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VITRINEThe permanent collection

The HallNo. I

An opened brass compass on a charcoal plinth, its patinated dial engraved YESTERDAY among invented day names, a single thin needle pointing back down the dial, lit by one warm beam.

No. I · Permanent collection

Compass of Yesterday

Material
Impossible
Provenance
Found in the coat pocket of a man who missed his own funeral.
Condition
Certain of itself

It has never once pointed forward.

The needle is honest. Ask it where you should go and it settles, gently, on the direction you came from. Its dial names the days of a week that has already happened: Meenday, Tensday, Westsday. The original owner consulted it daily and arrived, every evening, at the morning before. Visitors who hold it report a faint pull toward doors they once closed. It has never pointed forward. We have stopped asking.