A state-size version of 'Antiques Roadshow'

The treasure is all around us.

It's in the garage or in the attic collecting dust. It's near the sump pump or on the mantel next to that wedding gift no one really appreciated.

Or at least that's the myth that's played out on television shows such as "Antiques Roadshow." If you're not familiar with the concept, here's how it works: Well-meaning people drag in an oversized painting or tchotchke from their garage, mumble about how they never much liked it but explain that they brought it for "Roadshow" appraisers to look at, just in case.

And then an expert evaluates it and says, "Wow, that's worth $290,000."

Sometimes the expert adds, "Except for this cigarette burn and this red stain here - is this Kool-Aid? - that's the finest specimen of a charcoal drawing of New England pigs that we've ever seen. Get it insured."

The owner gasps - always - and says he had no idea it was so valuable.

Everyone watching at home says the owner got lucky.

The same theme plays out in a new line of Audi commercials. A doofus dad owns a baseball autographed by legend Honus Wagner but uses it to play fetch with his dog Pickles. In another, a family is unaware of the Vermeers hanging in their hallway.

They look like buffoons.

With all the subtlety of a frying pan to the face, the point is clear: We often overlook the treasures right under our noses.

We don't do this because of indifference, but because no one can be an expert in everything.

No one can know why a Honus Wagner baseball is valuable and what sculptures from the Incan empire go for on the open market and which New Mexican painter of the 1920s changed the landscape for watercolors.

Last week, the Virginia Association of Museums released a list of the state's 10 most-endangered artifacts (not to be confused with a similar list, the 10 most-endangered historical sites). One item and two of the three runners-up on the new list were based in Norfolk.

And the point - much like "Antiques Roadshow" - was to say, "Look at the treasure right under your noses!"

A silk tapestry from the Hermitage Museum & Gardens made the top 10. The artwork is the largest painted tapestry outside of Korea and is important to scholarship on Asian art, said Hermitage curator Lauren Northrup.

At one point, the tapestry's original art was painted over and, like an "Antiques Roadshow" piece, the cloth once was folded and kept in a drawer. (Buffoons!) Today, the tapestry would cost about $60,000 to restore and display.

Selected as runners-up were a group of 11 statues by Moses Ezekiel in the Norfolk Botanical Garden and the battleship Wisconsin. How could a navy ship be endangered? Officials say the time and money to preserve the hallmark of the downtown waterfront is expensive, especially considering that it sits in saltwater.

This was the first year that the museums association assembled the endangered list, and based on interest and online participation, officials said it was an overwhelming success.

The motivation for the project was to get attention through the media (we love lists) and catch the eye of visitors as well as potential donors who could help save some of the items.

But the list's very existence raises a question people in Virginia are not used to asking: Why are important artifacts not being preserved? (Even this column will make it to microfilm.)

Yes, art is always disintegrating in some form, but how can items of even mild historical significance be endangered when the state has more than 1,000 museums, galleries and heritage sites and even a new national monument in Fort Monroe?

The reason is simple. Preservation is expensive. Officials expect it will cost $100,000 to preserve former Chief Justice John Marshall's Supreme Court robes in Richmond. It's nearly impossible to believe anything related to Thomas Jefferson in Virginia could be endangered, but shockingly his working papers as governor, stored at the Library of Virginia, made the list.

The solution to the problem is the same message that's implied on "Antiques Roadshow": Take care of these items. Don't mess 'em up. Don't drink red Kool-Aid or any color Kool-Aid around these things.

The experts have spoken, and their warnings show it's not too late to do something about these endangered valuables. Virginia's gotten lucky.

Now comes the hard part, the expensive work that's rarely portrayed on TV shows or in commercials: making sure that we don't depend on luck again.

Mike Gruss, (757) 446-2277, mike.gruss@pilotonline.com, PilotOnline.com/gruss