Footnotes to a History of Museums
Kristina Marie Darling

1.A room that housed her beloved's lost cufflink.

2.Within the foyer, she had constructed a small diorama to illustrate the significance of their exchange. Her sisters began referring to this device as a "museum."

3.Statuary.

1. A set of statues considered as a group.
†2. The art of creating statues.
‡3. A sculptor.

4.The silent film follows its heroine through a labyrinth filled with marble cherubs. Although reunited with her beloved, she flinched upon seeing the broken thread in her hand.

5."Only then did I understand the task of a curator. One must maintain the collection, but also navigate its endless white halls. After leaving the harbour we lost sight of the shore."

6.Her initial desire for a collection was not quite so straightforward. To her sisters it suggested a deeper anxiety about losing, and perhaps also maintaining, the emotionally fraught correspondence.

7.Agitation. Translated from the French as "unrest."

8.Meaning the glass compartment, which held the most dangerous of these domestic objects.

9.Inside the room they found that the statuary had been dismantled. His marble hands gesturing to an empty room.