Last month, during my wanders, I turned a corner in a museum and was confronted by this breathtaking musing on privacy and human identity.

“Archives” (mixed media, 1989) by Christian Boltanski (1944-2021).

The description on the wall, just outside of shot, said “Boltanski’s Archives explores memory, loss, and the anonymity of war victims with a moving reference to the Holocaust.”

My lousy iPhone photo does not quite convey the impact of it. You are first struck by those identical rusting boxes, each slightly smaller than a shoebox, all stacked in perfect order. Each one signifies the entirety of a human life, after being processed into data to justify the subject’s extermination, and then filed away with automated efficiency.

Above the boxes, you have five photos of actual victims, their faces shown in close-up and slightly blurred; one looks a bit like my daughter. Above each of those photos is a 1940s-style spotlight, each shining on a face, either to illuminate them for good or to interrogate them for bad.

The location is part of its impact. It is just shoved against a wall, in a liminal space next to a storage cabinet, in a massive gallery room with ornate parquet floors and high rococo ceilings. It’s just there, by design.

It is in a museum; it should be in a museum; museums are meant to be showcases of things in the past. It should not have to be a warning for today. But it is.

If you’d like to experience this for yourself, it’s in the KMSKA Antwerpen, in a fascinating experimental exhibition where jarring modern art is displayed next to baroque Bible scenes by the Old Masters, in a way that draws a direct line between the two. It works, in the most insanely wonderful way. There is something even more poignant a few rooms away. You’ll know it when you see it.