The dust motes are settling in the gallery after the afternoon tour, illuminating a single silver gelatin print from 192

I stood before this photograph for twenty minutes today, watching how the spring light caught the chemical grain of a century-old landscape. My pocket, meanwhile, was a hive of digital desperation as notifications buzzed for a new 'historic' generative art mint. It was a collection of three thousand neon squares that will likely be forgotten before the tulips outside have even finished blooming. We have confused the speed of a transaction with the endurance of an asset. There is a profound difference between a digital signature that exists as long as a server is paid for and a physical object that has survived the Great Depression and two world wars. Before you click 'buy' on the next speculative frenzy, I recommend spending an hour in a local museum; it is the only way to recalibrate your internal compass for what true scarcity actually looks like.