Value vs Values

A news story I found this morning about stolen art brings me back to a subject I find endlessly fascinating. How do we value the things around us?

A Gaugin painting, stolen and later sold at auction for a miniscule price, with other lost or abandoned items, hung in a man's home for over 40 years and nobody noticed. Had it been in a museum, it would have been seen and admired (or criticized) by thousands of people over that same time span. It would have been guarded and insured and protected from the elements. It would have been curated and maintained, listed in brochures, validated by experts to establish its provenance. As it was, it hung in the dining room because it was a picture of food.

So what is its true value? Is it the money it could fetch if sold at auction now? Is it the pleasure the man's family and friends derived from having a fine still life on the wall? The article says he also bought another painting of lesser value at the same auction. Its value must have been so much less that the artist didn't even deserve to be mentioned. So does the value lie in the artist's name and reputation? It might be that the "lesser value" painting was more appealing to its owner than the Gaugin. Who knows?

I find this topic interesting because I'm so surrounded by stuff in our house. Also because I've hung around with museum people and historians for so much of my life. I have a lot of family antiques which have been passed down for several generations. As to their monetary value, I have no clear idea. I know the family provenance for many pieces ----- Aunt Lou did the needlework on these chair covers, this doll came into Iowa territory in the covered wagon, this marble-topped table with the crack stood in Mimi and Grandaddy's parlor, the cobalt blue teapot with the abalone stork on the front and the broken spout were Mabel's. But if all this stuff was bundled up and shunted to the auction house, stripped of all ID except the physical descriptions, where would the value lie? For me, much of the value is in knowing the stories, identifying pieces in old photos, having heard the voices of great-grandparents who owned this collection of hatpins, those old postcards, this inscribed book. 

I could sell them at auction and carry home the money, but it wouldn't represent their value to me, nor would the new owners have the same appreciation as I have. They might love the lines of this chair, be ecstatic about completing a set of china,or feel they made out like a bandit on this old mahogany secretary ----- those are values, too. But not the same as knowing who sat in those chairs one hundred years ago. 

We all get caught up in worth and value. It underlies most decisions, whether we're aware of it or not. We exercise value and worth whether comparing prices on paper towels at the grocery store or deciding between the house with five acres in the country or the one in town with a two car garage and a hot tub. Our values show up in everything we do and so often it has little to do with the inherent value of something. Remember those commercials for whatever the product was ---- popcorn and ice cream $10, helium balloons $20, smiles of a birthday kid, Priceless? That's the deal.

There have long been admonitions and sayings about value and worth, reminders that "The best things in life aren't things" or "You can't take it with you." Perhaps it is human nature to want to hoard and store up things to pass along, or hedge against future uncertainty. One of my oldest friends, who along with her husband and sons had built their dream house, doing much of the work themselves, lost it all in a fire. Nobody was home. It was a complete loss, but they were all ok. Later she told me that the things she missed the most were the mementos, the baby pictures, saved letters, things that were personal and irreplaceable. Things related to people and their stories, to love.

I ask myself frequently what it is that I love, what matters the most? In the way of my ancestors, I won't have any money to leave my children, but there will be stuff ---- stories and things that won't last forever, may or may not have monetary value, and will present them with the necessity of making decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of. That will be my legacy of material wealth, but I don't believe it's all that I leave. The most valuable things I leave my kids have nothing to do with stuff, and everything to do with worth. And values. And love.