An empty pedestal asks a small question: what would you like to keep looking at?
In Nousfarer, your ship has a Personal Museum. As you encounter historical artworks and objects, you can learn about them, add their digital representations to your collection, and choose which ones to display. Paintings and reliefs belong on the walls. Sculptures occupy pedestals. Architectural and monumental works appear as scale studies in the adjoining Monument Observatory.
The Nousdex is the catalogue that brings those discoveries together: more than 350 landmark works, from the ice-age Lion Man to paintings by Bosch and Turner. Open its console aboard the ship to browse works, return to their articles, and arrange your displays.
Your first catalogue entry
The Lion Man introduces the process. During the opening museum sequence, you select its record, read its article, and answer its Guardian’s Question. Completing that question catalogues the work and unlocks its digital model for display. You can then choose a compatible pedestal and give it a place aboard the ship.
The Lion Man essay explains why we chose it as the first sculpture. Here, it also teaches a distinction that carries through the collection: encountering a work begins the process; cataloguing it follows a closer look.
The Nousdex makes that distinction visible. An undiscovered entry marks a work you have yet to encounter. A work you have met but not yet studied shows Question pending: its article is open to you, and Read & answer takes you to it and its Guardian’s Question. A catalogued entry lets you preview the work, reread its history, and select its displays.
As you encounter further works during institute expeditions, return to the Nousdex to see what is waiting for your attention. You can pick up an encountered work’s reading and question from its record. Simply seeing it does not automatically complete its catalogue entry.
Choose what belongs in the room
The catalogue can hold more works than you can display at once. That gives arranging the museum a purpose: decide which discoveries you want around you for now.
Browse the collection in historical order, search for a work, or narrow the view to wall art, sculptures, or monuments. Selecting a catalogued work shows its compatible display locations and what already occupies them. You can install it in an empty space, replace another display, or remove a placement. Changing the room leaves the work in your catalogue, ready to return later.
You might arrange a group around animals, choose contrasting materials, or keep one sculpture simply because its form interests you. Those are ways to make the room your own. A comparison you make between two objects can become a reason to read their histories more closely.
The display types preserve some of the differences among works. A wall panel meets you as a surface; a freestanding sculpture occupies a pedestal. In the Monument Observatory, a scale study gives architecture a place in the collection while its record points back to the work’s setting and original scale.
Keep the work’s history with it
The collection holds digital representations of historical works, and each record keeps the object and its model apart. The Lion Man aboard your ship is a modern facsimile, a distinction the Lion Man essay explores. A model lets you examine a form; the article tells you what the work is, where it comes from, and what is known about it. Reopen a work’s record in the Nousdex whenever a display catches your attention again.
The Guardian’s Question gives you a reason to read before installing the work. There is still plenty to notice afterward. You might remember the overall silhouette on one visit and become curious about a material, a detail, or an unfamiliar use on another.
A collection you can return to
We want returning to the ship to include encounters with things you have already found. The museum gives those encounters a familiar place. Its contents can change as your interests change, while the Nousdex keeps the catalogue available beyond the current arrangement.
Start with the Lion Man, then let another work catch your attention. Read its record, answer its question, and choose where you would like to see it again.
Step aboard Nousfarer and visit the Nousdex console in your Personal Museum. For practical guidance on displays and the rest of the ship, see Your Ship & Collections.