Civilization and its Discontents

There was no Gossip Girl on Monday, so at a loss, I surfed my other three channels. After a stint with Dancing with the Stars, I fell upon a documentary on what happened to art and national monuments during World War II.

Did you know:

1. When Paris was evacuated, volunteers gathered at the Louvre to help pack its collection into trucks that would drive it to safer shelter?

2. In Florence, a brick tube was built around the David and wooden shelters on stilts were erected to protect a building’s (I can’t remember which one) treasured molding.

3. An American commission (do we care if it was a PR move?) of curators, art historians and educators to protect monuments and other cultural treasures from the perils of war. These “Monuments Men” also returned art stolen by Hitler and the Nazis, during and right after the war.