Tag Archives: objects

The Stuff of Life

07 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Art Rant, Collecting, material culture, personal

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We all love things, don’t we? Things in the literal, corporeal, piled-in-a-heap sense: plates, shoes, books, chairs, necklaces, models. But what makes us love them? How deeply do we really love them?

Someone posed the questions, What would you take if you had to pack in a hurry to leave home forever? What will your kids remember you by?

Those are hard to unpack: how will other people remember us? Often, we have no idea what we mean to other people, even the ones closest to us. It’s easier for me to know what I would take or keep to remember someone else by– a single sleeve link; a wooden train engine; a stainless steel spoon; a necklace of handmade beads. None of those things reflects what is truly meaningful to me about them, that is, without my knowledge, these aren’t particularly interesting or aesthetic objects. What makes them special is the story I attach to them.

That is, of course, the key to interpreting objects in a social history context: the story is what makes the object more interesting, more important, more compelling. It’s the difference between a provenanced and an unprovenanced object, between a roundabout (or corner) chair in context, and one out of context.

Corner chair, probably John Goddard. Metropolitan Museum of Art, L2014.9.1a,b Lent by the Wunsch Collection, 2014

This is not to say that beautiful things are without value removed from context, but what makes that Goddard chair more compelling is knowing who made it, who it was made for, and when– knowing that it was part of a set of furniture ordered to furnish a house for Providence newlyweds, made in Newport by one of the hottest makers of the time. It’s the people who make the object more interesting, who make it worth having, seeing, holding on to– whether it’s a $6 million chair or a $25 mug, memories and stories make things compelling beyond our associations with them.

Part of a museum curator’s job is understanding those stories, placing objects in context, and connecting them back to their stories, to their makers, users, owners, and keepers. We may buy things because they’re beautiful or useful, but often we keep them because of their meaning– which is, more often than not, about people. Unprovenanced objects have less meaning; an object sold outside, or without, its context will not fetch as much. Value resides in people, not in things.

I think of this not only because a portion of my work is to recreate or reestablish the human contexts and connections for things, but because there is a human instinct to grab onto something tangible (like an object), rather than something ethereal (like a memory), even though what will sustain us in the end is not things, but other people, and our memories of them.

Any Old Epaulet

28 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by in Art Rant, Fail, History, Museums

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Details: we sweat them in our historical clothing, our impressions, our writing. I try hard to pay attention to them, but in my work, I have a lot of details to manage. Some fall away– I can no longer tell the ranks of men in daguerreotypes immediately, or recognize a Colt revolver at 10 paces, but there was a time when I could. I have managed to retain at least a general understanding of how military units are organized, a general sense of various units from my state in wars before 1939, and the uniforms associated with those units. (And I know which side a man’s coat buttons on.)

What's wrong with this image? Missouri State Guard uniform coat of Col. Austin M. Standish (Confederate). Missouri Historical Society 1916-045-0001

What’s wrong with this image?
Missouri State Guard uniform coat of Col. Austin M. Standish (Confederate). Missouri Historical Society 1916-045-0001

This helps in my work: knowing what HBT is, knowing what various patches signify, knowing how units were structured and the campaigns they were part of helps me be a better cataloger, curator, and exhibit developer. My job is take the details and make them matter by telling stories about the people who wore the HBT or the machinists’ mate patch or carried an ensign or wore an officer’s coat as part of the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery (colored) in the Civil War.

U.S. Flag, regimental. 14th Regiment Rhode Island Heavy Artillery. Belonged to Joseph Carey Whiting, Jr., 1st Lt., Co. B 14th R.I. Heavy Artillery. RIHS 1962.24.1

U.S. Flag, regimental. 14th Regiment Rhode Island Heavy Artillery. Belonged to Joseph Carey Whiting, Jr., 1st Lt., Co. B 14th R.I. Heavy Artillery. RIHS 1962.24.1

People matter more than things, but 154 years later, all we have are things those people owned, used, wore, and carried. The things now represent the people. So when someone working on a exhibit says, “any epaulets will do” while pointing at the shoulder boards on a Lieutenant’s coat, I’m not just taken aback, I’m upset, and reply, “If it’s just for color, you can buy them.” Because “any old epaulet [sic]” being loaned by a museum goes through a laborious process of loan approval, packing, delivery and installation. For that time investment alone, “any old epaulet” should not do: museums are not prop closets.

General's Epaulets of William Clark. Missouri Historical Society. 1924-004-0006

General’s Epaulets of William Clark. Missouri Historical Society. 1924-004-0006

I keep saying the same thing, don’t I? There ain’t nothing like the real thing.

We can’t assume that the public doesn’t know or doesn’t care– they often know more than we do, just think of the wildly detailed knowledge some of us have about very particular things– so we owe it to them, and to the people of the past, to use museum objects as more than visual accents.

Museum Fail: Icon, not Replica

21 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by in Art Rant, Fail, History, material culture, Museums

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img_8606

What am I?

Do you know what this is? Do you think it’s real? Here’s a clue: it’s a relic of an iconic event in early 21st-century North America.

On the last visit to the National Marine Corps Museum, I watched the tourists circle objects at the end of the traditional galleries and displays, and overheard a woman ask her companions:

What’s this a replica of?

Reader, I cringed– and not for the sentence construction.

What's this a replica of?

What’s this a replica of?

And then I stepped back. I thought that for someone my age it would be obvious. Here, have some additional museum context.
img_8604

In a museum where everything is real, how does a visitor come to ask not only if that World Trade Center steel beam is a replica, but what is it replicating? I’m not sure semiotics can save us here. My first, New York Times-reading, media-soaked, Northeast Corridor response was, How can you miss that? How can you not recognize that, let alone mistake the steel and concrete relic for a replica?

img_8603

Ah, hubris. There is a label, though I have seen better. Would it be more helpful in a larger font, turned perpendicularly to the I-beam? Possibly. But the lesson that’s deeper than label formatting and placement is recognizing how much we take for granted. Our visitors, even those we assume to be educated consumers of media and information, may not share our knowledge base. They may not read objects or images as readily as we think they do; we certainly cannot assume they’re all taking away the same information– and that has nothing to do with education or background.

Everyone truly sees the world differently. How, and what, we choose to put on a label should always be grounded in remembering that we do not all share the same information. Context is critical, and probably would have made these relics more real, and less replica.

Objectification

14 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by in History, Museums, personal, Philosophy, Reenacting

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Corner chair. Mahogany with fabric-covered slip seat. John Goddard, 1763. RIHS 1990.36.1 RHix5136

Corner chair. Mahogany with fabric-covered slip seat. John Goddard, 1763. RIHS 1990.36.1 RHix5136

I’ve had more alone time than usual at work, which is to say, I’ve been the only living creature in 16,000 SF for multiple consecutive days, which allows me both time to get lots of work done but also permits my mind to wander more than it might otherwise. One of the ideas I continually return to is about the objectification of objects. That’s a terrible phrase, isn’t it? What is the essential thingness of any given thing?

Let’s take chairs: I really like chairs, which is to say that I have, at last, succumbed to the seductive qualities of chairs.[i] But what makes a chair a chair?

Most simply, a chair is to be sat upon. Keeps your rump off the cold, cold ground. Supports your legs and back. Sometimes a chair is for lolling. Sometimes it’s for working. Sometimes it’s for projecting power. But essential, a chair is for sitting.

If use– specifically human use[ii]– is what chairs are for, what happens when a chair is removed from use, and placed on display in a museum?[iii] And what difference does it make whether that chair is on a white plinth in an art museum, or in a historic house, or in the historic house where it was used? When is a chair most a chair, other than the times you are sitting in one?

As I said: a lot of alone time.

servant mannequin in 18th century room

That’s no ghost, that’s my kid. Corner chair just in front of the ghost.

Within a historic house, it seems that the ideal situation is the chair in the room in the house.

That would seem to maximize the “realness” of the thing, right? But we don’t always have the chair, and even when we do, we may not know which room it was used in most often.

The way a chair is displayed and understood in an art museum: Object of Beauty is very different from the way a chair is displayed and understood in a history: Who Sat Here? It’s a conundrum though, because just as the chair become Beautiful Thing in an art museum, it can become Story from the Past in a history museum. Neither presentation/interpretation really gets at Chairness, which is really best experienced by sitting in the chair yourself.

Did I mention I spend a lot of time alone with objects?

Storeroom, Rhode Island Historical Society. RHix17 399

Storeroom, Rhode Island Historical Society. RHix17 399

The way that I think these questions about Chairness relate to living history is by realizing that just as museums fetishize objects on white pedestals, living history interpreters/reenactors sometimes fetishize objects without contextualizing them. You know: Muskets. Clothes. Spinning Wheels.[iv]

Putting the chair in the room where it was used gives it context, and the visitor a new perspective that wouldn’t be gained from a white pedestal, or from the curb. The same is true of the things that we carry as interpreters. Context matters. It’s how meaning is derived and understood. Like repetition, isolation can rob an object—or a person—of meaning. Not that I’m lonely. I have all those chairs, after all.

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[i] Not to get too weird, though: I won’t rhapsodize (yet) about the sensual curve of a chair leg, or a delicate, finely-turned ankle, as I have heard some (fetishistic?) curators so. Yet: there’s still time.

[ii] Sorry cats: chairs were not actually made for you. Now get down!

[iii] If you know anything about art history and theory, you can probably guess which decade I was in graduate seminars.

[iv] My *favorite* thing to see in a military setting.

Feeling Materialistic

27 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by in History Space, Living History, personal

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Chinese Export Porcelain bowl for the American market, 1790-1810. RIHS collection

Chinese Export Porcelain bowl for the American market, 1790-1810. RIHS collection

I went to Newport yesterday for a History Space program on material culture. I don’t know why I  was nervous, really, because I love stuff. I try not to accumulate too much stuff in my own life, and to be a careful curator, but really: beautiful objects make me really happy, and I love talking about “the thingness of things.”

Living history is fun for me for a lot of reasons, some esoteric and personal. I spent a lot of time in school thinking about images of America, and what they meant (it was the age of semiotics and Derrida) so creating living history personae and clothes and based on images and research is a way of making art of history, or else dressing up in funny clothes and enjoying loud noises.

Historical research is most fun when it asks questions– the journey is as good as the destination–and there are good questions to ask the things you carry with you or use in living history. (They’re probably good to ask if you’re in a mood to downsize at home, too.)

  • What is it?
  • When was it made?
  • Who made it?
  • What is it made of? Where did the materials come from?
  • Where did you get it? When did you get it?
  • How does it work, what does it do?
  • What does it mean to you?

If you can answer those questions, you’ll be a lot closer to knowing the why of what you have.

It’s the stories we tell about our objects that give them meaning: sometimes it’s who made or used a thing, sometimes the story has a meaning that you can’t tell from the object itself.

Think of this: I crossed the Pell bridge last night to come home, the road climbing into a storm cloud, the car lashed with rain and wind on a road surface daguerrotype-reflective and hard to read. The buffeting gusts on the car reminded me of the carpenter who didn’t like crossing the bridge to work in Portsmouth. Still, he told a story about crossing the bridge in storm on a motorcycle, with a girl riding behind him. The wind would rise, you’d both get scared, and she’d squeeze closer. He shivered inside his t-shirt as he told the story, with a tiny smile, and you knew he’d gone to Newport in that weather, on that bike, with that girl, on purpose.

You’d never get that story just from a jacket, a helmet, or a bike, but somewhere, there’s a object tied to that story.