Priceless Peripatetics

Art is on the move. The Louvre's Venus de Milo, weighing more than a ton, arrived in Japan to grace the summer Olympics, having lost four chips of plaster and marble added during a 19th century restoration (they were glued back on). To enhance the New York World's Fair, Michelangelo's 6,700-lb. Piet`a was eased off its pedestal in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, slid down planks lubricated with laundry soap and packed in a double box with a foam plastic that cushions the marble and supports it by filling every cranny. For the sea voyage, the Vatican took out $6 million in humpty-bumpty insurance, plus another $20 million for its stay at the fair, just about enough to pay for the Vatican's embarrassment if the sculpture broke. In Spain, squabbling continued over the proposed loan to the fair of El Greco's 15-ft. by 24-ft. The Burial of Count Orgaz, while workmen waited to peel it from a wall in Toledo's Santo Tome Church.

Flown into New York City, to go on display at once at the Guggenheim Museum, were 120 Van Goghs (60 paintings and 60 drawings) strapped to seats in a jet. And Whistler's 92-year-old mobile Mother, lent by the Louvre, went on view in St. Louis.

Moving great works of art always stirs fears--vivid thoughts of a plane's crashing and burning with a considerable part of the work of Van Gogh, or the Piet`a gently cracking in two along some unknown flaw line (although technicians, having bombarded the sculpture with X rays and cobalt 60 gamma rays, have discovered it to be the perfect piece of marble that Michelangelo said it was). Beyond fears for the safety of the art, its sponsors are given to worry over whether the likes of World's

Fair or Olympic crowds can appreciate great works of art. The Venus de Milo is being shown in a flashy arena with a moving platform to carry viewers by without strain; the Piet`a will be dramatically lighted in a staging designed by Jo Mielziner.

Such precautions greatly underrate the proved ability of ordinary people to be moved by art. As Venus reached Tokyo, French Critic Claude Roger-Marx wrote: "I am one of those people who believe that museums are not sim ply repositories and that masterpieces should not be condemned to immobility. They belong to all mankind." Minister of Culture Andre Malraux agreed. "To take a simple example," he said. "In Washington, poor women came with their children and approached the Mona Lisa with their eyes lowered, raised them to see it, then went into the crowd and came back again, as if seeing icons."

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