Several weeks ago, I went to the Renwick Gallery in Washington D.C., where there was a large exhibition about Burning Man, the annual festival in the Nevada desert where lots of creative people gather to enjoy each other’s art and self-expression in a variety of forms. The Renwick exhibition included a couple of notebooks:

This one was captioned as “Will Roger Peterson’s Department of Public Works notebook, 2001.” Peterson was one of the founders of Black Rock City LLC, which has overseen the organization of Burning Man for almost 20 years. The Department of Public Works is responsible for construction logistics and production at the festival.

This one belonged to Harley K. Dubois, another founding Burning Man board member. She was heavily involved in the organization of the festival as its City Manager for many years so I’m sure the notebook contained quite a lot of important information about the safety and logistics involved in such a massive event.

I like notebooks, of course, but these are by far the least outlandish, colorful and interesting objects in the exhibition, which you can still see until January 21,2019 (some of the works will only be on view until September 16, 2018).