Trinity Hospice, etc - 2

The BBC's 6:30 NW regional news programme did a nice whitewash job just now on behalf of the trustees and management of Trinity, with a lots of visuals to grab your emotions, but with a very telling parting shot - 'the pictures, bought last year, have already appreciated in value.'  Hm.  You could almost hear the 'so there.'  Well, if you're going to speculate with other people's money, I suppose 'art' is a slightly safer bet than the horses, but it is still a rather slippery argument which treats 'cost' and 'value' as though they meant the same thing. 


The point, surely, is that there are legitimate concerns about whether the hospice has acted ethically, for it has evidently not acted wisely, and there is certainly some evidence of hypocrisy in its defensive statements.  The 'chapel', for instance is 'non-religious', presumably as a sop to appease people of other faiths and those of no faith, but the artist is a Christian; the pictures were unveiled by the Dean of Blackburn Cathedral, which houses more of the same artist's work; and the hospice maintains a chaplaincy.  It really cannot have it both ways.


You can see more of Penny Warden's paintings on her website, and read about her method of working there.  It is quite astonishingly interesting.


More in the next post.