How to make sense of treasure

Extract

Treasures in themselves are fetishes. Only the admirer can make 'treasure' of a find in isolation; but to wonder about it as treasure opens apt questions about why the thing was valued, by whom and under what conditions. It was worrying, then, when the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University's art collection, took in an exhibition of striking ancient finds returning to the Georgian National Museum from the USA (Smithsonian Institution and New York University). For the usual focus on the intrinsic qualities of fine art sits awkwardly with archaeological concern for context. The Fitzwilliam did tend to isolate the exhibits; but, here, that yielded an advantage as well as a difficulty.