Five o’clock tea
LE 'VITE' INUMANE DEI MUSEI
FELICE CIMATTI
Arena | 17.00-18.00

What does it actually mean to be anthropocentric? In a museum, for example? It means assuming that a museum—of any kind—is an institution reserved for humans. Yet this is not the case. Consider xerophilic organisms (from the Ancient Greek xērós, “dry,” and philos, “lover” or “friend”), organisms capable of surviving and reproducing in environments with extremely low levels of moisture, such as volcanic calderas or the hottest deserts. To the astonishment of conservators, it has been discovered that they also thrive in museums, feeding in particular on artistic heritage. The rust-coloured spots visible on Leonardo da Vinci’s famous self-portrait at the Royal Library of Turin, for instance, are the result of an “infection” caused by the xerophilic fungus Aspergillus halophilicus—a species whose name literally means “salt-loving,” referring to its ability to survive in highly saline and extremely dry conditions. Within museums, in the very “time” of art and culture, countless forms of inhuman life flourish. If we also consider the materials from which museums are built, we discover that roughly one-third of the minerals found on Earth would not exist without biological activity, whether through atmospheric oxygen production, microbial processes, or skeletal formations. Museums are saturated with inhuman life, whether we notice it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Image: Agnus scythycus borometz, from volume IV of Elizabeth Blackwell’s Herbarium Blackwellianum (1750–1773)