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Bound and Gagged
Totem-like creatures strapped, gagged and bound
Discovered in the bowels of the museum;
Stored, held prisoner-captive out of sight-eye;
Paradox of capture encaptured and enigmatic force field permeates the being;
Released from the catacombs to public eye
Still strapped, bound and gagged in paradox–
A force field of power (magic).
Ambiguity, what me!
Ed Moses
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The traveling biographies of some objects (which may first be a commodity, then a souvenir, a gift, a keepsake, and, later, a family heirloom) come to an end when they are donated to a museum.
The objects in Ed Moses' piece originally come from Africa and Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific. For me, Ed Moses has highlighted how museums literally “hold” collections– seemingly against their will. Displaying these objects exactly as we house them in our collection storage facilities, in the framing and strapping we employ to safeguard objects in case of earthquake, causes me to reflect, with some ambivalence, on how museums take objects out of circulation, restrain them in collection storage, and effectively end their traveling biographies as cultural objects.
W. Warner “Bill” Wood, Ph.D.
Curator of Anthropology
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