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.

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