After reading Thomas Pynchon's "Entropy", it followed me around. I was walking to my math tutoring session in the Sinclair library, and passed by the reproductions of documents from the founding of the United States, primarily the Constitution. Then I passed by the African tribal art that is in the glass cases in the library. I was reminded of all the lengths curators have gone to preserve the actual physical Constitution in the National Archives in Washington D.C. It is kept out of sunlight, because UV rays will cause it to fade. It was encased in helium, and now in argon to preserve the parchment. Despite all of this, there is nothing we can do to keep it from deteriorating forever.
The famous Percy Bysshe Shelley poem "Ozymandias" talks about a statue of the Egyptian king that has crumbled and ironically says at the bottom, "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" This strong statue made of stone couldn't survive the elements, which eroded it away. The whole of art preservation seems to be a field of resisting change, of fighting against entropy. In a way it seems like a noble, though ultimately fruitless, battle.
God damn Thomas Pynchon is depressing.
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