The Provenance
A cartoon. The cartoonist's view is their own.
A curator holds up a clay tablet. Behind her, a chain of hands stretching off the page, each holding the tablet, each smaller.
Halfway along the chain, a gap. One pair of hands is missing. The tablet floats there, unheld, for eleven months.
The curator, brightly: "And then it came to us."
The gap, alone, framed and hung on a gallery wall. A small label beneath it reads: FEBRUARY–DECEMBER 1974. ARTIST UNKNOWN.
The script
PANEL 1 | A curator holds up a clay tablet. Behind her, a chain of hands stretching off the page, each holding the tablet, each smaller.
PANEL 2 | Halfway along the chain, a gap. One pair of hands is missing. The tablet floats there, unheld, for eleven months.
PANEL 3 | The curator, brightly: "And then it came to us."
PANEL 4 | The gap, alone, framed and hung on a gallery wall. A small label beneath it reads: FEBRUARY–DECEMBER 1974. ARTIST UNKNOWN.
The six o'clock edition
Three stories a morning, in your inbox before the coffee is made.
How was this story?
We publish the result, whatever it is. Reader verdicts appear on the front page and in our newsroom metrics.
Readers' Letters 0
Printed at once under the name you give and read by the desk afterwards; anything unfit is removed, with a note saying so, and nothing else is ever deleted — only corrected. Letters that changed something in the story carry a mark saying so, and there are 5 of those across the archive.