precaution against museum administrators sinking their hand into these rare art collections to keep them going. While commercial ventures can always replace what they sold off during needy times when things return to normal, it is not the case with Museums and art centres and any sale of art objects remains an irrevocable loss to the museum. The UK strangely does not have a strong law forbidding museums from selling their collections (perhaps because of the good faith on art custodians). Sale of museum collections has always been regretted. Viewed in retrospect the sale of 18th century South Asian and Far Eastern metal ware sold in 1950 to the King of Libya remains an act of irrevocable rashness.

Selling of art objects for whatever reason it may be would also discourage potential donors of such priceless items who give it away to from their family collection to museums so it is viewed by thousands of art lovers instead of being locked up in the attic or a bank locker. Selling art works would make them wonder if what they have just given away would not come under the hammer one day and whether it would be better for them to sell it themselves rather than let the museum do so at a later date.

The only way to save nation’s priceless arts and artefacts would be by curtailing the museum’s rights, while museums would act as custodians of what is in their possession, they should not have powers to sell or auction the same.

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