Monumental Art Fever

You know how sometimes there's an explosion of attention around a subject and it inspires all kinds of excitement and exploration? Sometimes people hit on these things by themselves and other times the media does it for us. In these situations I have a tendency to get carried away and become intensely interested in forensic science or military boot camps or Russian prisons. Netflix is to thank for many of these phases.

Well last week I got all wrapped up in Monument's Men.

It started when the Minneapolis Institute of Art put together a list of everything in the museum that was plundered by the Nazis. So visitors could go around with a map and find all the recovered art. It was a cool little treasure hunt and gave the visit more purpose than forlorn wandering thinking, 'ok, I guess we just look at everything...'

Second thing: a coworker and I went to a talk given by a curator at the Smithsonian who is a real live Monument's (wo)man. While she was in the army she helped save a bunch of art in the Iraqi art museum and a ton of Jewish artifacts hidden in the basement of the Iraqi secret police building. A talk you say? Yes, I went to a lecture. On a Friday night. And now I'm going to join the army and save all the art.

My coworker and I were so excited by the lecture... uhh... amazing art event that we literally ran to the nearest movie theater to see the Monument's Men movie. It was good. The only issue was you didn't really see the scale of the undertaking. It mostly showed the 6-7 super star actors running around finding all the art and you're sitting there worried about how in heaven's name they're going to move it. "Clooney just take the best painting and run! The Russians are coming!" In reality there were a few hundred Monument's Men. They're just not in the film.

A common question between movie and art talk was why it is/was worthwhile to save art when lives are at risk. Obviously neither source placed the two on equal footing, but both emphasized art is a cultural and historical record. What do we know about past civilizations due to art, both practical and ornamental? Think about Egyptian history without art. No pyramids, tombs, afterlife preparations, hieroglyphics. What would you have? Sand. There would just be a lot of sand.