Plain Talk
By
Mursi Saad EL-Din
No one thought that an 11.4 by 9 inch painting would produce such a controversy. It all started when the Duke of Northhumberland sold "The Madonna of the Pinks", a painting by Raphael, to the Getty Museum for $35 million. The painting was originally bought for 6,000 pounds in the belief that it was only a copy of the original. That was until an expert at the National Gallery proved conclusively that it was the original.
When the news of the sale leaked out all hell was raised and that perennial question came up: should works of art be allowed to leave the country? This question applies not only to works of art but also, and more importantly, to the country's national heritage.
No sooner did the news become known than the National Gallery rushed in, trying to keep the painting in Britain. Thus began a tug of war across the Atlantic between two of the world's leading art galleries.
The argument crossed over to America and the American papers took up the gauntlet. The art critic of The Herald Tribune wrote last week on the issue of saving art for the nation. In doing so Souren Melikian took the argument further to discuss the role of the museum. Is it, he asked, primarily one of educating the public?
The National Gallery, he pointed out, already possesses eight Raphaels. Is it, then, trying to build up an encyclopedic collection of the artist's work in order to provide the public with points of reference in the career of this great artist? Melikian opposes the idea and ends his article with a question. Should major national museums be seen as arenas for doctoral disputations or are they the nation's treasure houses to which the public flocks hoping to look at wonders?
On the other side of the Atlantic Philip Hensken writes in the Independent, bringing up an important issue: should works of art be allowed to leave the country? The almost universal belief seems to be that once you've got hold of something you damn well hang on to it, and it would be a tragedy to lose it to a foreign museum.
We know that the UNESCO has a special committee for national heritage. According to the UNESCO, works of art ought to stay in the country in which they were produced. We still remember the furor that followed the looting of museums and libraries of Baghdad and the appearance of some of the stolen treasures in foreign markets.
Hensken expresses an opinion which I tend to agree with. Referring to the Parthenon marbles and the Rosetta Stone he seems to be opposed to the idea that they should be returned to their places of origin. "These cultures," he writes "are probably much better served by being represented in a great international museum like the British Museum."
When Zahi Hawass was in London for the celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the British Museum he was quoted as saying that the Rosetta Stone should be returned to Egypt. It is a well-known fact that millions of visitors see the stone in the museum. Later, however, Hawass modified his statement by saying that what he really wanted was that the Rosetta Stone be given on loan to be displayed in the Egyptian Museum for a certain period of time.
We know that one way or another many antiquities from Egypt find their way to art auction houses and private collections. In fact, on the same page of Souran Melikian article I found an intriguing advertisement under a picture of "an Egyptian gesso- painted wooden sarcophagus". Readers are told that the piece came from a German aristocratic collection, that it was sold in London on 13 May 2003 for 883.750 pounds and that it would once again be auctioned at a famous auction house on 29 October 2003.
