[New-Poetry] sent by (letters)

[Chris Lott]

On 6/14/07, jforjames at aol.com <jforjames at aol.com> wrote:
>  I think I missed something in this discussion. Isn't there a tremendous amount of art in public collections all over the world. I've been going to public museums for years and I can't say I've seen a fraction of what is out there...you can stand 3 feet away from it and stare as long as you want, I swear. And the admission price is usually about the same as some new Hollywood movie released last week and forgotten in another week. The work in private hands often works way into museum collections.
>
>  The beauty of those letters, if they were unknown before being auctioned, is that they'll prompt new biographies about their subjects.

I'm not arguing that there isn't a lot of art in museums... I'm simply
noting that a bunch of letters we didn't know were kept by one rich
guy about being auctioned off to some other rich patron for his or her
private collection is a strange kind of news.

Work in private hands often makes it into collections that are public.
And often it doesn't. Doesn't it seem a little strange to make a big
deal over a "treasure trove" of unknown letters that have a good
chance of continuing to be hidden? The interesting news would be the
letters being made public and available... but if that happens I bet
it gets nowhere near the interest as it does while it remains a
commodity of the fiscal aristocracy, the possessions of which we
generally can't make use of but that our media seems fascinated by
nonetheless.

c