Phil & Monique: Objects Speak

FADE IN:

INT. MUSEUM CONFERENCE - CAFE - DAY 

At a table are MONIQUE, exhibition developer wise beyond her years, and PHIL, anxiety-prone independent museum consultant. SVEN, enthusiastic curator, hurries past carrying a box of worksheets.

SVEN: [Without slowing] Morning! You guys coming to my session, “Objects Speak for Themselves”?

PHIL: Yep!

MONIQUE: [Gestures with coffee] Yep!

PHIL: [Mutters] So untrue.

MONIQUE: No, I’m really going.

PHIL: I mean his title. It should be “Objects Can’t Speak for Themselves.”

MONIQUE: Uh, what?

PHIL: Once a museum hired my boss at the time to do an exhibition. It was meant to prove how complex the cultures of Native people were before Europeans arrived. The curators showed us the star objects meant to prove their point. It was a handful of tiny brown pottery fragments.

MONIQUE: Sherds!

PHIL: Sherds. I blurt out, “Those look like dirt!” My boss literally kicked me.

MONIQUE: [Chokes on drink]

PHIL: But later that same curator said, “They do look like dirt. Visitors won’t understand. Can your exhibition help our objects speak?” And it did.

MONIQUE: Aww. Should we tell Sven?

PHIL: You can. I’m not going to his session anyway.

FADE OUT.