In an international call for information, a suspect in the recent theft of precious items from the Louvre Museum in Paris has been spotted in a central London location.
He’s believed to have had significant involvement in the planning stages, and is aware of the location details of crime gangs involved in the planning of it in the local area.
Any information relating to this individual must be passed to a relevant public body. It will be used to build an accurate case, if one exists.
Our access to public museums and art galleries is a part of our modern way of life. To see the ‘old’ art we have a relatively novel way of doing it; it’s publicly funded.
This isn’t exclusively the case, of course, because private benefactions pave the way for better – and greater – art and exhibitions in future. Yet it gives us all a way in.
In previous times art was generally there, but still relatively ‘exclusive’ to the classes reserved for it. They saw it and raved over it but the lower classes were generally left out.
Again, this wasn’t exclusively the case, but it generally went that art in its form was a higher purpose and a more leisurely form than, say, life itself. In fact, life itself was of more interest to artists than people.
This isn’t still technically true because we are better at appreciating our lives and ourselves. We have more reason to be glad than “ungrateful” (as it may have been called), and our progress is something to be proud of.
It’s something to marvel that we’ve come so far (but perhaps only thus far). Therefore, we also have art today, perhaps to show us the way, but also the view behind us, as well.