FEW institutions remind us of our rather interesting priorities more than the National Gallery. Though the State's income from tax has been rising and revenue from the National Lottery has flowed like the Nile to a multitude of little Aswans - often golf clubs and other such vital cultural institutions - the National Gallery has been put on emergency commons, its time, its space and its paintings severely rationed to the general public.
Wings are closed, rooms unlit, great masters unseen because the gallery has not enough money to provide the elementary protection for its works. It is, of course, not just a question of money today; it is in part a matter of public service unions insisting on jobs for life.
A Bleak Picture
The days of the Minister for Finance cheerfully adding to the Public Service bill as the mood takes him are now over, simply because the penny has finally dropped that the fine fellow you employ today will probably still be on the State payroll, on an index linked pension, in 60 years' time.
Enough ministers have done that in the past, and Ruairi is in a position - though the rest of us are not - to guess the State pension bill in 2040.
The figures probably cause him to start awake at 4 a.m., blinking at the ceiling in a muck sweat.
Work practices and expectations in the public sector, and especially within unions, still do not reflect the reality that State employment for life is far too expensive, and therefore employment inhibiting. Organised labour in the State sector has been pricing itself out of the jobs market, thereby shoving up unemployment. In National Gallery terms, that translates into fewer paintings on display.
It would be so economically sensible - but still, alas, politically impossible - to employ a private firm to guard the paintings of the National Gallery - and just as sensible, and a damn sight easier, for the National Lottery to sweeten the pill of privatised security with a little Aswan of money. Maybe that will happen.
Eating Their Words
Maybe not. Whatever, we are anyway going to have to pay to re-restore Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ, currently being eaten by biscuit beetles. No doubt the little dears initially acquired a taste for Garibaldis, and then moved on to something more sophisticated.
Did such artmunching biscuit beetles manage to make it into the 34 volumes of The Dictionary of Art? The dictionary was recently launched in the National Gallery - and, what's more, in a room which was actually open, with lights on and not a beetle in sight.
Most impressive. Just about everything in the art world is allegedly included in the dictionary, as it should be, with 720,000 entries; but I cannot be sure about the presence or absence of Caravaggio nibbling weevils in all those volumes because my review copies of this modest little work (price: £5,750) appear to have been delayed in the post.
However, in advance of the volumes arriving, the publishers were good enough to send me a nice little folder containing various details of the dictionary; and for the moment anyway, pending the arrival of the 34 volumes of my review copies, they will have to do.
The index alone stretches to 900 pages, but I still do not know (because my volumes have not yet arrived) if one of those entries is for the art eating beetle of Merrion Square, Cole optera Caravaggiovore, whose stealthy munching is often the only sound in the National Gallery.
A Smashing Story
It came as something of a surprise to be reminded in one of the publicity sheets (upon which I must depend until the 34 volumes of £5,750 worth of dictionary finally come through the letterbox) that the terracotta Chinese army of 10,000 warriors and horses - surely the most extravagant act of post homous vanity in all of history was discovered as recently as 1974.
The Chinese were good enough to send a large selection of the figures here some years ago, and without any assistance from any of our ingenious native beetles, we managed, I recall, to smash many of them into pieces almost upon their arrival.
They had survived 2,000 years of turbulent Chinese history, had emerged intact from one of the greatest archaeological excavations ever mounted, had been restored, preserved, numbered, then crated, undamaged, and sent halfway round the world to us. They weren't here a minute before the massacre began, a terracotta Somme. It was slaughter, boy, slaughter.
If you look up under "G" in the index of the Dictionary of Art you will probably find, under "glassyeyed", a description of the inscrutable Chinese officials who silently observed the excellent workmen of Dublin laying about their precious artifacts with lumphammers.
Individual Listings
Each warrior was a perfect likeness of one of the emperor's personal retinue, until, that is, it was reduced to fragments (see under "F") by our welcoming committee of stout and cheery artisans.
Under "S" in the index you will probably discover the fate of most of the Chinese officials in Dublin then - namely suicide, though under "J", and possibly "G" as well you will discover John of God's hospital, where one little gentleman from Peking still gibbers through the day and crawls the lightless corridors at night, whimpering and groping for warriors.
By heavens, if we could only get our hands on Michelangelo's heavenly Pieta we could merit a place under every letter, from amputate to zap, not forgetting "G", gobbled by insects.
Towering above this 34 volume masterpiece is the American editor, Jane Turner, who coordinated the work of 6,700 scholars over 14 years and who is probably listed twice under "B" (bonkers and barking mad) and once under "G" (gaga). I wouldn't know. I say again: my review copies have not yet arrived. The century draws on. I look at my watch. I yawn. Still no dictionary. Yawn. Look at watch. Still no.