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Comment by jimnotgym | Hacker News Reader

It makes me sad that Londons fabulous (and free) galleries have warehouses full of masterpieces that they have no space to display, yet my local museum has a gallery with not a single decent painting. I wish more of those great works could be shared around.

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The National Gallery loans paintings to other galleries and museums, but it does require the receiving gallery to have suitable climate control, security and so on.

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/about-us/partnering-with-...

The Victoria and Albert museum is about to open a new building in Stratford, which is a public storeroom. https://www.vam.ac.uk/east

I worked at the British Museum and there were rooms upon rooms of priceless objects. I remember a golden Buddha with the tags and wrapping still on it from Sotheby’s in the 1920s.

At that time, you could also just check out a piece and leave a little card there saying you’d taken it.

I'd argue there already is ample distribution of masterpieces via the internet on various social media / image sharing platforms.

A painting seen in person can leave a wildly different impact than scrolling by it on your phone. Both are important IMHO.

/r/unexpected_walterbenjamin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_...

Well that's intriguing. Can you say more?

If I look at this painting on my phone, what I'm experiencing is radically different to the patron of 1500-whatever looking at the altarpiece. My experience is physically different, for a start, and perhaps more insidiously, other people, in control of my experience, can change my emotional response to it (see "Kuleshov effect"). Imagine seeing the image preceded by some doom scrolling on your phone concerning religious sectarian atrocities, say, vs it being preceded by a story about nuns helping children. You are not engaging with the work, you are engaging with an image of the work. And that image has been edited, curated, and positioned by someone for you.

One might also note that even seeing an artwork like this in the modern public galleries that we have is quite odd. Altarpieces invite repeated contemplation by the worshippers in a church, over a long time. Maybe you grow up liking the look of baby jesus but as an adult start to notice and think that Mary is smiling down on you in your troubles. In a gallery, you shuffle along in a sea of people, and get a few seconds to look at the piece before your attention is captured by another piece in the same room.

Oh no, seeing a masterpiece on screen makes you say, 'oh that's nice'. Seeing the real thing, 6 feet wide, the texture, the light, can be truly stunning.

But if it’s so nice… why aren’t there enough people (donors/ticket buyers) willing to pay the cost for freight, security, and full coverage insurance?

I would imagine that security would be a big issue.

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