Installation 3: Ride the Snake previous

Attendance at The Museum was down. Its last two exhibitions, Reconstruction! Carpetbaggers & Scalawags in the New South and Picchu! Art of the Ancient Incas, hadn't brought in nearly enough paying customers. The Restaurant didn't sell enough chitlins baskets (its special addition to the menu in honor of the Reconstruction! exhibit) and The Store didn't sell enough stuffed guinea pigs and Picchu! notebooks. It was hard to persuade people to become members with such lukewarm offerings in the galleries. To make matters worse, exhibits like The Science of Star Trek at World of Science and Warhol Doodles at The Modern Art Museum brought in busloads of people.

To get The Museum back on track, The Director called an emergency brainstorming session for all museum curators and various department directors. Before the meeting, everyone sat around the conference table and fiddled with mugs of coffee, laughing too loudly at anything anyone said.

The Director strode into the room ten minutes late. He was a tiny man, balding and had just the hint of a speech impediment left over from his childhood. Once, when he came to work in a wool sweater, someone suggested he looked “cuddly” and he smiled while turning an alarming shade of red. Since then, he stuck to suits, often three-piece, with silk ties he selected in Hong Kong.

Not much was known about The Director. He kept himself busy on the nonprofit party scene, popping up at all the right galas and fundraisers and serving on many boards. But his personal life was a closed subject. He had been divorced for so long that hardly anyone working at the museum could remember his ex-wife. She was mousy, some people said. She was a bitch, others insisted. The only point of agreement was that once, in the late 1970s, she wore a bright orange dress to an opening and got so drunk the paramedics were called, although not before she pulled the dress up over her head and crawled across the lobby floor in her coffee-colored nylons, sparking a debate amongst party-goers over whether or not underwear should be worn under nylons or not. After that, everyone's memory of her seemed to hit a blank wall.

“So, people, what shall we do?” The Director said, looking around at everyone gathered in the Grecian Room. “I hope you've come with ideas for exhibits that will spark public interest.”

Several ideas were immediately put forth. They were what might be expected when trying to engage the masses with art. French Impressionism (The Director's upper lip actually curled into a snarl), Van Gogh (the mentally ill never fail to capture the public's imagination) and Leonardo da Vinci were all bandied about. The Director listened to all of this while facing forward and looking slightly up above everyone's heads. Once the conversation ran out of steam, he looked around the table.

“Phillip,” he said, looking over to Phillip Mantou, Curator of
Antiquities as if just noticing him sitting there. “What do you have for us?”

“Well, I was thinking perhaps we could focus on ancient Rome...” Phillip ventured.

“Wrong!” The Director yelled, slapping his rather tiny palm against the table top. “What is one of the hottest touring exhibits right now?”

“Well, sir... my guess is that you're referring to the Tutankhamun exhibit but we can't have it. Its only going to Chicago and Philadelphia. In my opinion, it's all very political.”

“That's not the point,” The Director said. “The point is that people love ancient Egypt. Love it! Can't get enough of that Egyptian stuff.”

“This is true,” Lars Auerbach, Director of Development, said. “Anything mummified draws a crowd.”

“There's no solid explanation,” The Director said, “other than that people are fascinated and yet repelled by the specter of death.”

The room became very quiet. The Director stood up and paced around the room, making the long walk down to one end of the table and back again.

“It's true,” he said, speaking slowly as if puzzling something out. “We can't get King Tut and that's a pity. But we can't focus on what's wrong, we have to focus on what's right. And what's right is Egypt.”

He stopped in front of a window and turned his back on the others so that he spoke out towards the city skyline.

“I believe what's right is another exhibit that has been offered to us. It's got all the glamor - mummified animals, golden sarcophagi, jewels... And something else. This exhibit focuses on one of King Tut's lesser known relatives, a cousin...”

“Sir, are you talking about the Prince Anka exhibit?” Phillip asked, jumping up from his chair. “I've already turned that down. I will not have that traveling side show masquerading as art in my museum!”

“Not so fast, Phillip,” The Director said, losing his patience but quickly recovering it. “You're being negative again. Why don't you have a seat?”

Phillip pushed back his hair with both his hands. He wasn't very fond of bathing so the hair stayed that way, sticking straight up from his head in two graying sprays.

“Sir, with all due respect, this exhibit is lurid,” he said. “Anka was known throughout Egypt as being the most well-endowed man in all of the ancient world. His nickname was 'King Snake.'”

Titters erupted from the other end of the table and Mary Ellen Hightower, Manager of The Store, put her hand over her mouth.

The Director sighed. Suddenly he looked deflated.

“Phillip, I'm well aware of that aspect of the show. And yet, because of Anka's... status, his tomb was spectacular. They found thirty mummified virgins in there, meant to accompany him to the afterlife. And the hieroglyphics...”

“Are pornographic, sir. What about our mission? What about the thousands of school children who come here every month?”

The Director waved Phillip off. “We need a sexy show. There, I said it, it needed to be said. Enough of these Biblical sketches from the thirteenth century and Ansel Adams photographs of mountains...”

There was a collective gasp in the room.

“We need to make some money. Ride the Snake: The Afterlife of Prince Anka is available to us and it fits our time frame. I'm already in possession of the contract.”

“Let's discuss this,” Phillip said. “As Curator of Antiquities, I feel I must have a say in what gets displayed here. This is not a museum of oddities and curiosities...”

“And I'm The Director,” The Director said. “And I say we need to make some money if we want to spend the rest of our time showing cast iron banks from the early twentieth century.”

Everyone was silent, as if they'd just been chastised by their first grade teacher.

“Well,” Julia Brandywine said, clearing her throat. “I think I can sell this to the media. Sex sells, people. Even three-thousand-year-old dick sells.”

“Watch your language,” Elinore Spark, Curator of Decorative Arts, said. “I shouldn't have to listen to your potty mouth at a staff meeting.”

“That's the spirit, Julia,” The Director said. “I'm glad to see that someone is on board. It will be in all of your best interests to follow suit as quickly as possible. Ride the Snake will open here within the year. And Phillip will curate it.”

Phillip threw his head back in despair and gave a strangled gasp.

“Meeting adjourned,” The Director said.

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