I sat for lunch the other day with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rafael Moneo who designed the soon-to-be-opening Chace Center here at RISD. During our conversation we spoke about street grafitti with RISD Museum Assistant Director James Hall. A variety of ideas to stem the growth of grafitti were proposed, with Rafael presenting the most radical idea. He suggested that by simply putting the name of a building on a building … that the building would be less likely to be defaced. In essence Moneo was saying that that once an anonymous artifact becomes “outed” as having an identity that it somehow becomes more invincible to an external challenge.

An abstract object is easy (and free) to interpret by nature of its being abstract. Once it becomes concrete, it loses its interpretability. One might say in defense of objects left “un-texted” that they remain as free citizens without prejudice or constraints imposed by a perceived norm.

Open to criticism versus closed to opinion. It’s better to be labelless … is how I summarize this free thought today.