Contemplating a new lexicon

[jeregenest]

As peaseblossom can attest, I've been reading a lot of stuff on art and antiquities looting lately. For a while I've been contemplating a new lexicon, so I've decided to merge the two together (this isn't the first time the thought has percolated). And thus Museum of the Missing

Art theft has been done for the purpose of resale or ransom; stolen art is also often used between criminals in an underworld banking system as collateral for drug and weapons deals, or to barter for those items. Even more worrisome is the state sponsored looting, such as that from 1933 through the end of World War II, of the Nazi regime which maintained a policy of looting art for sale or for removal to museums in the Third Reich.

Art Recovery is serious business, the FBI, London's Metropolitan Police, and a number of other law enforcement agencies worldwide maintain "art squads" dedicated to investigating thefts of this nature and recovering stolen works of art. In 2007 a consortium of these agencies met to discuss some of the most long-standing, strangest and down right weird cases on their files. This Lexicon is the report of those proceedings.

I'm thinking 8 round Lexicon, telephone style, each entry is a piece of art thats been stolen (real or made-up) or a region or style or what have you (for example, I could see a fun entry on Peru or the Getty Museum) thats relevant.

Any interest out there?

EDIT: Looks like there might be critical mass out there. What do folks think about starting on Monday the 12th?

Comments

[bluegargantua]

That might be fun. I assume some entries could be infamous art thieves?

It might also be useful to narrow the range for focus. For example, art stolen from the Iraqi National Museum after Saddam's fall.

later
Tom

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I thought about it and was unsure. On one side a narrow focus would be helpful, but I've had a lot of bad experiences with folks feeling lexicons were too narrow.

So absically I'm curious in what others would want to do.

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Ooh! I don't have time, but someone do something about the stolen LaFarge window from the Thomas Crane Library in Quincy! It was stolen by a grudgy worker when they were remodeling, and the library director and her sister ended up finding it thanks to an anonymous tip, propped against a gravestone in Quincy. Neat!

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Little syuff like this, and making it even weirder than it might otherwise be, is one of the reasons I had originally thought to keep it wide open in scope.

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

Awesome. :)

[jeffr23.livejournal.com]

I'd be up for it.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Cool.

[ivan23.livejournal.com]

If the invite's open, I'd love to claim a slot.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Great

[sben.livejournal.com]

I am not up for it, but I'm in the process of resurrecting the Ocean wiki (as a Mediawiki server, rather than PHPWiki). If you'd like space, this would be the kick I need to get it done.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

The ocean of stories wiki? Do you need the db? I have a zip of what it was before it went bye-bye.

[sben.livejournal.com]

I got a zip from shiffer. It doesn't have history, but it has the latest version of each entry. (If yours has the entry histories, I'd love to get a copy.)

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't make a copy with history when I got it pre lose of the server space.

Whats thed ate on the copy you have? And I wonder how Shiffer got a copy, chances are I must have sent it, mind like a sieve me.

[sben.livejournal.com]

I'll check the date and size when I get home; I'm guessing that you sent it to him, or someone you sent it to.

(He actually had two: One with the "raw" entries, one as an HTML-formatted dump.)

[sben.livejournal.com]

(And now I see -- speaking of following the link! -- that you already have space. I'll still use this as motivation to get the Ocean of Stories back up.)

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

You should, I've long debated buying new space and getting it up. Theres a hell of a lot of quality Nobilis stuff there, ehck I'm using a fair amount of Lexicon of the Lost 500 Years for my 1:1 game with peaseblossom

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Yeah I have one of each, sounds like I might have sent them to him. Hard to remember, sieve effect.

How hard is it converting from PhP to Media?

[sben.livejournal.com]

Non-trivial. Some formatting will probably be broken. I think that no linking has gotten broken.

I'm mostly doing it because I'm familiar with administering Mediawiki, and I'm very nervous about PHPWiki spam -- I couldn't find a good story for combating it. (I just lock down a Mediawiki server to allow edits from logged-in users, and create user accounts manually on request.)

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

We're doing a mediawiki for our homeschooling group. I love the ability to lock it down compared to the other wikis I've used.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you sent me the backups when the wiki went offline. I wanted to keep it online at the time, but I didn't have the resources for it back then.

Now I have sben.

[imnotandrei.livejournal.com]

I've tried Lexicon before, and would love to try it again. I admit to not being 100% sure what "telephone style" is, but I can learn. ;)

[imnotandrei.livejournal.com]

Ne'er mind, I just realized I should *gasp* *choke* go look at the page, and read for myself. Please ignore previous ignorance. ;)

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

You are very welcome. Sounds like I have critical mass. Now for a start date. Monday?

[jeffr23.livejournal.com]

What kind of pace are you thinking? Two turns a week like FWoaN was?

(It'll collide with Turkey Day at that pace, but much slower and you risk hitting the bigger holidays...)

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Twice a week seems like the best way, that way its done before the winter craziness of Christmas and everything else. And then new years weirdness.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

I've definitely got the itch for another Lexicon, but I know next to nothing about this field and it's way outside my usual areas of interest.

Could you point me at a few good starter sites, to see if the topic catches my interest?

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

At the heart this lexicon can be

1. Choose an existing piece of art that was stolen (or something) and spin a tale
2. Make up a piece of art by a known artist thats lost or stolen
3. Make up something entirely new

And have wacky lexicon fun.

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

I shall watch it with interest, and maybe purloin some ideas for story pitches for Caper/Horatio Club if I ever get around to actually, you know, RUNNING that again. ;)

[jeffr23.livejournal.com]

I certainly hope that the current spam-attack will be over by Monday, then...even if the bots don't see new pages for a fairly long period of time, they seem to hit the sidebar pretty often...

[seborn.livejournal.com]

Ok, I should try wacky Lexicon fun. Count me in.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Cool

[allonymist.livejournal.com]

Awesome; I've wanted to do a lexicon game for years, and this topic sounds like great fun! May I join?

(seborn pointed me here, and will vouch for my good character and general amusement level.)

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Welcome aboard!