Introduction

To find the future, listen for acronyms. Abbreviations are economic bellwethers, and where there is spending, proper names often must pay. Over the last twenty-five years, the California Department of Corrections has redesignated all thirty-three of its state prisons, or CSPs, with two to five letter acronyms, adding to an already impressive list of abbreviations used to run those facilities, such as AD-SEG, SHU, LWOP, 270s, and J-CAT. ¹ At a stroke, the storied bastions of San Quentin, Folsom and Pelican Bay became SQ, FOL and PBSP, respectively, mere nodes in a vast punitive archipelago. In the same years, most major museums trademarked cute, populist contractions of their names as brand logos. Long a redoubt of proper names, especially those of artists and connoisseurs, the art press now features a proliferation of MoMAs and MOCAs, Dias and MAKs, ICAs and CACs.