TINA LOUISE TAYLOR (a.k.a. MUMMY)
Head of Shipping & Strategic Appearances
“Handled.”
She married well. Exceptionally well. The kind of marriage that comes with estates, jets with G’s on their tails, obligations, and an allowance to match. When her husband passed — a 30-year age gap does tend to resolve itself — he left her a considerable inheritance and, more importantly, a position. Tina has spent the years since curating both, with named buildings, awards, carefully documented brushes with the celebrated, and acrylic plaques to prove it.
There were boards. Many boards.
Not all of them… essential.
She has been, at various points, affiliated with the La Jolla Cultural Advancement Circle, the Pacific Decorative Arts Council, and the Friends of the Getty (Auxiliary Advisory Tier). There were also quieter associations — the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities in London, the Icelandic Phallological Museum (where her role remains diplomatically undefined), and a brief but well-photographed involvement with an acquisition conversation adjacent to Gauguin’s Arii Matamoe (The Royal End), which she references with confidence and minimal detail.
Her contributions were described as “influential,” though rarely specified.
She understood exchange — social, financial, positional — and moved accordingly.
Names were currency. She spent them freely.
She rarely paid full price for anything, including relationships.
There is, beneath all of this, a small and carefully managed sense that something may not have gone entirely right. It presents occasionally. Briefly. Then disappears.
When Tay Tay’s logistical situation became… apparent, Tina agreed to help. Not directly. Not emotionally. But structurally. One suspects a professional recommendation was involved. Indonesia has come up.
She assumed responsibility for shipping. And, quietly, a form of maternal reconciliation.
No announcement. No discussion. Just a shift.
Boxes began arriving intact. Labels aligned. Fragile items treated as if they were, in fact, fragile. Processes appeared. Standards followed.
Errors diminished. It was unsettling.
She runs the shipping operation remotely from La Jolla, in a room adjacent to what she refers to as the “staff lounge,”
though the staff itself is rarely mentioned.
Items are collected from the studio and transported — carbon footprint undisclosed — to her for final handling.
They leave better than they arrived.
She moves through this system with quiet authority, correcting what needs correcting, ignoring what cannot be salvaged.
She does not rush. She does not explain. She does not repeat herself.
Tina maintains a level of composure that suggests either discipline or chemistry. It’s considered impolite to ask which.
Packages go out on time now.
No one has thanked her.
She has not required it.
TINA TAYLOR
TINA, AGE 22 — for the 30th consecutive year, after ‘just a little work,’ insists this is the earliest photo ever taken.
