Thin Earth Blog

Two curators in the cafe of the Gardiner Museum in Boston.  They are listening to a consulting conservator “mansplain” the process of preserving a Roman sarcophagus, part of the permanent collection of the museum.  The Gardener Museum is the former private residence of Isabella Stewart Gardener and it features a spectacular open courtyard in which…

The rough sketch below is of one of the totem poles in Great Hall of the Field Museum of Chicago.  It is considered an example of totemism, the belief that humans have kinship with the natural world.  As James Frazer put it, a totem “is an intimate relation which is supposed to exist between a…

The empty shell of a rock crab, found on the blazing sand of the Cape Cod National Seashore on a hot day in August.  The carapace of an intention: all that’s left is the armor.  He (she?) dates back to the Jurassic, and is built of “highly mineralized chiton.”  What are you built of?  What…

This is the excerpt for your very first post.