Sir, – Your correspondent (Tut, tut: Tutankhamun's beard 'hastily glued back on') laments the poor conservation work carried out on Tutankhamun's mask at Cairo's Egyptian Museum and this in a country that relies heavily on heritage tourism.
Poor conservation standards are witnessed by conservators in Ireland as a matter of course: unprecedented wear and tear caused by unregulated numbers of visitors to historic sites, well-meaning but untrained staff using damaging cleaning methods and materials on objects, the light let stream in on delicate furnishings and pictures.
In the not-too-distant future, there truly will be nothing left except, to quote Thomas Sheridan, “a curtain worn to half a stripe”.
Minister for Arts Heather Humphreys announced funding for the Structures At Risk Fund in February of this year, yet it is the contents of those buildings that bring them to life and that visitors pay to see; they are in dire need of an equivalent fund that will support a conservation advice service accessible by all. – Yours, etc, ERICA DEVINE Dublin Decorative and Fine Arts Society, 51 Sandycove Road, Co Dublin.