I think the real reason for Usmanov's investment in Highbury (apart from the fact that it's the price of a lunch for someone like him)
Some lunch, even by British restaurant standards! - but I get your meaning, of course.
is that it's putting somewhere aside for a rainy day.
Which I suppose might be wise, if he's going to give substantial purchases such as this one away to the Russian nation; he's only reckoned to be worth a couple of billion or thereabouts, so whilst investments such as Arsenal and the Slava collection are unlikely to railroad him into penury, the do represent rather more than mere pocket change, I think.
Whilst it's marvellous that these artefacts have been saved for the nation, it seems emblematic of our times that tangible "stuff" peripherally related to a performer is more deserving of investment than the live artform?
Although I suppose most of this stuff isn't memorabilia, but collectable antiques, whose value barely depends on the identity of the previous owner.
I think that your last sentence here addresses the concerns understandably expressed in your previous one.
"Rostro" was said to have "the eye" for collectabilia, and at a time when many were ditching "boring old stuff" in favour of buying Mercs or Gucci, he made quite a few wise purchases...
Sorabji used to have - and do - pretty much the same, albeit on a vastly smaller scale and, considering that, in his case, his income was so small, it was probably just as well that he, too, had "the eye" for such things (and, coincidentally, his home from the early 1950s until the mid-1980s was actually called "The Eye").
Russians have never trusted their banks with their pensions much, and wisely so as it turned out.
Do any of us?! Over the years I've heard a number of string players, for example, make remarks along the lines that they play their pensions every day...
But there's an amusing apocryphal anecdote of some distant relatives of Vishnevskaya's, who decided to sell a painting inherited from an uncle, to raise some needed cash. They came down from St P to Moscow with the painting, to ask Rostropovich's opinion, and the great cellist looked the piece over thoroughly. "Well, Slava, what do you think? Is it an original?". "Of course it's an original! No doubt about it! Who the hell would copy shit like this?"
Nice one!
Best,
Alistair
