Death is not the negation of life, but of birth. Life, therefore, would not, semantically, have its opposite. It would not be a binary concept, but a process.

It is November. You’ll say: “What a revelation!” I’d reply: “At least these covers of mine serve some purpose!” Of course, it’s November! We are once again in November. And yet, most people, including myself, are convinced we’re talking about time. It’s November, and we, compared to the position we occupied in the universe last year, have moved, riding our planet, about twenty billion kilometers. It doesn’t seem to me that we’ve truly returned to November, to that November of last year, or rather, to the place that we, a year ago, called November. So then: where are we? When and how much are we?

It is November and, according to the calendar, the second day of this wonderful month: the day dedicated to the commemoration of the dead, at least for Christians. For pre-Christian cultures, this time of year represented the premonition of a closeness between the realm of beating hearts and that of those dissolved, a proximity that could no longer occur during the rest of nature’s annual cyclicity. Speaking of “cyclicity”: one wonders why so many identify this geometric manifestation, vaguely and synoptically, with the sun’s revolution, which triggers the rhythm of the seasons, an aspect, that of their alternation, which our species has often tried to project into other dimensions and onto other scales.

Those familiar with Catholic liturgy, today more than ever, will have heard not so much about the dead, but about a trait present in our species, one that seems to define us: the desire to live forever. Now I believe that those who, with a certain taste for self-inflicted suffering, have endured this reading, are beginning to glimpse what death has to do with museums.

Death or rather, its cause, the entropy of systems, the law of laws (at least in this physical system) is what we all constantly fight against, except for suicides, whether voluntary or involuntary. Every thought, every activity, every action is stirred to contain the breakdown of breakdowns, the disorder of disorders: death.

Since the dawn of time, our species has tried to win this confrontation, without success, apparently. For me, it’s a matter of awareness: the reason why understanding, culture, and museums themselves exist, even if still immature in their expression. Death, as considered so far, is not the negation of life, but of birth. Life, therefore, would not, semantically, have its opposite. It would not be a binary concept, but a process.

Thus, our bewilderment, our fear, our anguish, and for many, a true and proper panic (very likely in my case, when I find myself in the circumstance of my departure, someone please remind me of this cover!) has transformed, ever since we realized, as a species, that we too “come to an end,” into a thirst for continuity, for perpetual existence, for infinity, as also recalled by Article 18 of Gaudium et Spes, by Saint Paul VI, Pope Montini, who speaks of man as a being projected toward infinity, restless, open, capable of transcendence.

Let us return, then, to our beloved museums: what relationship do they establish with death and with infinity? I perceive, precisely in these entities, and always have, a clear analogy and testimony of our cultural evolution and of the evolution of our awareness, individual, collective, as a species. Let us focus precisely on the aspect, on the term I chose as the title: infinity. Let us try to imagine how a museum might live infinity.

Two scenarios emerge: infinity as preservation and perpetual reference to testimonies of what has happened, of what has been produced, where time, an entity I admit I have never understood (if only it were just that!) reigns supreme, dictating epistemological rhythms, museum narratives, and didactic structures.

The second scenario, present in Eastern cultures, for example, is considered a perpetual regenerative capacity, a Heraclitean becoming, which tends to allow us to grasp our essence in the contingent, in the present, not in what has been, even if it reverberates and is part of us, nor in the future, a desire that denies, that distances, that postpones the appointment with the “satori” of existential awareness.

One of the most promising aspects, even though its drift is called “protagonism” and “relativism,” lies in the effort, also thanks to inclusion policies, to place the visitor at the center, who, in the future, if we wish to give a future to those who practice museology, will see their role evolve from that of a mere spectator.

Technology already makes the visitor a “user,” almost a consumer of cultural “emotions.” Here, however, another delicate scenario opens up, one of a didactic, pedagogical, and museological nature, which we cannot address in this context.

Between preserving everything, according to old fetishistic schemes, and “throwing” everything away, museological evolution is finding a compromise, a kind of “Copernican revolution,” identifying the person and their needs as the primary point of reference. My equestrian statue at the British Museum will certainly be beautiful, but what purpose would it serve to venerate it, if one does not understand the relationship it will generate with the child who looks up at it from below? (For those with limited sense of humor, of course, the matter of my statue is a hyperbole, a device to make this cover less pernicious for the readers’ psychophysical balance.)

Jokes aside, returning to the question of infinity, according to current evolutionary scenarios, we will pay less visceral, fetishistic attention to eternal masterpieces handed down to us from the past, and more attention to the process of continuous formation, aimed at various forms of awareness for the benefit of the visitor. The very concept of continuous formation is symptomatic of an attitude toward an anthropological vision of infinity: life as a multidimensional process, “quantistically” conceived, for example, investigative and exploratory of a possible transcendence, because it is inherent in ourselves, and less inclined to wait. This falls within the path of a cultural, and not only cultural, evolution that will increasingly distinguish us from what we once were. From imagining the “almost contact between two dimensional expressions of pre-Christian cultures” to grasping, in the evolutionary thrust, the individual and species-wide dimension toward a dynamic existential regeneration, a more conscious transcendence begins to take shape, a frontier that is truly attainable. Even in this case, theological references would find new vitality and new opportunities for analysis and perspective, though there will be other venues and occasions dedicated to the topic.

Among many, one is the design project that has been engaging us for several years: the “concept museum” of the Museum of Death by INFOGESTIONE (www.museodellamorte.com), a digital and physical space conceived precisely to propose, or perhaps re-propose, a dialectic on our shared frontier, which we call death on this side of the boundary, infinity on the other side of the limit. I found it quite amusing to see how, in recent days, many shop windows and many people displayed death-related symbols, and to realize that our information schedules, television, and film programming are made up of death and violence for its own sake as a main ingredient, while, when we present our Museum of Death project, most people (especially the men, who offer us urological perspectives through their tactile reactions) are surprised, as if meeting someone only by hearsay.

I would like to close this reflection by returning to the theme of the year, that of museal intelligence, highlighting how this kind of topics, of dissertations, and of invitations to reflection and dialogue, constitute what we refer to as the intellectual function of the museum. It is perhaps the principal function, one that may find meaning in the service our fellow humans seek in their Brownian wandering across this planet.