If you thought doing nothing about a GST deal that hands extra money to a state with a $3.5 billion operating surplus was not enough to really irritate people, try announcing you're sending them one of the country's most famous paintings to really rub it in.

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Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles - as vibrant and striking as it was expensive and controversial - is off on a holiday to Western Australia next year while the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra has repairs and a facelift.

If the building works demand a serious and lasting closure, put the highlights of international art on the road together rather than farming pieces out to a network of far-flung relatives.

But dressed up as a great act of cultural exchange, Blue Poles going alone is little more than Canberra bashing in fancy dress. It is also the latest act that shows when it really comes to it, the federal government likes talking up the idea of Canberra but does as little as it can get away with to ensure it is the nation's city.

The program of sending these works around the country is called "Sharing the National Collection". The gallery and the government talk excitedly about masterpieces in different places.

The masterpiece, if we need to entertain that deeply flawed idea, is only ever as good as what is around it. Does it overtake what has come before? How does it sit with what else artists were making at the same time? What does it say of its own time and how does it address ours?

There will be people who will never make it to Canberra to see the collection, whether for reasons of mobility, health or money.

A National Gallery that proudly toured a selection of its best pieces every now and again rather than posting out piecemeal bits would be an admirable national institution.

Lending art is a magnificent, and often right, thing to do. Masterpieces from Paris at the National Gallery in 2009-10 was the kind of once-in-a-lifetime show that brought pictures from the Musee d'Orsay that demonstrated why we ought to care so much about the application........

© Canberra Times