In the upbeat version of this future fantasy, the archaeologists strike it lucky. Clambering across the remains of the city's one-time centre of learning, the University of Canterbury Library, they discover a dusty recess half-hidden beneath a slab of brutalist concrete. Inside, miraculously preserved from flood and fire, there's a stash of precious art books. Ernst Gombrich's The Story of Art, H.H. Arnasson's History of Modern Art, perhaps even Michael Dunn's New Zealand Painting: A Concise History. Histories of the art we judged great and good, packed with pictures we thought mattered.

If the future's approval is what we're after, then no doubt this discovery is the one to wish for. But I can't help imagining a slightly different discovery – one with funnier and more confusing results. In this alternative scenario, the archaeologists unwittingly begin digging for samples in what was once the University's School of Fine Arts. And there, sealed in a box amidst the wreckage of a lecturer's office, they discover a much stranger account of art-making in our time-namely Christchurch painter Roger Boyce's The Illustrated History of Painting.