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Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025
The Daily Pennsylvanian

Christian Gilberti



The Daily Pennsylvanian

As you exit the elevators on the newly renovated sixth floor of Van Pelt Library, Benjamin Franklin’s writing desk and several of his prized possessions — including his cufflinks and a silver spoon — are displayed in a glass case on your right.





	Museum of Modern Art poet laureate and part-time Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing lecturer Kenneth Goldsmith believes it is “useless to tell people not to plagiarize.” Instead, he says to become “the best plagiarist you can be.”

A full-time poet and part-time lecturer at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Kenneth Goldsmith is also a self-professed “institutional critic.” So when he was named the first “poet laureate” of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in January, Goldsmith was naturally “suspicious.”