Amidst all the brouhaha over the UK Heritage Lottery Fund’s decision to spend £11.5 million to keep a 9-inch Raphael painting in the country is a debate over what constitutes “national heritage.” To Charles Smith, the Lottery’s attempt to keep a foreign work of art in London is a promising sign that Britons are finally beginning to get past the notion that a work of art must be thoroughly British to be important. Still, with budget cuts running rampant in the UK, such programs of national preservation are under threat, and Smith says that the nation would do well to remember the reasons for their creation.