Value judgements

 We saw some cool and valuable things in NYC.

On Saturday we saw the actual Winnie-the-Pooh and some of his stuffed friends, on display in an exhibition about children's literature at the New York Public Library.  If you are not a fan of A.A.Milne, you might dispute the attribution of value to a bunch of shabby old toys.  But I grew up loving our Winnie-the-Pooh books to pieces.  Also, I corresponded for years with a friend who went by the name of Pooh.  His letters, which I was always excited to receive, came in envelopes marked with a red ink-stamped Winnie-the-Pooh...  So seeing that original battered old bear in a glass case was something valuable to me.

On Sunday in the Museum of Natural History we saw Lucy, the 3.2 million year-old skeleton from which scientists have deduced much of what we understand about early human-kind.  You could call her the very first global celebrity (not that she ever knew anything about it). While we were looking at the exhibit we assumed it was the original Lucy skeleton, which seemed very special.  Since then we've discovered that it was actually a cast (the original is - quite reasonably - in Ethiopia where it was found).  I feel a tiny bit let down by the fact that we saw "just" a copy, and I'm not sure why since in the context of an informational museum exhibit, an exact copy is just as valuable as those real, celebrity bones would have been.  But in retrospect the experience doesn't feel as valuable.

Back on Saturday it is highly likely that we passed by some original signed Banksy artworks on a trader's stall - without even noticing them.  Even if we'd seen them, we most likely would have balked at paying $60 (the asking price) for a spray-painting.  But the few people who did choose to buy one this weekend, just because they liked them, now own work valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  The thing with the Banksies is that in the context of a roadside stall the original paintings looked like worthless copies...

Strange, isn't it, what we value and why?