those 5000-odd unfortunates were never claimed by their families, so they rotted slowly to death, and their cremains just moldered in a forgotten room for decades- that is about as tear-inducing as anything i can think of right now. there are numbers atop each can, i hope there is a surviving log book with the names behind those numbers, so that some curiously caring researcher can look up the actual patients and redeem their lives via historical exposition. now that would be an art project with a heart, to display the library of dust along with photos and biographical information of the people behind each cannister of cremains. that has at least as much artistic/sociological merit as the various henry darger exhibits.
02 Mar 2011, 9:48 am
