GLASGOW has a unique public sculpture heritage but does not seem to be very good at looking after it (Row as city statues set sail for the US, June 15). SNP boss John Mason's intervention in the Townhead statues controversy is a welcome reminder that the management of this aspect of our urban inheritance is a political and not just a ''cultural'' issue.

The allegorical figures of Knowledge and Learning that are now on the point of being deported to the USA were created as part of the wave of library building in the early part of this century, financed by millionaire Scots emigre Andrew Carnegie who wanted to give something back to the country of his birth.

Their loss to a modern American tycoon is not just ironic; it shows a shameful ignorance of the true meaning of the historic art of our city.

What is most distressing about the decision to let them go is that they are not just run-of-the-mill works, but statues of exceptional quality. They were carved not by John Fairweather, as your article claims, but by James C Young, an artist responsible for many fine pieces in Glasgow, and one of the team of carvers who produced the decorative reliefs on Kelvingrove Museum.

As it happens, my colleague Gary Nisbet has recently called for the restoration of the lost bronze figures by Archibald Macfarlane Shannan on the towers of Kelvingrove as part of its projected facelift. Let us hope his call is heeded. In the meantime, though, we have to learn to value and properly care for what we still have.

You quote your anonymous ''spokeswoman'' from the council as saying that there is such a surplus of wonderful work in Glasgow that we can afford to allow wealthy American asset-strippers to come in and help themselves.

It is frankly outrageous that council officials should speak about our city in such terms. This is the kind of gung-ho philistinism that we at the Public Sculpture Research Unit at Glasgow School of Art have been trying to overcome for many years now, so far with a depressing lack of success.

There is a massive educational job to be done here, and if the loss of these two beautiful statues does no more than alert the people of Glasgow to what is being snatched from under their noses some good at least will have come out of it.

Ray McKenzie,

Glasgow School of Art,

167 Renfrew Street, Glasgow.

June 15.