Registration

3 tractor trailers, 6 drivers, 6 art handlers, 3 registrars, two canine teams (Leroy and Shadow), and one plucky intern = 65 Shonibare crates unloaded, inspected, and dispersed around the museum waiting to be unpacked. Some were on the first sublevel; others on the second sublevel. Some in galleries, others in storage areas. All safe and secure until the first couriers arrived October 22.

The first crates to be opened contained a full-size model of an 18th century carriage in myriad parts. It was hard to imagine the body, various wheels, lamps, hub caps, steel perches and hooks, springs, leather straps with brass buckles, and trunks coming together to make a complete carriage, much less one suspended six feet above the ground in the piece entitled “Gallantry and Criminal Conversation.” Ten men and eight hours later the carriage was in place, trunks and all.