Museum Archaeology
The “discovery” of the new world (the Americas) ushered in the European mania to explore and conquer for the next 400 years. Amidst this excitement true discovery was abound as well as abhorrent destruction and colonialism. New modes of definition were required to color the richness of the rapidly expanding western world. Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a 19th century British romantic took to the challenge of defining the anxiety involving the Eros and pathos of rapid expansion and growth. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” begins to describe the dilemma that is a result of greedy over use vs balance and harmony with the natural world.
The artist utilized the rich visual excess of collecting gone wrong juxtaposed against the metaphor of the Albatross. Expressed is a saturated reality where both humans and wildlife are downing in the excesses of unhinged progress in the form of discarded material goods.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173253