The Gulbenkian Museum of Random Labeling

Calouste Gulbenkian was an Armenian oil tycoon, and a devoted art collector. He practiced a philosophy he called "tithing for art" -- he spent ten percent of his income on things of beauty. Boy I wish I were rich enough to do that. He lived most of his life in Paris, but in 1942 he decided maybe it wasn't such a good idea to be a rich Armenian in Paris -- he wasn't Jewish, but he was swarthy -- and started making plans to leave forthwith. Unfortunately nobody wanted him, despite his riches -- England and the US both refused him entry. Portugal was the only place that would take him. That worked out well for all concerned, though, since he loved it here so much that he never moved out of his hotel room -- he lived in the same suite, in the same luxury hotel in Lisbon, from 1942 until he died in 1955. When he died he bequeathed his entire art collection to the government of Portugal, in gratitude, and they built an entire museum to hold it. It's a beautiful museum, in a beautiful park a few subway stops away from the center of Lisbon, and I was in a beautiful mood when I went out there today, since I haven't been to any museums yet on my trip (Portugal not being a big museum country in general).

The Gulbenkian is arranged chronologically, and has a small but important selection from each historical era -- Egyptian funerary statues, Greek coins, Islamic textiles, etc. The very first room I walked into was the Egyptian room, and I was enjoying it thoroughly until I came to a very odd case. There were four objects in the case and a label with four different items listed on it, but the items on the label did not seem to match up with the objects in the case. The label said "female figurine", for example, but the object in the corresponding place in the case was a black and white stone bowl. Curious. Even curiouser, these labels sounded familiar, like I had read them before. Sure enough, I checked and found that the exact same label also existed on the opposite side of the room, next to a case whose contents it did describe. So then I had to decide whether to potentially make a scene or not. So awkward, you know, when you notice something wrong but don't know whether it would be tacky to correct it or not. Usually it is tacky to correct someone's mistake, but would that stop me?

I finally decided in favor of being the squeaky wheel (not a huge surprise for those of you that know me) and went over to the guard. "Desculpe, fala Inglis?", I asked (Excuse me, do you speak English? -- the most important phrase in any tourist's vocabulary, in any language, bar none). He shook his head and motioned me to the ticket desk. I screwed up my courage and approached the heavily-eyelinered woman at the ticket desk to say "Desculpe, one of the labels is -- wrong?" She said, without missing a beat and almost as a friendly challenge, "Show me." I took her to the room (leaving behind a bewildered line of people waiting to buy tickets to the museum) and showed her the two labels and she spent an inordinate amount of time examining them, as if to prove to herself that they were indeed identical and that one of them did indeed fail utterly to describe the contents of the case it was supposed to be describing. She squinted at the black and white stone bowl for a very long time, as if trying to convince herself that it was not in fact a female figurine, perhaps just a very subtle, abstract one. Finally she said, "This room was closed... they found a... something that eats the wood? A bug, we must kill it. When they reopened... they must have moved the case but not the label." When did they reopen the room, I asked? A week ago, I was told. A whole week with a duplicate label on the wall of the most prestigious museum in Lisbon; I was the first person who had noticed. It was funny and annoying at the same time -- I actually really wanted to know what kind of stone that black and white bowl was made of, and now I never will.