Metropolitan Museum Trustees Sell Art to Pay Bills

So the Met has succumbed to the sweet songs of the Sirens. It’s selling art to balance its budget. It’s starting with a sale of about a million dollars in art over the next few weeks. It’ll surely consign more. The Met has done its fair share of grave robbing, having returned over the past few years millions of dollars in antiquities it bought illegally. Now it’s into robbing art vaults, and its own at that.

The Met’s top brass needs to brush up on its Homer. It needs to read The Odyssey to learn something about fighting temptation. In The Odyssey, the Sirens, dangerous creatures who combined the look of women and birds, hid among cliffs and crags by the ocean. They sang so beautifully to music so divine that sailors would draw their ships close to the rocks for a listen, too close, too often as the Sirens peddled not music but death. Ships became shipwrecks, sailors soggy corpses. On their voyage-turned–obstacle course, Odysseus and his crew got lost and skirted the Sirens’ home. He ordered the crew to plug their ears with beeswax and row as if their lives depended on it, which they did.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

So the Met has succumbed to the sweet songs of the Sirens. It’s selling art to balance its budget. It’s starting with a sale of about a million dollars in art over the next few weeks. It’ll surely consign more. The Met has done its fair share of grave robbing, having returned over the past few years millions of dollars in antiquities it bought illegally. Now it’s into robbing art vaults, and its own at that.

The Met’s top brass needs to brush up on its Homer. It needs to read The Odyssey to learn something about fighting temptation. In The Odyssey, the Sirens, dangerous creatures who combined the look of women and birds, hid among cliffs and crags by the ocean. They sang so beautifully to music so divine that sailors would draw their ships close to the rocks for a listen, too close, too often as the Sirens peddled not music but death. Ships became shipwrecks, sailors soggy corpses. On their voyage-turned–obstacle course, Odysseus and his crew got lost and skirted the Sirens’ home. He ordered the crew to plug their ears with beeswax and row as if their lives depended on it, which they did.