EST. NEVER — CONDEMNED SOON — OPEN NOW

The Musæum
of Lost Things

Wing IV · The Impossible Collection

Opening Hourswhenever remembered · closed during moments of certainty

FROM THE DIRECTOR'S FOREWORD

Every object in this wing has been rigorously authenticated as never having existed. Our conservators work by candlelight, restoring paintings to conditions they never enjoyed, in centuries that declined to occur.

Visitors are reminded that the collection cannot be stolen. It can only be forgotten, which is worse, and which is why we keep the lights low and the doors unlocked.

Romantic oil painting of a drowned cathedral city beneath green water — The City of Ys-Vitrea, Seen at the Hour of Its Descent

attrib. a follower of Caspar Aldous Merrow

CAT. Nº LT.IV.001

1858 daguerreotype of a comet suspended over a small town — The Comet Anselm over the Township of Verity, Ohio

attrib. E. Quill Hastings, itinerant photographer

CAT. Nº LT.IV.002

Medieval tapestry of a cartographer weaving a map of an island that was never found — The Cartographer Weaves the Isle of Sanc Perduta

Workshop of the Blind Weavers of Arras-sur-Nulle

CAT. Nº LT.IV.003

Ukiyo-e woodblock print of a lighthouse keeper releasing paper lanterns over the sea — The Keeper of Cape Yūrei Releases the Year's Unanswered Letters

attrib. Utagawa Hiroshige IV, who declined to exist

CAT. Nº LT.IV.004

Dutch vanitas still life with skull, flowers, and an hourglass — Vanitas with Hourglass Running Upward

attrib. the Monogrammist V.G.N. (Delft?, active never)

CAT. Nº LT.IV.005

Surrealist painting of whales as trains in a grand railway station — Grand Terminus of the Cetacean Line, Rush Hour

Odilon Marchetti-Blau (disputed by Belgium)

CAT. Nº LT.IV.006

Byzantine mosaic of an astronomer saint holding an astrolabe against gold — Saint Astrolabia, Patroness of Uncharted Stars

Mosaicists of the Basilica of Holy-Wisdom-That-Was-Not

CAT. Nº LT.IV.007

Victorian watercolour study of moths with stained-glass wings — Plate XIV — Moths of the Cathedral Species *(Vitraria nocturna)*

Miss Emeline Thorne, F.L.S. (elected posthumously, in advance)

CAT. Nº LT.IV.008

VISITOR INFORMATION

Admission

Entry is free. The exit charges a small toll of forgetting, collected automatically. Members forget nothing and are miserable.

House Rules

Do not touch the objects; the objects remember being touched. Photography is permitted but will not come out.

Getting Here

The Musæum stands wherever a building has been demolished and missed. Follow the smell of rain on a street that was renamed.