On November 28, two “portable museums” were delivered to the Oriental Institute (OI) and the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), with a third to be donated to the Chicago Cultural Center on December 8. Named “This Is Not a Bomb” (TINB), the nearly identical miniature museums are the culmination of a quarter-long project between the 2018 Tinker Visiting Professor Mariana Castillo Deball and the students taking her autumn course, “The Audience, the Archaeologist, and the Art Historian.” 

The studio course is built upon the techniques used to study archeological objects, as well as researchers’ interpretations thereof. As an artist, Deball’s practice draws heavily on research in archaeology, anthropology, and ethnography, and the course was designed with a similar framework. The portable museum presented to the Oriental Institute was cast in plaster, so that only by its destruction may its meanings be discerned. The T.I.N.B. museums contain replicas of real, imaginary, and parafictional artifacts created by the students, such as “Egyptian arms, Teotihuacan masks…and the possessions of an extraterrestrial Chicagoan,” according to the group’s signed donation letters to the aforementioned organizations. The museums themselves are modeled after the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library. 

Describing themselves as a “random confederation of unlike-minded vagrants,” the group explains in the letters that the “honor” of the T.I.N.B. museums will last “until the end of the world,” and that the above institutions are responsible for their protection. The gifts were well-received by OI Head Archivist Anne Flannery and SCRC Assistant University Archivist Eileen Ielmini. Throughout the quarter, Flannery had collaborated with Deball and her students, giving them access to the OI Museum’s archives to draw upon for their project.  

Mariana Castillo Deball: Petlacoatl is currently on display at Logan Center.