# Museum collections catalogue early-modern Aesop prints as public objects

Date: 1917

## The fact

The Met and peer museums accession and later publish [Aesop](/people/aesop) woodcuts and drawings. The dated public cataloguing is a knowledge-access act. Aesop did not curate the department.

## Context

Museum labels can teach form and can repeat the slave-sage caption uncritically. Label critique sits in other rows.

Aesop is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

An official or archival page and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Met — Aesop-related fable print / drawing record (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/337057; Metropolitan Museum of Art).

## Significance

An accession is not an autograph.

An accession is not an autograph.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Aesop: https://factrail.ai/people/aesop

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/337057
- https://www.loc.gov/item/2021663235/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ae-met-fable-prints