Increasingly there are a lot of people in the academic world who have trouble with the masterpiece, with the concept of good, better, best.
--Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1977 - 2008
(NYTimes, Conversation with Philippe de Montebello)
I wish that were only true in the academic world, but sadly it is not so. I meet ordinary people, or businesspeople who have a great deal of trouble with the notion of cultures, or ideas (or whatever) being good, better or best . I face people constantly who have profound difficulty with the notion of research being more significant and valid than their own intuition.
De Montebello is also puzzled by the "rapidity and and the eagerness of the press to embrace the anticollecting lobby. The press has been for the archeologists and for the source countries and against museums." Why?
Ah well. This discussion is a lost cause.