Stele this post

There is in the National Gallery a blank brown metal slab called Stele. Pigeons have pooped upon it. In Harvard Yard in Cambridge there are also steles – these are stone tablets sitting atop tortoises. From my college years I remember these as blank. Years ago, I visited China, somewhere in the countryside of Xian I recollect visiting a stele of Empress Wu. Unlike other emperors who had scrupulously recorded their achievements, she had left hers blank. Others had filled it in. Still others had scratched out the text and filled in more. “Stele, revised” as it turned out was more visited than “Stele, preserved as a pickle.” I was at the Brooklyn Museum at a fashion exhibit recently, every dress had an extensive write up. At the companion exhibit at the Met, not only were there labels, but there was film documentation of the dresses worn, and an audio guide with color reporting on context, design, and status. Then, I recalled the rows of mummy sarcophagi at the Cairo Museum in Egypt. They each were covered in meaning, glyphs of different colors, images and design, matched by a short paper label, typed, leaving the modern mystified. Who knows really?