There is a typo in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's been there for at least 10 years. Every time I go, I check up on it, and sure enough last Friday it was still there, a completely unambiguous typographical error, surviving against all odds in this ivory tower of culture and history.

I mean, it's really bad. It's not like confusing "which" and "that" or something, where a lot of laypeople might not catch it. No, this is something that absolutely everyone could see; there's a really, really important letter missing from a word. It's not an alternate spelling, or a common misspelling. It's something like writing "hinoceros". or "lligator".

How can this have gone unnoticed for sooooooooo long? Or has it been noticed, and laziness or bureaucracy has prevented anyone from fixing it? Perhaps it and the surrounding exhibits are printed on some obscure old paper that would be hard to match. I like to think that maybe there is an old story about it, some old lady who typed it up and then was hit by a bus on her way home from work that night, in the rain, and the staff decided to keep the typo in her honor. Or perhaps there is an old voodoo curse involved. Or something about Frank Lloyd Wright's estate.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no reference to the error anywhere on the internet. I've googled the offending phrase and get 0 Met-correlated results. This even more so leads me to believe that there is hocus-pocus involved. I mean, no blogger has noticed this ever? None of the grammar-watch blogs or culture pages? No snarky Upper East Side teenager forced to do a report?

Anyway.

I love it. i love it so much. It's my favorite thing there.
It fills me with such glee and delight for human fallibility.
The perfect godliness in seeing the king with his shoe untied.

It's in one of my very favorite rooms, the Frank Lloyd Wright room, in the newly renovated American Wing.

Newly renovated!
Oh will these joys ever cease.