The Forgotten Plan to Save Great Art From World War III

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From a secret treasure trove below the memorial to Oliver Wendell Holmes in DC to a retrofitted quarry in Wales, our governments have gone to great lengths to protect precious objects from ruin—and a new trove of declassified documents shine light on a new, little-known project to do just that during the Cold War,

Paranoia and fear wracked the Western world during the Cold War, and we got a new glimpse at just how seriously the UK government took the Soviet threat during the 1980s this week, when the National Archives declassified Cold War documents that detail the plan to protect the country's masterpieces if nuclear war broke out.

It wasn't the first time the idea had been floated. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the British government created something called Operation Methodical to hide its greatest treasures at Manod Quarry in Wales, where art had been stored in World War II:

Here's how The Guardian explained what would happen should the bomb drop:

There would be just six hours to save the nation's art treasures. The order was to be given at midday, the troops and museum staff would be deployed and then the lorries would begin arriving. Hours later, in darkness so as not to provoke panic, the Titians and the Turners and the Tintorettos would be on their way to Welsh quarries. When the ballistic missiles incinerated British cities, they at least would survive - though there may have been no one left to view them.

Obviously, that never happened. But by the early 1980s, the possibility of nuclear war was back—and this time, it was the museums who were asking for help. The idea was to store the works in two specially-outfitted rooms in formerly top secret government facility beneath North Wales, at Rhydymwyn, where mustard gas shells had once been stored.

So what paintings made the cut? During the Cuban Missile Crisis, planning documents cited byHyperallergic included mention of the amazing 14th century painting, the Wilton Diptych:

But the list also included modern works, lime Vincent Van Gogh's masterpiece Sunflowers, painted in 1888 and stored at the National Gallery:

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