I went to a Creative Mornings talk this morning with the theme “Perserve.” These things are pretty open-ended — whoever’s invited to talk can decide where they want to take it. Eden Redmond talked about what we preserve and why, through her lens of art, activism, and land stewardship.

It’s a big topic.

Anyway, she took a short detour into art history for a moment to talk about 17th and 17th century Dutch still life. It’s gorgeous, all richly rendered food and light. She told us about how these beautiful paintings were commissioned to celebrate all these goods that were taken via colonial violence. “This is ours,” the colonizers and their culture say. “This is important.”

And we keep these paintings and preserve them.

I definitely wouldn’t be thinking about that this morning if I hadn’t gone.