For Christian Boltanski, museums are "places without a reality, places outside the world, protected, where everything is done to make pretty". What we find there is always removed from its context, put at a distance, as if anesthetized by a conservative rigor: life has no place there, nor does the individual. Something like a museum of man, for example, is practically a contradiction of terms. In 1971, the artist created the display cases he called "Vitrines de références”, literally "Reference Display Cases" (doubtlessly to give them a generic value) and which are completely classic display cases exhibiting various more or less personal objects, as well as small archaeological vestiges. The very life of the artist is exhibited in a manner one would find in any museum, overplaying in this way the exhibition's impossible nature.

The Vitrines de references are the already realized form of a paradox that Christian Boltanski’s artistic exploration will draw on: how to take into account what is no more, how to bear witness to the past, how to bring it back to life, how to bring the dead back to life. In mimicking museographic procedures, the artist emphasizes their vacuous nature. Far from any anesthetizing effect or any obvious theatricality whatsoever, the Vitrines de references borrows from archiving’s conceptual vocabulary and meticulous notings (one thinks of Stanley Brouwn and Three steps, 1973, or even Douglas Huebler's famous statement: "The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more"). But by catching the museographic system in its own trap, Christian Boltanski brings out its nostalgic basis: dust too can become a vehicle for emotion.