“Animula vagula blandula” (Pale Little Vagabond Soul), the title of this exhibition, which reads like a cantata of sonorous vowels, is the opening line of a poem by the Roman emperor Hadrian. In these words are echoes of sensuality, playfulness, and late-Roman decadence—in any case, the consciousness of living in a late era that cannot long survive in its present form. With this citation, Anne Chu refers to the Memoirs of Hadrian as opulently and unironically imagined by the novelist Marguerite Yourcenar from the perspective of the dying emperor: “A good three-quarters of my life escapes