Our brief time?

“Noise Aquarium” (installation view from the “Our Time on Earth” exhibition), by Victoria Vesna, at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass., through June 9.

© Danann Breathnach Photography

Use everything

 

"Tangle'' (300-foot-long rope made with acorn caps), by BETH GALSTON,  in the show "Branching Out: Trees as Art,'' at the Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem, Mass.,  through Sept. 20, 2015.

She collected the acorn caps under a single red oak in Boston's Arnold Arboretum.

"The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we'll hang them.''

-- Lenin