A Case For UK Museums’ Purchase Of £100m Titians

The figure represents one third of their estimated open market value, but why is it so important to save the works for the nation, and how difficult will it be to raise the cash? National Gallery of Scotland director John Leighton: “I think it would be hard to exaggerate the misfortune it would be. In our terms it would be like the Mona Lisa being taking out of the Louvre, or the Uffizi gallery in Florence losing its Botticellis,”

Pop Star Pulls His Opera From The Met

Rufus Wainwright wants the opera, “Prima Donna,” to be in French; its would-be commissioners — the Met and Lincoln Center Theater — insisted on English. Wainwright said another stumbling block was the date of a potential production at the opera house. The earliest the Met could offer, he said, was in 2014. “They work on that sort of scale; I wanted to get it out as soon as possible,” he said, adding wryly, “because I’m an impatient pop star.”