Two non-descript trucks rolled into the FMNH docks early this morning. I was informed just after they arrived that there wouldn’t be any artifacts in this shipment. What’s being set up over the next few days is the “pre-install”: mounts, reference photographs, Plexiglas cases and all of their bases (check it out; that kinda rhymes). The exhibit preps rolled them in all morning… one-by-one and two-by-two. At the time of this writing, the once modest Hall E has been almost completely transformed from a small underground corner of the museum into what can only be described as a shrine waiting to happen.

The hall looks like the scene of a very thorough crime. Scattered everywhere along both of the long, narrow corridors are small cylindrical columns, thick rectangular bases, and short odd-sided platforms; their brushed and pebbled copper finishes just as they stood in the Smithsonian (in design if not in placement.) Even though the mounts fill space in the hall, their presence without the artifacts in place creates an incredible vacuum. Imagine an entire art gallery full of empty frames.

I’m a rational guy. I’ve seen The Magic of Myth in D.C. I know that what’s coming here in just a few days is pretty much the same stuff I saw a few years ago. But walking into the hall this afternoon; seeing all those empty spaces and knowing what the place will look like by this time next month…

Le Penguin
“Excuse me, I have something in my eye…”