Dear Observer,
The museum in my town has this beautiful collection of fence wire. The museum, like all museums, might be considered boring: all these collections, all this saved rusty, dusty stuff that may have no meaning anymore. Certainly, the meaning has changed.
I love this collection of wire because of its formal beauty- the lyrical lines, the punctuation of the bends and barbs. It was on a painted plywood the last time I visited the museum, and of course, what did I want from my museum but frozen time. I wanted to visit it and photograph the wire the way it had been formerly presented on the painted plywood, black marker detailing each wire segment. But, the collection has been updated, and is now on some kind of plasticky board and these oversized tongue depressors hold the specifics. The change has kept me from giving you these beautiful wires, but I am ready, now, after 2 years, to accept and embrace this change.
What we save, how we save it, and where and when we present it are all such fascinating things to ponder on a grey December day, in a collection of musings, in a virtual, visual format that is organized chronologically.
