
Buckingham Palace art collection to go on gallery display for the first time - wholeness
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/aug/16/buckingham-palace-art-collection-gallery-display-first-time
======
zhte415
> they are double stacked in a sumptuous interior

Tangential and complimentary: if in London... The Wallace Collection [1] [2]
is a fantastic off-the-mainstream collection of works focused around the time
of the French Revolution. Convenient location for public transport (just off
Oxford Street), low foot traffic, off the typical tourist trail radar,
knowledgable staff.

[1] [https://www.wallacecollection.org/](https://www.wallacecollection.org/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Collection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Collection)

------
pixxel
Lots of PR moves going on recently with the Royal Family...

~~~
ksec
Sorry did I miss something?

~~~
mhh__
Prince Andrew is in a spot of bother

------
a5withtrrs
I find it genuinely surprising that such significant art is owned by the royal
family and yet wasn't on display for the broader public until now.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I find it genuinely surprising that we still have a royal family.

~~~
martindbp
I wonder if royal houses are a net economic positive due to increased tourism.
That would be the only reason to keep them. It's like a really long-lasting,
expensive reality show.

~~~
billyruffian
I think it was Niall Fergusson, perhaps in 'Empire' or maybe 'Civilisation',
who argued that the modern purpose of monarchy is to protect the citizenry
from its government -- particularly the emergence of extreme forms of
government. You might not agree but I found it quite persuasive.

~~~
ploika
As an Irish person I don't find it persuasive at all. There's pretty much
nothing a monarch can do that a non executive president can't, and the UK's
monarch didn't protect anyone in Northern Ireland from gerrymandering or the
B-Specials.

~~~
ntwalker
My take on it, personally, is that the primary benefit of a monarch is
precisely that they are inherently illegitimate, in a way. This means that
every day they have to justify to the people and keep answering the question
"Why do we keep these people around?"

A president only has to convince (fool?) the people twice, and can always hide
behind a "mandate" from the people to justify bad behavior. A monarch has to
fight to earn that legitimacy every day. Plus they have the incentive of not
screwing their kids' inheritance up. That's the value I see in it anyways, I
don't know if there's a more sophisticated articulation of this idea out
there.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
So they have to behave so they can continue to lord it over us.

In reality it takes a huge amount of propaganda from the British media to keep
them in place. If there was anything resembling an objective assesment of them
then they would be gone.

------
jedberg
Pretty brave of them considering some of the pieces were not acquired
peacefully.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
Governments steal lots of stuff all the time. The least they can do is do
something useful to the taxpayer with it.

~~~
oh_sigh
Or they could give it back to the people they stole it from.

~~~
Shivetya
well there are pros and cons to that, in many places in the world you would
risk losing the piece forever regardless what the locals claim.

plus while something may have come from a region and people of the world that
no longer exist and the attachment is in name only. As in, there is no
connection to the society that created the works to the one that rules the
area now. There is always a case for those stolen within a few generations but
going back beyond that is not always warranted. Plus when you get into some
art and such who was the last rightful owner, you stole from someone who stole
it from another and so on.

I would prefer a world where these antiquities are preserved but open to
anyone to see.

~~~
edge17
This type of attempt to intellectualize cultural theft is usually how
colonizers rationalize it.

I understand what you're saying, but thats like making the argument that you
shouldn't have the fancy car because it's safer in my driveway than yours.

~~~
CamperBob2
Eh, without colonial cross-pollination and cultural appropriation, many of
these works would never have been inspired or created to begin with.

You want to redress the past, invent a time machine. Otherwise, it is what it
is (or, rather, was).

~~~
mav3rick
Let me go to your house, steal your stuff and keep it forever and call it
crosspollination.

~~~
CamperBob2
(Shrug) Being a white male landowner, I probably have it coming.

~~~
xnyan
Or you know we could just agree to 1) not steal things and 2) return the stuff
we stole from others

~~~
CamperBob2
(Shrug) They're dead, and don't need their stuff back. I'm not.

~~~
mav3rick
So we can steal it right now and not return it to your descendants ?

------
blackrock
Does this also include all the art and treasures that the British stole from
the entire world?

The British Museum is an active historical crime scene.

The western world loves talking about intellectual property, morality, and
intellectual honesty, but here you actually have the British flaunting all the
treasures that they stole from the rest of the world.

~~~
smabie
Your property was stolen by someone too, long ago (or maybe not so long ago,
depending on where you live). You gonna return that too?

Everything is stolen; nothing is stolen.

~~~
mav3rick
Let me break into your house and steal your stuff. "You gonna return that
too?" \- NO finders keepers.

