Historical Amnesia

There is something missing from most major museums. In the huge effort to catalogue the highlights of our entire existence, some very important things have been left out -- there are no tears, no crooked picture frames or dented walls that someone punched, no gold leaf flaking off of the frames, no sunspot in the lens, no sweaty handprints. What we get is confusing: restored this, restored that, things that are supposed to change but don’t; a perfect example of how the privileged take care of things. A guy puts his elbow through a Picasso he is trying to sell- he sends it to the restorer and is promised it will look like new.

This preservation of “the perfect” is what is not honest. I’m not trying to say that bigshot museums are liars. They are just cleaned up a bit. They are polished and manicured and prepared to face the public… perfectly. As though nothing ever happened. As though all of the time things look like this. They are have a very specific intention: to show the accomplishments of the rulers and the powerful. But the brass gets polished, the paintings get dusted, the floors are waxed. What is invisible is the staff taking care of it all. Even more invisible are the slaves that made it all possible.