Saturday, July 24, 2004
Political Correctness in Arts Grants
Cronaca reports on the Heritage Lottery Fund's decision not to assist Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum in acquiring the Macclesfield Psalter ("the most important medieval illuminated manuscript found in Britain in living memory") at a Sotheby's auction:
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Even worse, my source reports that the Lottery Fund's decision not to give the grant was ultimately based on reasons of extreme political correctness. To wit, that the Psalter would not be meaningful to non-Christians, and that its small size would make it too difficult to view by the wheelchair-bound (not to mention, one supposes, the blind -- or would that be, "differently sighted"?).
Apparently, the decision last year to fund the acquisition of Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks was "in part because [it was felt that] young single mothers could relate to the experience of suddenly finding themselves pregnant like the Virgin Mary".England's loss is America's gain. The John P. Getty Museum of Los Angeles successfully bid for the Psalter.
