Forget the crocodile teary apologies by politicians for the Irish potato famine, the Babylonian Captivity, or the brutal discrimination against the sensitive kindly hard-working Neanderthals by the sharp-suited wide-boy Homo Sapiens. I have just seen the most splendid public avowal of private anguished embarrassment. It was in a museum gift shop, and it cost £1.
Stuff happens in museums and galleries, but traditionally they have been remarkably reluctant to discuss it: foolish, since if it's a good enough yarn, like the National Gallery dropping a Renaissance panel painting and cleaving it in twain like William Tell's apple, the story will inevitably get out and make them look shifty as well as cack-handed.
The story of the Fitzwilliam's window sill moment went round the world: the story may since have become a little more complex, but as originally told it had a Buster Keaton simplicity, the visitor, the shoelace, the priceless Chinese vases quietly on their window ledge on the grand staircase.
The Fitzwilliam, though superb, is one of the world's more daunting museums: the inevitable lottery-funded glazed courtyard and new side door may give level access, but I'm not convinced it's any better than the old steps up to the grand portico at shouting "come in, oh great unwashed, this is yours and it's free".
It would have been easy, though knuckle headed, to gather up the 24 trays of shattered fragments of the vases, and refuse to discuss the incident. Instead, the initial disaster, the plans to restore the vases, and their redisplay, were milked for publicity and generated a stream of visitors, many of them first-timers.
The vases are now displayed near but not on their original window sill: the museum insists, straight faced, that the only reason for not putting them back is anxiety that sunlight might destroy the adhesive. Er, possibly.
But meanwhile the latest contribution to the debate has a handsome image of the vases on one side, and on the reverse an account of the incident, and a nice photograph of conservator Penny Bendall at work. And it's a jigsaw.
Now that's class.
Stuff happens in museums and galleries, but traditionally they have been remarkably reluctant to discuss it: foolish, since if it's a good enough yarn, like the National Gallery dropping a Renaissance panel painting and cleaving it in twain like William Tell's apple, the story will inevitably get out and make them look shifty as well as cack-handed.
The story of the Fitzwilliam's window sill moment went round the world: the story may since have become a little more complex, but as originally told it had a Buster Keaton simplicity, the visitor, the shoelace, the priceless Chinese vases quietly on their window ledge on the grand staircase.
The Fitzwilliam, though superb, is one of the world's more daunting museums: the inevitable lottery-funded glazed courtyard and new side door may give level access, but I'm not convinced it's any better than the old steps up to the grand portico at shouting "come in, oh great unwashed, this is yours and it's free".
It would have been easy, though knuckle headed, to gather up the 24 trays of shattered fragments of the vases, and refuse to discuss the incident. Instead, the initial disaster, the plans to restore the vases, and their redisplay, were milked for publicity and generated a stream of visitors, many of them first-timers.
The vases are now displayed near but not on their original window sill: the museum insists, straight faced, that the only reason for not putting them back is anxiety that sunlight might destroy the adhesive. Er, possibly.
But meanwhile the latest contribution to the debate has a handsome image of the vases on one side, and on the reverse an account of the incident, and a nice photograph of conservator Penny Bendall at work. And it's a jigsaw.
Now that's class.
