From "Museums Collect Protest Signs to Preserve History in Real Time/Curators surveyed the area outside the White House on Wednesday for artifacts that will help record the emotional turmoil" (NYT).
They swoop in.
This morning, driving to the sunrise, at the turtle crossing, we saw birds picking over the smashed body of a plate-sized turtle.
I thought: How mean of the birds. But the birds didn't smash the turtle. Yes, but they delighted in the corpse.
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28 comments:
Sounds a lot like the Twitterverse.
- Krumhorn
Does the article say whether they also collected Tea Party signs? Or would that have been too deplorable?
You prefer the turtle to be wasted on bacteria?
These are precious artifacts commemorating the establishment of our new national religion, AmericaIsRacist-ism.
Museums are doing this? Why?
They should wait for found object artists to put the signs into aesthetically moving tableaus. Because they're museums, not historical societies.
"Delighted"?
Don't anthropomorphize animals, Ann. They hate it when we do that.
"I thought: How mean of the birds. But the birds didn't smash the turtle. Yes, but they delighted in the corpse."
Like the members of the mob who didn't tear down the statues themselves, but jumped on them once they were down. Like primitive savages.
Has even one museum director or curator spoken out against the defacement or destruction of statues, or the vandalism of monuments? Has even one museum offered to place the statues in a safe place, but insisted that they should be preserved for artistic and historical reasons?
I hope at least the museums are honest with their new collections. "This poster proclaiming 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot' is based on a fabrication," for example.
Big Mike said...
Does the article say whether they also collected Tea Party signs? Or would that have been too deplorable?
That's what i was wondering too!
tim maguire asked...
Museums are doing this? Why?
That's NOT what i was wondering too; on account of because i saw they meant HISTORY MUSEUMS
(duh!)
But the birds didn't smash the turtle. Yes, but they delighted in the corpse.
It's what he would have wanted.
It's no fun preserving the past; much more enjoyable to navel-gaze at the eternal now.
"never let a crisis go to waste" often involves delighting in corpses.
...some of these corpsemen are here with us today
"...to Preserve History in Real Time." To do that, you must already have decided what is History (as opposed to Just Stuff That Happened, which can be allowed to fall into the Memory Hole and be forgotten).
As noted above, birds are opportunists, like looters, and similar to insects in their empathy and politics.
I wonder how the curators will respond when the mob comes for their artifacts with nothing more than intent to smash and destroy. Will they be startled and yell "Dudes! We're on your side!"
Let's smash all the RACIST statues, but keep all the idiot RIOTERS garbage...because History is so important, right???
I thought this was going to be about museums preserving the statues and monuments. But nope.
gilbar said...tim maguire asked...
Museums are doing this? Why?
That's NOT what i was wondering too; on account of because i saw they meant HISTORY MUSEUMS
(duh!)
So history museums MAKE history now? (duh!)
Were the birds really delighted, or were they just eating?
Would they be more or less delighted, versus the turtle carcass, with a nice rare steak cut into bite sized pieces?
During #OccupyWallStreet the Smithsonian collected signs, articles of clothing, even discarded coffee cups of the communist agitators.
They even opened up a separate wing in one of their museums to house the "historic materials".
I thought: How mean of the birds. But the birds didn't smash the turtle. Yes, but they delighted in the corpse.
Who told you the birds didn't smash the turtle?
As Jack walked back towards the sea the heat was greater, the glare of the white road more blinding, and the harsh
clamour of the cicadas louder still. He had rarely been so sad. The black thoughts flooded in, one upon another:
Admiral Hartley, of course; and the perpetual rushing passage of time; inevitable decay; the most unimaginable evil
of impotence... Instinctively he jerked back as something shot past his face like a block hurtling from high aloft in
action: it struck the stony ground just in front of his feet and burst apart - a tortoise, probably one of the amorous
reptiles of a little while ago, since this was the very place. And looking up he saw the huge dark bird that had
dropped it: the bird looked down at him, circling, circling as it stared. 'Good Lord above,' he said. 'Good Lord
above..." And after a moment's consideration, 'How I wish Stephen had been here.'
--Patrick O'Brian, "Treason's Harbour"
Such collecting has taken place at demonstrations around the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015, and during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., after the death of Michael Brown."
All police were acquitted or not charged in both of those cases. The protests were built mainly on slanted information or outright lies.
The collectors, however, almost certainly now display these objects to further the original lies. They are openly anti-intellectual and anti-historical. The same people adding asterisks to other museum pieces to warn of the objects' failing, now do the opposite, actively mislead.
Excellent, Nichevo!
“Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms.” - Josie Wales
Yesterday, in our oak tree, a Cooper's hawk clutching a live squirrel was repeatedly dive-bombed by screeching robins and crows. Flew to a bay laurel, no relief. Crows hate hawks.
Can't blame the birds when there's dinner on the whole shell in front of them.
This type of collecting is neither new nor novel. I was a Curator of Military and Political History years ago, and we Field Collected objects from protests and campaigns all the time. The Museum was in the State Capitol, so it was a target rich environment for politics. Only two issues come to mind, one - the travelling Vietnam Wall kept everything left by visiting veterans, and one election year the Dems wanted us to buy campaign stuff rather than just hand it out.
On the wall over my workbench I have a sweet collection of batshit Lefty ephemera my son acquired off lampposts and bulletin boards at the UW. I guess I’m a curator of sorts.
Big Mike said...
"Does the article say whether they also collected Tea Party signs? Or would that have been too deplorable?"
Maybe there were none left in the street or the trash bins.
Thank you, Howard. Surprised that the aerial can-opener technique never occurred to AA, who knows that animals are jerks.
What a wealth of culture PoB left for the world to share. Mad props to my BFF Mike, alas, who bought me Master and Commander many moons ago, thus slipping the needle straight into the vein.
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