Cultural relics, once lost, are generally assumed to be lost forever, which is perhaps why they are so often said to be lost “to time”—as if the objects themselves had come face-to-face with eternity and chosen to dissipate. For those of us whose ancestral totems are conspicuously missing from the public archives that are meant […]

Original source: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/02/13/hiding-in-plain-sight/