Memento Mori

If you have a big ego and a bigger bank balance it’s not a bad idea to build somewhere to display your tasteful collection of art, sculpture, furniture and bric-a-brac but the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is the first “dedicated exclusively to visual storytelling and narrative art, placing popular culture (such as comics and cinematic props) on an equal footing with fine art”.

It’s easy to scoff (and I do) but I wonder what people like me thought when Henry Frick built an elegant house on 5th Avenue to house his collection. Like Lucas he did it in old age but he only lived there for a few years. Similarly, Lord Iveagh bought Kenwood House just two years before he died to exhibit his magnificent collection (The Iveagh Bequest, which may or may not have inspired Osbert Lancaster’s Littlehampton Bequest). By the way he was and is Lord Iveagh, not Earl Iveagh, though of course he was created an Earl, something Lord Spencer and the BBC overlook.

Museums like the Frick, Kenwood, the Wallace Collection and two in Paris: Nissim de Camondo, Jaquemart-André, are my favourites. It’s not the same as giving a house and contents to the Nat Trust or opening it to the public, though that’s laudable and makes for some enjoyable rubbernecking.

To digress a tad, Henry Frick built what we call The Frick in New York in 1913, six years before he died. If his wife had not strained her ankle in Italy it wouldn’t have been built and we can only speculate what might have become of his collection. Fortuitously for us she did and they cancelled their booking on the maiden voyage of RMS Titanic, though I fancy Frick might have elbowed his way into a lifeboat.

The rest of us wonder what to do with our bric-a-brac. Maybe something of museum quality could go to one but, if accepted, might not be displayed. I think best to ask younger friends and relations if they like anything and give in one’s lifetime. Let’s face it, it makes less work for others later.