One of the 3,437 volumes of the Epstein Files that I couldn’t read (photo: me)

I haven’t curated an exhibition since 2019. It’s not for lack of trying. I was months into a show about nightlife with Fotografiska before they picked up their museum and left the city. More recently, I submitted a proposal for a trash aesthetic exhibition, an idea that made me so excited I buzzed my way through the application. No hard feelings about the rejection, though. I understand the New York art world is still not—and may never be—ready for the glorious tastelessness of our fellow countrymen. As much as I’d like to curate a trash aesthetic show someday, it’s not even my dream show. My fantasy exhibition consists of mounting a faux Wolfgang Tillmans installation of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s vacation and party pics from Data Set 2, and the documentation of investigatory home tours by the feds in Data Set 1 of the Department of Justice’s Epstein files. My first foray into appropriation art! Imagine: Jeffrey in his mud mask. Ghislaine playing with silly string with fellow sex offender Jean-Luc Brunel. Views of the atrocious leopard print chairs in front of Liberace-style candelabras and a tacky stuffed tiger in Epstein’s 71^st Street townhouse. The ominous masks hanging above a dentist’s chair on Little Saint James. Hell, I’d even settle for showing these images in slideshow format like a pseudo-Nan Goldin. There is a purpose to my madness other than my own ghoulish fixation with gazing into the depths of the mundane but disturbingly cheery vacay pics of the pure evil. I want to encourage people who may not, like me, spend their free time perusing Jmail (I understand some people have families and a life), to LOOK at the breezy lives of the upper echelons of dominant global power that runs on the abuse and exploitation of children. Sure, it’s possibly legally dubious (though all the files are public so…hey I’m not a lawyer) and personally risky for an industry still filled with connections to Epstein and his buddies. Still, it’s a fucking great idea.

This is why, when numerous friends sent me articles about the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room, a pop-up mock library installation in a Tribeca gallery that featured a whopping 3,437 printed volumes of the files, I immediately registered for a free visit. It would be better for this article’s narrative arc if I pretended I thought the Trump/Epstein Memorial Reading Room would, like my appropriation dream, provide the general public a fresh and easy way to encounter some of the files, without straining their eyes clicking through the endless PDFs on the Department of Justice’s website. But I had an inkling there would be problems. In Wired’s preview of the installation, EJ Dickson noted, “Though the installation will be open to the public, only journalists and members of law enforcement are permitted to actually read through the files.” Surely, this had to be a misprint or a misunderstanding of the installation’s rules. The Reading Room’s website features a contact box to request private viewings for “a member of Congress, law enforcement, journalist with government-issued press credentials, survivor, or survivors’ advocate.” Perhaps Dickson mistook this private tour for the rules overall. Yet, even the private tour for these select groups raised a red flag. Why would a member of Congress, a cop, or a journalist with a government-issued ID (which in 2026 might just be Newsmax and Rudy Giuliani’s podcast producer) be safer for the survivors? Isn’t this the exact crowd that participated in the decades-long cover-up and abdication of justice? This means in the future, Congressman Ed Gallrein can take a gander, even though he won the Kentucky Republican primary thanks to Trump and his Israel lobby pals pulling a multimillion-dollar snit in part over Thomas Massie’s successful legislation to release the files.

Outside the reading room, near the trash

This stubborn belief in the inherent sanctity and essential good-heartedness of the system, despite, well, everything being evidence to the contrary, gels with the impressions I had of the installation’s organizers, Institute for Primary Facts. Institute for Primary Facts is a mysterious non-profit dedicated to, according to their barebones website, “empowering a civic-minded public” and “fostering a deeper understanding of America’s democratic institutions through immersive, fact-based educational experiences.” Digging deeper, I couldn’t find any public disclosures of their finances or board (though The Guardian scooped that the board includes “Democratic strategist Jenna Lowenstein and Mary Corcoran, co-founder of an anti-Trump former Republican PAC”). However, the copious requests for donations on the nonprofit’s websites are run through Democrat-aligned fundraising platform ActBlue. According to Lisa Rubin on MS NOW, the show’s PR team is also “employed by a communications and public advocacy firm founded by seasoned Democratic campaign professionals.” And just for fun, the main mouthpiece for the Reading Room is board member David Garrett, who is, according to a description for a podcast appearance, “leading a movement to revolutionize wine ownership through blockchain and tokenization.” With this mix of NeverTrumpers, corporate Dem consultants, and a bitcoin wine merchant, I anticipated a heavy dose of feckless shitlibbery.

And that’s exactly what I got. The Trump/Epstein Memorial Reading Room transformed the files that slightly lifted the veil on the inner sex trafficking workings of an expansive global pedo power structure into bad anti-Trump art alongside naked Trump statues and fussy Trump baby balloons. You know, futile, vaguely artistic gestures that preach to the #NoKings choir. Standing in line outside Mriya Gallery, next to a pile of trash, waiting for the bored security guard to half-heartedly wave a metal detector wand around my arms and check my ID, an entry requirement that made my paranoia senses tingle (Wouldn’t this be a perfect ruse for the administration or their intelligence services to start making LISTS?!), I sized up my fellow viewers, who unsurprisingly skewed female though not as much as I anticipated. The attendees seemed to understand at least the bare minimum about the Epstein case, which puts us in a rarified crowd, I realized, as an elderly woman approached the couple in front of me to ask about the line. She probably assumed we were waiting for Instagram-famous froyo. No, honey, this is the pedo pop-up! She followed up by asking what the Epstein files were. “They are the files of the guy…I think Trump was involved…he was a pedophile,” the woman partner haltingly explained (an insufficient answer, but how deep do you want to get? Do you tell her about eugenics at the Zorro Ranch?! Do you start all the way back with Space Relations?). The older woman did not join the line (they allowed walk-ins once the crowd thinned out). Nor did she splurge on one of the “EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN” tops sitting on a nearby blanket courtesy of artist Eva Mueller, who independently hocked T-shirts outside for some reason. Yes, the Trump/Epstein Memorial Reading Room had a bootlegger!

I regret not buying one

Like the amusing ambiguity of a tank-top emblazoned with Epstein’s name, I don’t raise the aforementioned micro-penis Trump statue or diapered Don inflatable for no reason. Waiting for the admissions worker to gather a small group for a rundown of the show’s rules and regulations, I gazed upon a ginormous, bright screen that projected a sketchy red image of Epstein and Donnie skipping, hand in hand, in front of the Capitol Building. This prancing twosome was a sculpture entitled Best Friends, plunked on the National Mall last September by an anonymous art group. Don and Jeff tiptoeing through the tulips is a deeply atrocious and offensively unserious artwork, given the heinousness of Epstein’s crimes. It’s not funny; it’s also not meaningful. Best Friends’ appearance at the very front of the Trump/Epstein Memorial Reading Room did not bode well for the exhibition’s mission to draw attention to the breadth of crimes contained in the files. Not that we would confront these crimes ourselves. The admissions worker confirmed Wired’s reporting: we would not be able to read the books contained within this Reading Room. Why? Because the DOJ did not properly redact the names and images of victims. This is an unfortunate decision. Of course, Pam Bondi’s DOJ did indeed protect people like Les Wexner over victims, and at first, the Institute of Primary Facts’ decision seemed protective and respectful. Yet, preventing viewers from reading also had the ironic effect of censoring the files that so many of these survivors fought and are still fighting to have released. The exhibition’s choice was also absurd when I could just go home and peruse them myself online. If they were so worried about the survivors’ well-being, why not remove the pages that weren’t properly redacted when binding the books? While not permitted to cull through the books myself, I could, however, score a pencil or a highlighter emblazoned with the exhibition’s name (“Only one!” the admissions lady insisted when I asked). Always be branding!

Epstein fIles and, more importantly, a fern

The Reading Room’s tagline on its website reads, “The truth is hard to deny when it’s printed and bound for you to see.” I guess they meant “to see” as in the image of the physical copies hit my retinas from a distance. Spanning two floors of Mriya Gallery, the Trump/Epstein Memorial Reading Room lined its walls with bookshelves stocked with the printed and bound files, including a spillover shelf and trolley downstairs. Velvet ropes and stanchions blocked the files from the sticky fingers of the public, an unintentionally Trumpian choice given the sheer number of velvet ropes strewn around Trump Tower. Each volume boasted a bureaucratically boring white cover, only notable for its puzzling publishing credit, “The Trumpsonian.” First, don’t give Trump any more renaming ideas, please. Secondly, when I googled “Trumpsonian,” I landed on yet another vague ActBlue-associated website that bills itself as “a fake museum of real truth.” OK. Barred from engaging with the content of the files themselves, the plebs had to ponder the size of the 3,437 volumes. Yet, they mostly reminded me of Pam Bondi’s faux Epstein binders provided to conservative influencers in early 2025. All aesthetics, no substance. Why should I even trust that the files are printed in these books?!

Instead, I contemplated the library’s bizarro decorating choices, namely the bewildering amount of worn, well-trod Persian rugs and ferns plopped throughout the show. Is this what the Institute of Primary Facts thinks libraries look like? Or were the Persian rugs intended to transport us to Epstein’s tacky Upper East Side townhouse? Were the ferns a nod to the tropics of West Palm Beach or the fake plants in the Trump Tower penthouse? Earlier, while waiting to enter the exhibition, I laughed when spotting a woman cop a feel of a fern. Later, I understood, though I didn’t dare caress them myself, feeling constantly under the watchful eye of the security guards.

BUSTED

Other than the peculiar plants, the most interesting part of the exhibition—and the primary reading material for us unofficial peons—was a stroll down diddler memory lane with the “Trump and Epstein Through the Years” timeline. The timeline consisted of three separate strands, marked by itsy cartoon avatars: a light overview of Epstein’s crimes and major real estate purchases (though not any of his international arms dealing or global intrigue so meticulously reported by Drop Site News); Trump’s decades of abhorrent behavior targeting women; and Trump and Epstein’s toxic frienemyship. Though some of the points were familiar—E. Jean Carroll’s accusations; the Stormy Daniels affair; backstage beauty pageant lechery; the birthday book; the sweetheart deal; the dancing eyebrow video, the timeline contained a few surprises, even for me. Most related to the extent of Trump and Epstein’s relationship beyond the images we already know. For instance, I wasn’t aware that Trump and Epstein spent a night in Atlantic City in 1987 that was so debauched the COO of the Trump Plaza and Casino had to lecture the gruesome twosome about bringing underaged women onto the casino floor—and most intriguingly, Epstein’s name was cut from this incident when the COO tried to write about it in his 1991 memoir. What publisher was THAT?! I also didn’t realize Trump inscribed a copy of his The Art of the Comeback to Epstein with “Jeff—you are the greatest!” There are some real doozies in Trump’s singular timeline, too. 1997 was Trump’s year of forcible kissing as he nonconsensually planted one on at least three women. Yet the episode that really sticks in my mind is this one from 1992:

“Trump approached a youth choir singing outside the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan and asked two of the girls how old they were. When they said 14, Trump replied, ‘Wow! Just think, in a couple of years, I’ll be dating you.'”

That’s our president, alright.

Mini Jeff and Don

Yet, there were still flaws. Glaring ones. In the various articles I’ve ingested about the exhibition, its organizers seem particularly proud of the effort they put into researching and fact-checking this timeline. They didn’t, however, spend enough time eyeballing the wall decal before sending it to the printer, with incidents located in the wrong spot and repeated text. Trump leering at the women at Miss USA in 2001 is filed under the Trump and Epstein strand. Same with a 1998 US Open accusation, which also mistakenly copied and pasted the text from “health food entrepreneur” Lisa Boyne’s revolting remembrance of Trump forcing models to walk on a table so he could peer up their skirts in 1996. Come on now, it’s not THAT complex. More than the editing snafus, the Trump/Epstein Memorial Reading Room could have provided more relevant information for some entries, particularly about Epstein. Take Maria Farmer’s accusation, which generically explains that Farmer met Epstein “at an art exhibition.” What it doesn’t say is that the art exhibition was just a few blocks away from the Reading Room at the New York Academy of Art, and that New York Academy of Art former Chairwoman Eileen Guggenheim introduced Farmer and Epstein. Yes, the same Eileen Guggenheim who was honored at this year’s New York Academy of Art benefit a month ago and appears in the Epstein files apologizing for not being quick enough in recruiting art students to paint Epstein’s entranceway.

But pointing out Eileen Guggenheim’s role—or anyone else’s, really—would distract from the exhibition’s frustratingly monomaniacal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. In the timeline, Trump came off as an equal monster to Epstein, if not more out of control (all that unwanted smooching!). As much as I can’t stand the guy, Trump doesn’t even touch the sheer level of demonic behavior Epstein and, let’s not forget, Maxwell, perpetrated. One issue was that Epstein’s timeline didn’t engage with the full extent of survivors’ stories. Virginia Giuffre appears twice on the timeline: when she was recruited from Mar-A-Lago and when she went public, with a passing reference to a photo she provided of Prince Andrew. What it didn’t mention is her recollection of being left bleeding from multiple orifices after a brutal rape by a certain unnamed prime minister (*cough* Ehud Barak), which she recounts in her harrowing posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl. In fact, the survivors’ perspectives are shockingly absent throughout the installation. The survivors only appear as silent witnesses in still images, including screengrabs from their moving Epstein Files Transparency Act PSA (why not just PLAY the commercial?) and a photograph of a press conference around the Act’s passing, with a guest appearance by Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’ll hand it to the Institute of Primary Facts; at least they didn’t snip Marj right out, indicating that at least they are aware of the potential of reaching across the aisle when bipartisanship can seek justice rather than pass more surveillance legislation.

A tribute to the victims and survivors

The victims being seen and not heard spoke volumes, particularly for an exhibition so concerned with their well-being that they’re re-censoring the files. Why not make up for the inability to read the files by letting the survivors have a say somewhere? Or even just plunking a copy of Giuffre’s Nobody’s Girl on the uncomfortable-looking wooden benches? Attendees would have certainly read it, as they devoured the Trump and Epstein timeline, reacting with gentle scoffs, sighs, and headshakes. I would say I was surprised by the level of concentration, but it was literally the only thing to look at in any detail. There was no choice but to engage. That is, if you could willfully ignore the syrupy heart-strings plucking mood music piped throughout the exhibition, presumably coming from the Instagram-worthy blinkering fake candle tribute to the 1000+ victims and survivors, covered by a dramatic diaphanous gauzy canopy. This Marshalls candle tribute reminded me a tad of the Nova Music Festival exhibition, which transformed the overblown, neon-lit aesthetics of experiential Instagram museums, like the Museum of Ice Cream and Mind of a Serial Killer (I desperately want to go), into a trauma exhibition with bullet hole-punctured porta johns, abandoned tents, blown-up cars, and an automatic rifle left in the wake of the October 7^th attack on the Nova music festival.

Like that hasbara exhibition, the Trump/Epstein Memorial Reading Room had a narrative to push too. Without allowing readers to follow their bliss in the files, the Reading Room narrowed the coconspirators just to Trump. As guilty as Trump acts about whatever is in the files they won’t release, he remains on the lesser end of the creeps in Epstein’s circle. But, fixing viewers’ attention solely on Trump’s interaction with Epstein means the Institute for Primary Facts, whatever their angle, doesn’t have to answer tough questions about how this international pedo ring spanned both parties, multiple continents, and so many titans of industry. This includes politicians who were also fundraising on Act Blue, like New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, and major Dem donors, such as Reid Hoffman, who sent this ominously oblique email to Epstein:

“Sent you two gifts to NYC addie.

1- ice cream. if you have any interest, you should try — else for=the girls.
2- something that may strike your funny bone for the island.

hope you’re having fun as usual.”

Yuck.

And given this is supposed to be a (sorta) art installation, why not also pick apart some of the ghoulish art world ties, like Ronald Lauder, whose Neue Galerie just merged with the Met (another name they’ll have to chip off like the Sacklers in a few years) and whose name appears around 900 times in the files, or MoMA board member Leon Black, who allegedly chomped a girl?

A gathering of reacts

Though it may not chase him out of the White House—or into his billion-dollar ballroom bunker, there was proof the exhibition achieved its goal of training the viewers’ ire toward Trump rather than the Epstein class as a whole. Downstairs, the basement gallery space was dedicated to “processing”—and I guess, action, though that was much less successful. A front library table was affixed with a script for viewers who wanted to call the DOJ to urge them to release the rest of the properly redacted files. I didn’t see anyone calling. Nor did I ring up Todd Blanche. It’s not that I don’t care, but it’s a waste of time to appeal to the guy who moved Ghislaine into her cushy Club Fed and gave Trump a billion-dollar slush fund for Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and probably a handful of his “low-class” insurrectionist buddies from January 6. If you didn’t feel like zapping your phone’s battery to spit into the wind, the exhibition offered a place to pen responses onto little cards and pin them to cork boards. While a notable amount of the responses featured visceral bloodlust (“Donald Trump 4 death penalty”; “Kill them all”; “Firing squad for all those sick fucks”), as well as sympathy and care for the survivors, many channeled their fury directly at the president, like “Are we great yet?”; “Perpetrator in Chief: We need to evict us from our house” (Huh?); “Release all the Files! Trump is Guilty” or the simple yet effective “Fuck Trump” and “Fuck Trump Forever.” Only a small number displayed a wider knowledge of the scope of Epstein’s influence, including one that read “Expose Les Wexner” and another, my favorite, which stated:

“Leon Black
Jes Stanley
Les Wexner
Eva Dubin
Steve Bannon
Prince Andrew
Ehud Barak
Karyna Shaliak
Lesley Groff

Google these names and Epstein. It goes deeper than you realize.”

And no, this wasn’t me.

In the days since viewing the Trump/Epstein Memorial Reading Room, I keep wondering what the point was, other than triggering the poor older woman who sobbed and sniffled her way through the exhibit. Executed better, the Trump/Epstein Memorial Reading Room could have offered an accessible way to digest the enormity of the files, much-needed, given the purposeful chaos of their release. Perhaps the organizers will retool by their Trump/Epstein Memorial Reading Room bus tour this summer, but I don’t have a lot of confidence. In The Daily Beast’s article on the upcoming tour, an organizer, Miles Taylor, giddily boasts about celebrity bus drivers (UGH! No no no no…) and anticipates, “This is gonna get the president furious.” Is this really the best you can do? Is this really what the survivors fought for–a presidential irritant and a branded highlighter?

I went to the Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room, and all I got was this highlighter