Hypothetical Amusement Dilemma. - The Bear and Badger

mistercrayon

You are in charge of the Louvre - your responsibilities are to make sure people will come in the future and you understand why people visit. You also understand the cultural significance of everything in the place.

You receive a letter from the world’s greatest criminal mastermind with the following threat:

In the next seven days I will destroy a portion of the art collection in your museum - you will get a choice as to what portion of the art collection will be destroyed. Your options are the following:

The Mona Lisa will be destroyed; or

Everything except the Mona Lisa is destroyed.

Do not try to hoodwink me in this situation I will carry out exactly one of these actions in the next seven days and public will then find out that the action has been carried! No fakes will fool me!

The Choice is Yours!

The smoking Thief (criminal mastermind)

Which one do you choose?

RedDave2

Unless I'm missing some trick here, mona Lisa takes a hike. There's way too much other stuff in the louvre of cultural and historical significance to throw out for one thing.

mistercrayon

You aren’t missing anything.

GurtTractor

I've not been to the Louvre but I can't imagine letting one piece of art no matter how great take precedence over many others in this kind of scenario.

poprock

I’d publish the threat. Turn it into a public vote - let the audience choose. It’d be the greatest arts marketing campaign in history.

Yossarian

Tell them to destroy the Mona Lisa, donate it to another museum so it’s no longer in the collection. Job done.

Paul the sparky

Yossarian wrote:

Tell them to destroy the Mona Lisa, donate it to another museum so it’s no longer in the collection. Job done.

They'd destroy you in its stead

Yossarian

In that case, turn myself into an artwork, donate myself to the Louvre, be protected by being in the portion of the collection that won’t be destroyed.

RamSteelwood

Challenge the criminal to an all-or-nothing fist fight.

poprock wrote:

I’d publish the threat. Turn it into a public vote - let the audience choose. It’d be the greatest arts marketing campaign in history.

This is probably the best solution though. "Quick, come visit before some of it is destroyed. BE HERE when the destruction happens!"

mistercrayon

You’d let the public vote on this?

Also don’t forget your responsibility covers the long term prospects.

Yoss: no hoodwinking - The Mona Lisa goes or everything else. Assume the collection is defined by what is the collection at the time of the letter.

Paul the sparky

Isn't the Mona Lisa notoriously underwhelming in the flesh? I don't think it'd be a tough choice between that and everything else. Leave the space where it used to be empty so people can gawp at that instead

GooberTheHat

The mona Lisa has to go. You could then hang a replica of it if it was really that big a draw.

Yossarian

Put a Mona Lisa iPhone case in the space instead.

Moot_Geeza

Keep the Mona Lisa but get someone in to make her look a bit more grateful.

mistercrayon

GooberTheHat wrote:

The mona Lisa has to go. You could then hang a replica of it if it was really that big a draw.

They already do I think but - i think it’s draw is more than the thing itself. It’s draw is that it’s the Mona Lisa.

Question: what’s the second most famous painting? I think the relative difficulty to answer that question compared to the most famous painting tells you something about the Mona Lisa.

And to add to red daves point. I’m sure there is a lot of cultural significance but I’d be hard pressed to name one specifically.

Yossarian

mistercrayon wrote:

Question: what’s the second most famous painting? I think the relative difficulty to answer that question compared to the most famous painting tells you something about the Mona Lisa.

Might have been difficult to answer once, but now that it’s become an emoji, it’s definitely The Scream.

Paul the sparky

The Musée du Louvre contains more than 380,000 objects and displays 35,000 works of art in eight curatorial departments

Yeah, I don't care how many people think of that first when it comes to paintings, you're not losing the rest just because the Mona Lisa is more famous

equinox_code

sorry but you really have to still try and hoodwink this criminal. imagine the furore if it became known that you just agreed to one of these ridiculous demands?

mistercrayon

Which would cause less furore do you think then. Try not to find a solution here. I’m sure there are ideas I haven’t thought of.

The principle game here is: if you’re in charge of the louvre do you think you have more to lose in the long run if you lose the Mona Lisa or Everything else?

tin_robot

Taking the omnipotent power of said criminal at face value, then it's a pretty easy decision to torch the Mona Lisa. Hell, even if it was "choose between the Mona Lisa or the Venus de Milo" I'd probably still trash Mona. I don't think the Louvre would struggle to get punters with the rest of its collection, and maybe some of the other works would get a little more love. (You would, at least, be freed of the hopeless gaggle of tourists that usually means it's night on impossible to look at the Mona Lisa anyway.)

That said, if a criminal mastermind did make such a threat, I'd be infinitely more interested in what evil scheme they were actually hatching, as this one has "distraction whilst I pull off the heist of the century" written all over it...

mistercrayon

Yossarian wrote:

mistercrayon wrote:

Question: what’s the second most famous painting? I think the relative difficulty to answer that question compared to the most famous painting tells you something about the Mona Lisa.

Might have been difficult to answer once, but now that it’s become an emoji, it’s definitely The Scream.

Yeah my partner and I went with The Scream too as #2. Maybe David and God.

Moot_Geeza

In my experience if this was a would you rather Whatsapp game, whoever created the dilemma would be trying to add extra stipulations right now to even things up, so good on crayon for sticking to his original vision.

tin_robot

mistercrayon wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

mistercrayon wrote:

Question: what’s the second most famous painting? I think the relative difficulty to answer that question compared to the most famous painting tells you something about the Mona Lisa.

Might have been difficult to answer once, but now that it’s become an emoji, it’s definitely The Scream.

Yeah my partner and I went with The Scream too as #2. Maybe David and God.

Yeah, Creation of Adam, and The Scream are up there. (I'd go with Creation of Adam, I think.) Equally I reckon Van Gogh's Sunflowers and/or Starry Night are in with a chance. Da Vinci's got a second go at it with The Last Supper too.

Then maybe Hokusai's Great Wave as sort of underdog outsider bet - because whilst it's not one that necessarily pops into people's heads, it's widely referenced in other works, and other mediums.

poprock

poprock wrote:

I’d publish the threat. Turn it into a public vote - let the audience choose. It’d be the greatest arts marketing campaign in history.

This is what I based my recommendation on:

mistercrayon wrote:

You are in charge of the Louvre - your responsibilities are to make sure people will come in the future and you understand why people visit.

The value of the story here would hopefully equal the previous value of the Mona Lisa, in terms of a reason to visit the Louvre. Asking what the next most famous painting in the Louvre is misses the point – because after the Mona Lisa, the next most famous thing is the Louvre itself. (And I’m trusting that the French public would choose to torch the painting, not the entire rest of the collection.)

Diluted Dante

I ensure that smoke detectors are fitted and working and catch the thief in the act.

mistercrayon

The second most famous painting was to highlight how many streets ahead the Mona Lisa is in terms of cultural value and how much it is a part of our existence. It’s the painting to say if someone asks “name a famous painting”.

Diluted Dante

Whistlers Mother

regmcfly

Went to see the Mona Lisa about 16 years ago, utterly underwhelming. The Lonely Island were right.

Diluted Dante

Why was it on a boat?

regmcfly

EvilRedEye

If the Mona Lisa has had all that new-fangled x-ray scanning done on it, which IIRC it has, they could probably use that in the future to 3D print a convincing replica or something.

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