How many years does it take to change a label?
February 24 2015
Picture: BG
Answer; 6. And counting...
Six years after I first proved that the above portrait is not Bonnie Prince Charlie, four years after the Scottish National Portrait Gallery agreed to change their cataloguing, and one year after I made a telly programme about the whole business and found a better replacement portrait, the National Museum of Scotland (which I visited yesterday) is still misleading its visitors by displaying the above image as 'Bonnie Prince Charlie'.
It's a simple print, and would take about five minutes to replace. So it can't really be a question of time and effort. Is it instead that many people just don't care about these things? Worrying if so...
Update - a reader writes:
I loaned a minaiture to the [leading London museum] and it took [...] 4 months for them to have a label printed with my name on it and a brief description of the sitter... think it was in total 5 lines! I provided the info too although very easy to find in about 3 seconds online. Apparently 'that department' (printing lot...always take ages...)
