A few weeks ago, my nephew took my dad through the Joseph Cornell exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC.→[More:] There was a mockup of Cornell's basement in the middle of one floor, with boxes labeled "Photographs," or "Shoe sizers," or "Ballet slippers," and my nephew wanted to know what was in each one.

While he and my dad were checking out the box constructions on the walls of the gallery, he mentioned that he, in fact, had made them. A year ago, when he was three. Under the nickname, "Joseph Cornell."

When my dad told him there was an exhibit of Cornell's papers on display at the Archives of American Art, he was excited to go, so my father could read to him from Cornell's letters to and from schoolchildren and ballerinas; from his notebooks; and from his diaries.

Later they went to the dinosaur exhibit at Natural History, where they watched a pair of paleontologists dismantle part of a fossil dinosaur skeleton, to be replaced by castings in order to protect the fossils. The paleontologists answered all his questions, and, guessing from his interest, asked him if he wanted to be a paleontologist when he grew up.

"No, I don't," he said. "I'm going to be an auto mechanic."