The Petrified, Part 1

This text includes content quoted or adapted from actual events, essays, and other sources. For “The Old Woman,” see: Randy Kennedy, “Metropolitan Museum Completes Round of Layoffs,” New York Times, June 22, 2009 →; and Roger Caillois, “Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia,” trans. John Shepley, October 31 (Winter 1984): 16–32. For “The Would-Bes,” see: Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant, trans. S. W. Taylor (1926; Exact Change, 1994); Simon Baker, “Surrealism in the Bronze Age: Statuephobia and the Efficacy of Metaphorical Iconoclasm,” in Iconoclasm: Contested Objects, Contested Terms, ed. Stacy Boldrick and Richard Clay (Ashgate, 2007), 189–213; Marcel Sauvage, La fin de Paris ou la révolte des statues, trans. Tyler Coburn (1932; Éditions Grasset, 1983); and Robert Desnos, “Pygmalion and the Sphinx,” trans. Simon Baker, Papers of Surrealism 7 (2007). The images in this text are watercolors by the author, respectively titled The Met Fifth Avenue, Gallery 126 and Getty Center, Museum South Pavilion, Gallery S203.