The Museum of Loss

by Peter Davidson

The Museum of Loss has no permanent home: its collections are always on tour, sometimes on show in more than one location at once. Things restless of their nature, disquieted and melancholy, objects borne down by a burden of memory too grave for them to sustain. It was to contain these that the Museum came into being.
The Museum has no website, publishes no maps, offers no directions to visitors. When it has halted and set forth its exhibits, the Museum never advertises its presence, save by the most discreet placard, noticed only by those predisposed to see it. There are, however, conditions in which the Museum is most likely to be found.

Winter dusk, prickle of  frost, cold in the air, smoke in the throat.
Lesser streets of provincial cities, railway arches, smudged brick, flaking stone.
River Harbour, fog, ships’ sirens, splinters of glass and ice between cobbles.
*
Latest summer, sullen and overblown, thunderstorms approaching. A fair on the edges of a country town.
Cut grass on the drainage ditch, level horizon, murmur of insects, heaviness of trees.
Vapour of petrol, mechanical music, arc lights and flares.
*
Outer London, failing parade of shops, overshadowed autumn day.
Weary end of afternoon, rain setting in, tyres on wet asphalt.
One shop lit behind a whited-out window.
*
Spring, hill road, long views of cold slopes and shores, far bitter wind.
Cardboard notices and arrows, tracks which are only a scatter of  stones in matted grass, rusted gates and fallen stones.
A croft or field barn, sole on that scarred hillside.

The visibility of the Museum depends to a great degree on the condition of the visitor. Unease and longing are the moods to which the Museum will disclose itself. Or a degree of fever, illness coming on. An aimless walk, undertaken as a late distraction, is liable to end at the door of the Museum. Those more robust, more anchored in the present, will stride past and never see its sign, never guess that it has almost brushed against their lives.
The curatorial staff are highly qualified for their posts, which is why they appear inconsolable. Hence the weary perfection of their manners, the sincerity of their expressions of regret.
The collections policy of the Museum is governed by the dictum WHAT IS TERRIBLE ABOUT OBJECTS IS LESS THEIR SILENCE THAN THEIR ELOQUENCE. The order of exhibits in the Museum’s cases is governed by heirarchies of displacement. And always the sense that there is a perfect place for the display of any object, and that that place is elsewhere.
There is no museum shop. Visitors will come to appreciate the absence.
Opening hours: belated, benighted.
Price of admission: in one sense, free. In another, at a price.