TROPHY ROOM: BRONX MUSEUM

These four installations are like the calm before the storm of Steve Miller’s Trophy Room.  This might be a lightning storm in the lair of a crazed Daddy Warbucks, for all the jagged wildness of his many line graphs.  A red gash bisecting the sun-filled window that looks out onto the festering Concourse seems to climb rather serenely, until one learns that these graphs portray the unemployment rate.

The room is festooned with the hides of animals: birds, a dog, a fish and a classic bear skin.  Mr. Miller might be saying that bagging one of these taxidermist’s specials has as much real worth as keeping a rosy economic indicator in mind.  The actual voices of economic wizards are broadcast to the already noisome street.  What comes through this camouflage of power, this pretense of sitting atop the situation, is the Apocalypse – if it’s not now, it will be in the next quarter.