Margins of the Rifle: Curating a Guerrilla Notebook as Testimony and Artifact
Margins of the Rifle: Curating a Guerrilla Notebook as Testimony and Artifact Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™ April 6, 2026 --- Curatorial Frame The recovered guerrilla notebook—pages of cramped handwriting, sketches of camps and hammocks, a letter dated March 28, 2026—arrives in the museum as an object that refuses simple classification. It is at once an intimate epistolary act, a pedagogical ledger, a field sketchbook, and an index of exhaustion. To curate it responsibly requires a frame that is simultaneously academic, humane, esoteric, humorous, poignant, erudite, ironic, critical, and anecdotal. The curator’s task is to translate the notebook’s polyvocality into an exhibition logic that honors the human voice while refusing to reproduce material that could cause harm. This frame sets out principles, interpretive strategies, and display tactics that together constitute a model for handling contested archives of armed struggle. Principles of Care and Constraint. First, the curator must...