Exhibit 5

The entire display consisted of nothing more than two brown chicken eggs and a pocket watch.  These items were sitting on a wooden stool with the area roped off to keep the general public and people like me from fussing with things.

Off to the left of the display and on our side of the rope was a wood tripod holding a sign that read - No Moving Parts. Artist: Angelia deGlazer

I stood there for some time just thinking about that.  What did it mean?  What was the artist saying?  Was she trying to say there were no longer little heart beats inside the eggs, and that even in the finest man-made items things eventually cease to function?  Did her artsy, esoteric display suggest that in nature as well as in Man, life stops?

Or was this a much simpler message, one so obvious as to allude the collective wit now standing before it?  Perhaps we were the ones now with no moving parts.  Maybe it was the intent of this exhibit to alter those viewing it.  Simply by placing something so obscure in front of a random group of on-lookers, the group dynamic would kick in and they would unwittingly become the exhibit.

No.  That couldn't possibly be it.  Maybe I was missing the bigger picture.  I took a few steps back.  I wanted to take in the entire display, wall to wall, top to bottom.  After a very few minutes the others who had been studying this setting gave up and wandered off to the next exhibit.

Now my view was completely unobstructed.  I could see the left-hand wall, the complete right side and everything displayed.  It didn't help.  The longer I looked at it the dumber I felt for not getting it.

A gallery worker came up from my left side.  He was wearing a tee shirt that said, STAFF, and he had a small two-way radio clipped to his belt.  As he stepped over the rope and into the display he unclipped the radio from his belt and spoke into it.

"You're right, Larry.  Exhibit five is not set up yet."  He then slipped the watch into his pocket, scooped up the two eggs and grabbed the stool with his left hand.  He then stepped back over the rope and walked down the hall.  "I'm going to take my lunch break.  Holler if you need me."






I glanced down at my watch, hoping it was time for Happy Hour.