The Museum Vaults: Excerpts from the Journal of an Expert

The second of a four-volume series copublished by NBM and the Louvre invites artists to create a story involving the museum. Mathieu's follows an expert hired to catalogue a vast, half-ruined museum; he encounters inhabitants living in the lower reaches who have no understanding of the location or its contents. A Kafkaesque catalogue of paradoxes ensues: paintings kept in the dark so the light will not damage the colors that no one will ever see; statues restored then broken then defaced to keep their states \x93authentic\x94; a frame maker who considers his contribution the true definition of painting. As years go by, the expert becomes old and unkempt as further and further levels of absurdist cataloguing are discovered. Eventually, he discovers the deepest layers and the secret behind the Mona Lisa, even as he passes his journal on to another \x93expert\x94 for a continuation of these meaningless attempts to quantify art without perceiving its beauty. The story is rendered in grim, gray tones, which make the endless rounds of the museum workers look all the more fruitless. Like the expert, readers will be glad for the rays of real light and art at the end of this dark satire. (Feb.)