Exhibiting Objects as Mediators: Cabinet of the Unknown and
Finders Keepers as Exposed Shifts in the Object’s Trajectory
Anna Mária Juhász Student Number: 11797517 Research Master Cultural Analysis Submission Date: 31 July 2019Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1 Exhibiting the Collected: Processes of Selection and Value Attribution Cabinet of the Unknown: Thoughts on the „Periphery of the Collection” Finders Keepers – Valuing the Devaluated Chapter 2 Re-thinking Collecting as a Practice Chapter 3 Problematizing the Legibility of Objects: The Possibility of Collecting and Exhibiting Objects as Mediators Conclusion Primary Sources Works Cited
Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Noa Roei for encouraging me in my moments of despair and believing in my thesis during my struggles with finding a structure for my thoughts, and with deadlines. But most of all, for all the insights and remarks on my chapter drafts that I received from her, and for the Skype sessions, which always helped me to advance further. I also would like to thank Niall Martin for his feedback on my thesis presentation during our Research Seminar, and for drawing my attention to rubbish and waste theory. As a participant of this course, Zeno Siemens Brega advised me to visit Museum der Dinge, which proved to be a good idea. My thanks goes to Suzi Asa and Justine Gensse for keeping me going, and for providing feedback on my writing. I would like to thank Gábor Dobó for sharing his life with me and my thesis, and for all the insights and support he gave me during the past months. Finally, I owe a huge thanks to my parents, not only for helping me emotionally during the writing of my thesis, but for making my studies in Amsterdam possible.
Introduction My thesis examines practices of collecting and exhibiting objects that are understood to be „everyday”. I will explore if and how the category of everyday objects can challenge the way we conceive of the specific category of museum objects. How do ordinary objects problematize the role that objects play in exhibitions, and the taken-for-granted capacities or values with which they are imbued? Can this understanding of the objects be mobilized by exhibitions in order to open up alternative ways of encountering objects in their frames? For my analysis, I engage in a dialogue with two recent exhibitions, and examine the above described questions and problems by their comparative reading. Cabinet of the Unknown (27 July 2017 – 2 October 2017, Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge, Berlin) (Fig.1.) was an intervention in the museum’s collection by guest curator Ece Pazarbaşı. The displayed objects were selected together with team members of the museum and people working in neighbouring Oranienstrasse, referred to as „cabinet members”. Participants had to pick an object from the collection that was from some aspect unknown to them. Finders Keepers (8 September 2017 – 11 February 2018, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam) (Fig.2.) was guest-curated by the editors of the design magazine MacGuffin, Kirsten Algera and Ernst van der Hoeven. The exhibition featured objects from private collections, and aimed to present – besides the objects themselves – collecting practices.
Fig. 1. Cabinet of the Unknown. Exhibition view. Photograph: Armin Herrmann, Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge. Fig.2. Finders Keepers. Exhibition view. Photograph: Mathijs Labadie.
Both exhibitions positioned themselves as dealing with collections of ordinary, everyday objects. Mieke Bal regards exhibitions as specific narrative discourses (2-3), written „not only on labels but on things, not primarily with pen and ink but with hammer and nails” (87-88). Similarly, Sharon MacDonald emphasizes how the close-reading of specific museums (or exhibitions) enables an „understanding of the practices not simply as outcomes of certain broader developments but as active commentary upon them” (160). In this respect, I will critically examine how Finders Keepers and Cabinet of the Unknown conceptualized and commented on the everyday object, and on the practices of its collecting and exhibiting. Cabinet of the Unknown characterized the exhibited objects as belonging to „the product culture of the 20th and 21st century that surrounds us everyday” (Flagmeier 6, translation mine). Moreover, the fact that they all had been used for specific purposes previously was also alluded to. The unknown object chosen by the curator – the Berlin Key – was described as „widely known”, at least in the given locality of the city (Cabinet of the Unknown – leaflet). Finders Keepers claimed to present „stories about collecting everyday objects” (Finders Keepers 3). The introductory text panel wrote about „household objects” with which „we all surround ourselves”; objects usually defined by their function. Additionally, the text described the guest curators as finding „wonderment in the ordinariness of the everyday”. At the same time, the two exhibitions also problematized the notion of this everydayness. Although to a different extent, they exposed and conceptualized these objects as not overtly accessible and familiar but more ambiguous. They were described as „unknown”, „unfamiliar”, as a „mystery object” (Cabinet of the
Unknown), or as „shaking off their everyday significance”, as „things” that have a „hidden life” (Finders Keepers, introductory text panel). I consider the emphasis of Finders Keepers and Cabinet of the Unknown on the ambiguity of these „unfamiliar familiar” objects as their contribution to the discourse on the collection and exhibition of everyday objects. I will keep this ambiguity as a driving force throughout my thesis, and see how it might have the potential to unsettle the very practice of classifying objects, by inserting disturbance into the core of their initial concept. I look at the framing of these objects as „everyday” by the exhibition makers as the intentional point of departure of the exhibitions. Nevertheless, my main focus will be on the emerging tensions and contradictions, that problematizes how the exhibition makers mobilized the concept in some cases.1 This follows from how I conceive of an exhibition as a spatio-temporal constellation of shared human – non-human presences, where those present shape and affect each other – and are affected while being there.2 Thus, while regarding exhibitions as intentionally staged and attempting to enhance certain ways of perception (Peter Bjerregaard, Sandra H. Dudley) – thereby acknowledging that in some cases the exhibition 1 My focus on these „messy”, sometimes contradictory details of the exhibitions is not driven by an intention of „unveiling” but rather to trace „hidden connections, not by laying bare evidence” (J. Bennett 154-155, building on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick). 2 Dudley regards exhibitions as a „mutually constitutive process” and an „evolving state of hybridity” between the participating actors who encounter each other („Encountering a Chinese Horse” 8).
makers willfully induced some tensions –, I also emphasize that the outcome of exhibitions can never be taken for granted.3 Bal underlines that even though effects can be facilitated (128), „things that happen in cultural practices cannot fully be mastered, predicted and programmed” (130).4 She emphasizes how the exhibited object might be used to serve as a sign or an illustration of the statement made about it – but even if the object is „mute”, by its very presence it is also able to bring discrepancies to the fore, by receding „before the statement about it” (4). But how to think about these discrepancies in the case of exhibitions, that otherwise positioned themselves as acknowledging objects not as mute, but as active participants in the conversation? As I regard exhibitions as shifting constellations and assemblages (mostly based on Jill Bennett, Bal and Hernández-Navarro, and Basu), my approach is also informed by Bruno Latour’s discussion of how in general networks can never be conceived to work in a straightforward manner of linear causality (38-62).5 As he writes, „When a force manipulates another, it does not mean that it is a cause generating effects; it can also be an occasion for other things to start acting” (60). I conceive of exhibitions – even if intentionally staged – not as causes but more as occasions. I also build on Latour to think about the agency of objects and the specific ways in which they can act (68-86). Accordingly, I engage with authors 3 I discuss the cases when the exhibitions kept these tensions intentionally as acts of „showing their hands” as the ones who are responsible for the expository gesture (Bal 53). 4 Limits of intentionality are also acknowledged by Bjerregaard and Dudley, although they are mainly concerned with the intentional ways of achieving certain effects in exhibitions. 5 The writing of Bennett was drawing my attention to examine the working in exhibitions in Latourian terms.
(most importantly, Caitlin DeSilvey) who consider the role of these non-human participants in the assembling of collections and exhibitions, pointing to the limits of human intentionality. Besides the ambiguities at their very core, which destabilizes how to relate to and conceive of these objects, I also decided to make these two exhibitions my partners in analysis because they were not artistic interventions in a museum’s collection, nor an exhibition showing artists’ engagement with everyday objects.6 The examination of the problem of when and how do everyday objects turn into works of art have been central issues in art theory since Marcel Duchamp’s readymades and the Surrealists’ objects, throughout the challenges introduced by pop art to contemporary practices.7 However, Finders Keepers and Cabinet of the Unknown provoked me to engage with how we encounter these objects in the exhibition space and the implications this has for the way we perceive them in other contexts, because the objects they featured retained their everyday quaility, but were still put on display. Their „strangeness” was exposed while keeping them seemingly what they were in their pre-collection / pre-exhibition life. Thus, they can provide another, specific angle from which the transformations in the objects’ perception, which come into play in the processes of collecting and exhibiting can 6 See Carroll „Object to Project” on the practice of artists’ interventions and Pearce on one of the first artists’ intervention featuring objects similar to the ones in the center of my thesis, Andy Warhol’s Raid the Icebox 1 in the Rhode Island Museum, 1969 („Knowing the New” 93-94). 7 Hudek gives an overview of these artistic practices from the beginning of the 20th century. Brown focuses on Surrealist objects, pop art („Thing Theory”) and contemporary practices concerning mass produced objects („Objects, Others, and Us”), while Degot engages with the readymade and Moscow Conceptualism.
be seen, than the cases in which these objects are exhibited as the work of an artist who „detoured” (Hudek 16-17) or „de-familiarized” them (J. Bennett 44, based on the concept of Viktor Shklovsky). Instead of being concerned with the division between work of art and everyday object, I engage with these exhibitions more in terms of Jill Bennett’s „practical aesthetics”. This approach regards art as one, but not the sole means to study the „means of apprehending the world via sense-based and affective processes” (3, 18, 28). As an „outward oriented” practice, not bounded by disciplines, it is interested in paying attention to „how practices are transformed through engagement with what lies beyond them” (2-3). This „outward orientation” in Bennett’s case means the analysis of how art relates to „events” of the „real world”, or more precisely, „what art ... does – what it becomes – in its very particular relationship to events” (5). It also advocates for an „aesthetics-at-large”, regarding the realm of „practical aesthetics” and „everyday life” as operating on an aesthetic continuum (3), though not levelling their specificities (4). Bennett provides productive insights to consider how Finders Keepers and Cabinet of the Unknown – though not art exhibitions – can be conceived of as operating in terms of practical aesthetics. How can their relation to objects of the „real world” be discussed, as an engagement which transforms the very practice of exhibiting objects itself? The overarching focus of this thesis is on the movement of objects, the specificities of phases they go through during their trajectory, and the shifts occurring in their status. I am concerned with the objects’ presence in a collection and / or and exhibition as one of these phases; and conceive of the exhibition as
one possible spatio-temporal assemblage in which they appear and participate.8 The collection/exhibition phase of the objects’ life will be in the center of my analysis; however, I will always discuss it in relation to the other phases to which they are connected. How does this opening up towards other phases work in the case of Finders Keepers and Cabinet of the Unknown? How can their analysis modulate what we think about the specificities of the collection / exhibition phase? And how does this focus on the relations, emerging and dissolving associations and changes in the perception of the objects relate to the conceptualization of the exhibited objects in terms of the everyday or ordinary? To examine these questions, I will engage with authors from various fields, who conceive of objects not as fixed entities but more mutable things, focusing on the shifts occurring in their trajectory as they move between phases in their „social life” (Arjun Appadurai) or their participation in networks and assemblages of human and non-human actors (Latour). Following among others Latour, DeSilvey and Myra Hird, I do not treat the social/cultural and material realms as separate, sustaining the division between them, but regard them as entangled.9 Besides these theories, concerned with the processual understanding of objects more generally, my analysis will depart from authors who approach the 8 The understanding of exhibitions as temporary constellations is also relevant considering the way I had access to the exhibitions. I visited Finders Keepers while it was on view, whereas I got familiar with Cabinet of the Unknown first through its catalogue. As I engaged with the latter exhibition after its dismantling, I experienced the exhibited material when doing my research already in a different constellation. I literally had to re-assemble this exhibition for my analysis. 9 As Latour writes, „the apparently reasonable division between material and social becomes just what is obfuscating any enquiry on how a collective action is possible” (74).
working of collections and exhibitions in a similar manner, discussing the specificities of the collection / exhibition phase. These authors inform how I conceive of exhibitions as specific spatio-temporal constellations, and examine the relations that come into being in their frames (Bal, J. Bennett, Bjerregaard, Dudley and Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll). While acknowledging that there are other phenomena that have been recently challenging and shaping our understanding of object-centered museal practices (e.g. the appearance of digital objects), these will not be covered in my thesis.10 Although the „digital turn” proved to be a central issue of museum studies in the past two decades, the showing of physical things is still a prevalent practice in museums. This both entails further existing earlier models of object-centered museum practices, and a renewed interest in objects from a different angle, informed by new materialism, „thing theory” (Brown) and Object Oriented Ontology/Philosophy.11 The two exhibitions I analyze are not exceptions or forerunners to scrutinize how we relate to objects or to take a closer look at what objects are, but share this preoccupation with numerous other initiatives. However, I argue that from multiple regards they acted in an in-between position, which contributed to 10 On the digital turn in museums and the implications this have for physical objects, see e.g. Witcomb „Re-Imagining the Museum” ch. 5. 11 On the difference between earlier object-centered practices and the recent „material turn” or the return to objects with new concerns, see Berta (giving a summary of material culture studies), Brown („Anarchéologie” on recent exhibitions), Candlin and Guins (on giving an overview of „object studies”), Dudley (advocating for a „material” museum studies) and Joyce and Bennett (on the „material turn”). For an overview of object oriented philosophies see Bryant.
the way they could engage with these questions, and to the kind of tensions that emerged in their frames. This in-betweenness followed partly from the fact that they were guest-curated exhibitions. Although the host institutions have a certain disciplinary approach towards the objects they collect, the exhibitions were not acting within these boundaries. While also not positing the objects as artworks, they acted in a less clearly defined field. Thereby taken-for-granted terms of encountering objects in the exhibition space became destabilized, by making uncertain the very reason behind the objects’ showing, and the way in which the visitor should relate to them. On the other hand, by working together in both cases with many participants, who brought their own ways of relating to the featured objects, they further opened up the possibility of other positions. The position of the participants also challenged the distinctions between individual and institutional collecting and exhibiting practices, further leading to an „inbetweenness”. This „dwelling in the interval”, to paraphrase J. Bennett (4), is still quite unique among exhibitions, even if the concerns of these two exhibitions are shared with others. In Chapter 1, I examine how processes of selection unfold in the exhibitions and analyze the diverse notions of value informing them. Gestures of choosing, inherent both in collecting and exhibiting will be discussed as another shift in the trajectory of these objects, although a much exposed one. My main focus will be on how these objects challenge both established values informing museal practices, and on the other hand, values that are central in their previous life as – mostly – commodities. In Chapter 2, I focus on how certain elements of the exhibitions problematized the working of an abstract organizing category, both inherent in
practices of curating and collecting. On the one hand, I will analyze how this led to a reconsideration of what the singularity of objects in exhibitions can entail; on the other hand, besides human actors whose selecting activities I examined in Chapter 1, in this case I will take into consideration how objects as actors can problematize the working of an abstract organizing principle and human intentionality. In Chapter 3, I analyze the legibility of the exhibited objects. In this case, what propelled me to focus on this question was Cabinet of the Unknown, which made the notion of the „unknown” its central issue. Furthermore, both exhibitions problematized the legibility of exhibited objects and taken-for-granted practices of facilitating this. By pointing to the limits of certain ways of knowing objects, they also provide an opportunity to consider potential roles that exhibited objects can have besides a representational logic. Together, these exhibitions demonstrate the specificities of what belonging to a collection and an assemblage of exhibited items entail in the trajectory of an object. They problematize the status and meaning of the museum object, and its habitual / naturalized perception. I will examine how this destabilization is triggered by the various understandings of the everyday or ordinary object, with which the exhibitions work, and whether the emerging tensions and ambiguities can lead to a re-consideration of the category of both museum objects and everyday objects.
Chapter 1 Exhibiting the Collected: Processes of Selection and Value Attribution This chapter focuses on how processes of selection unfolded in the exhibitions Finders Keepers and Cabinet of the Unknown and analyze the diverse notions of value informing them. The selection of objects entailed a double selection in both exhibitions. First the objects were chosen to become part of collections, and then they were selected for the exhibitions from the collections. I consider the various cycles of selection as commenting on each other, and on the underlying values. Thereby a multiplicity of possible evaluations of the very same objects opened up in both cases. I examine how this multiplicity of evaluations highlight the processes by which objects are imbued with values, instead of regarding them as possessing some fixed, inherent value that would necessarily lead to their collecting and exhibiting. What kind of values are challenged in these multiple rounds of selection, and what kind of values gain validity and become acceptable practice? As Appadurai argues in his analysis of how objects have a „social life”, a trajectory which entails shifts in their status and value, „all efforts at defining commodities are doomed to sterility unless they illuminate commodities in motion” („Commodities” 16). While his analysis is mostly concerned with the „commodity-hood” of objects (13), I examine the phase that objects spend in exhibitions by illuminating the exhibited objects in motion, examining „the
conditions under which ... objects circulate in different regimes of value in space and time” (4).12 I conceive of collecting and curating, and the object's subsequent presence in an exhibition, as a more exposed shift among other shifts. Latour argues that the making of new associations always involves the work, effort of the actors (34-35), resulting in a „difference to a state of affairs” (52-53). However, this only becomes visible when an account is given of it by the actors, when traces of the change can be encountered. He also lists certain occasions which can enhance the generation of „good accounts”, one of which is the resource of fiction and art (80-82).13 I regard collections and exhibitions as such „more visible” accounts or traces, informing about the changes that occurred during the formation of the collection or the exhibition, among others in the evaluation of objects. For this, I will partly build on authors concerned with collecting and exhibiting as a selective and value attributive process, pointing to the specificities of evaluation that this phase in their life entails.14 On the other hand, I depart from 12 I use the term museum object to refer to the phase that an object spends exhibited in the space of an institution, and the frames informing its encounter. In the case of my thesis, this does not always indicate the belonging of the object to a museum collection. On the notion of museum object see e.g. Carroll’s and Dudley’s writings and Pearce „Museum Objects”. 13 Following my understanding of Cabinet of the Unknown and Finders Keepers in terms of practical aesthetics, I regard them as belonging to Latour’s understanding of this resource. 14 Although authors engaging with practices of collecting might differ in what aspects of collecting their main concerns are, while also pointing to the diversity of collecting practices, they all discuss collecting as a selective process; and as such, its relation to processes of value attribution (see e.g. Pearce „Introduction”, „The Urge to Collect” and „Museum Objects”, Danet and Katriel, DeSilvey, Lambert, and Were).
theories concerned with another more exposed shift in the object’s trajectory, equally informative about its evaluation: the moment when it is determined as waste or rubbish.15 Following the argument to engage with the two exhibitions to examine selective gestures because they exhibit collected objects, any such exhibition could have been chosen for my analysis. However, in Finders Keepers and Cabinet of the Unknown not simply the gesture of collecting and curating can inform – understood as a more exposed shift – about the values attributed to the objects. In both cases, narrative accounts about the motives underlying the selective gesture of given participants formed an integral part of the exhibition. I examine how these accounts correlate with less explicit accounts of other rounds of selectors. This means on the one hand further texts, on the other hand the exhibition display, as the equally evaluative part of the exhibition discourse (Bal 87-88).16 The analysis of Finders Keepers and Cabinet of the Unknown can also problematize how and why the „everyday” is valued and referred to in certain ways (or not) in these different rounds. In the case of collected and exhibited objects, „everyday materials” are often discussed as challenging naturalized museal values. But how are museal codes of evaluation that „pervade our thinking” (Bal 67) challenged, if the understanding of the „everyday object” proves to be split and multiplied – both in verbal accounts and the way it is shown? 15 As Myra J. Hird points out, based on Greg Kennedy, „Waste provides appreciable epistemological insights into how humans determine the existence and status of objects” (454). 16 For further discussion of the implications of various modes of display see also Alpers and Vogel.
Cabinet of the Unknown: Thoughts on the „Periphery of the Collection” As the objects in Cabinet of the Unknown were selected from the permanent exhibition of Museum der Dinge, I consider the temporary exhibition as a case where the collecting practices of an institution were commented on and evaluated. In a sense, the guest-curator already commented on the practices of the museum’s collecting by focusing on the notion of the „unknown” in the case of a collection that defines itself as engaging with „20th and 21st century product culture” (Museum der Dinge 3). First, she asked each museum team member to select an object from the collection that was „unknown” for the chooser, and an „unknown” location in the neighbouring street. People working in these locations were invited to select their own unknown objects as „cabinet members”, and could invite further participants. (Fig.3.) Museum team members and cabinet members likewise were asked to comment on their chosen objects and motives of their choice. Their responses formed an integral part of the exhibition in the form of „object cards”. Visitors were also encouraged to comment on a selected object, although this time from the temporary exhibition. How can the selective gestures, that these participants practiced during the exhibition and the accounts given of their motives, highlight the evaluation of the museum object? And how to conceive of the category of the museum object in this specific case, when the museum entails an institution like Museum der Dinge? What kind of other considerations and evaluations of the collection’s objects
unfolded as the participants of the exhibition commented on them – and on the museum’s and the curator’s ways of conceptualizing the same objects? Fig.3. Cabinet of the Unknown. Neighborhood map with photos of participants and chosen objects, showing the unfolding of the selection with strings. Photo: Armin Herrmann, Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge. The „Musealization of Everyday Life” Museum der Dinge can be discussed in terms of the „musealization of everyday life”. Sharon MacDonald traces forms of this practice to „gather up, preserve and display the ordinary stuff of mundane everyday life” (137) back to the 19th century
establishment of museums of folk life (141-144).17 She also discusses how collecting of „past or passing everyday life” (141) increased from the 1920-30s and „escalated” from the 1970s, driven by the urge to compensate accelerating changes in lifestyle (145).18 But how do similar practices build on or challenge already existing core values of museums? Although the core values of the museum are also subject to change, in the following I ground my understanding on museal values based on Bal’s discussion of the museum as „value factory” (57).19 Her analysis engages with museums that show how the values informing the modern museum from its Enlightenment birth, throughout the 19th century, are still prevailing until today, even if in mutating forms. Bal examines how the museum values objects within its walls traditionally as divided along the art / artifact divide, concerned with aesthetics or knowledge (5, 64-66, 77). She demonstrates how both considerations are inherent in these seemingly separate museal ways of valuing and showing objects (77-78). However, this dichotomy is sustained as it bolsters and naturalizes a hierarchy of values (66-67), regarding art in terms of individuality of Western culture (49) and artifact as 17 MacDonald understands the notion of everyday life as „daily domestic and workplace existence (137). However, referring to Marianne Gullestad, she emphasizes that „this concept should not be taken for granted”, and „its meanings may change over both time and location”. 18 As MacDonald summarizes, whereas earlier museums were mainly focusing on the preservation of rural life in the face of industrialization, from the 1970s there was also a growing interest for the industrial past - alongside processes of de-industrialization (145-146). 19 On changes in museum values see e.g. Bann’s discussion of how cabinets of curiosities relate to the ensuing „scientific” model of exhibiting, valuing „reason” (24-29). For the discussion of more recent changes see e.g. Witcomb „Re-Imagining the Museum”.
„standing for the larger culture it represents (its original context)”, meaning „other cultures” (78). Notions of authenticity, concerned with the originality of the exhibited objects are central concerns of the museum as a regime of value (Witcomb 102-108): whether in terms of the unique original masterwork (Appadurai „The Thing Itself” 20; „Commodities” 45), or in the case of the objects of the „other”, in terms of a clear provenance (so it can represent the „original context”).20 On the one hand, even some of those who acknowledge the collecting of everyday objects as „challenging”, like Were or Lambert, value the objects most of all as documents and sources of knowledge – as a „material archive for future generations” (Were 6). Although Were acknowledges that the selected objects are imbued with relevance partly in the process of selection (1), they frame challenges more in managerial terms. From the account of Lambert – although she engages with contemporary plastic objects – it becomes evident that even in this case, some institutions still not give up on the relevance (in this case, its typicality of contemporary material culture) or significance of the object before its collecting. However, even this understanding shows how the museum of everyday life goes against the dichotomy of the art („our own”) and artifact („others”) as described by Bal. Another prevailing motive for collecting everyday objects is the case when they are perceived as „secular relics”, connected to a specific person, event or site (Stengs). This category still clings to notions of specificity and authenticity. 20 On how the „exhibitionary complex” naturalize these values and the ordering and exhibiting of the world according to them, see also T. Bennett „Exhibitionary Complex”.
The affective aspect of „secular relics” is also present in how more anonymous or impersonal objects in the museum „evoke (usually in general and unspecific ways) ... lives and social relations”, in a sense of „semi-familiarity” (MacDonald 155, 158). On the other hand, „these things do not begin their lives as special and neither, for the most part, is this specialness slowly accumulated”, but „rather ... effected by their movement to the museum” (147). This aspect challenges „ideas of the museum as selector and preserver of a culture’s most singular and valuable items”. But even an object like this has, according to MacDonald, a certain aura, „an ineffable quality gathered during its history” (146-147). Pearce also examines how collecting practices of mass-produced materials defy the motives underlying museum practices, by being drawn to „material which is old, but not very old, technologically inferior, and lacking in any precious or aesthetic component”, to objects that are „often extremely similar” („Knowing the New” 97). To summarize, the dynamics of singularity/specificity, typicality and representativeness is also a central problem in the case of collections of everyday objects, even if this kind of material introduces other aspects to it as 19-20th mainstream museum practices. The Unknown as the Periphery of the Collection? In the case of Museum der Dinge, the central theme of its permanent exhibition are the „objectives and strategies” (5) of the Deutscher Werkbund, an association concerned with questions of „quality” and „good form” under conditions of mass production (Museum der Dinge 3) . These cabinets in the „middle row” (60) of the exhibition space contain mostly objects stemming from the Werkbund’s archive, following a chronological order. (Fig.4.) These showcases are accompanied by the
other part of the permanent exhibition called „Open Storage” (60), opening up the collection towards an even broader range of everyday objects and towards „other dialogue structures” than the Werkbund’s „polemical argumentation” of „good” and „bad” form (5). The organizing category of each cabinet is more idiosyncratic, with titles like „writing”, „imitations and quotations”, or „body things” (60). (Fig.5.) Fig. 4. Cabinet from the „middle row”. Photo: author.
Fig.5. Cabinet from the „Open Storage”. Photo: author.
While the guest curator’s instruction given to participants was simple and open-ended, Pazarbaşi herself also had a more distinct understanding of what the „unknown” stands for in the case of an institutional collection. In her essay to the catalogue, she defines this narrower understanding of the unknown objects as „the periphery of the collection” (12). She values this category as it shifts „the attention ... to unknown objects that do not fit into any kind of taxonomy” (10); „what is around the defined collection that remains as unknown at the museum” (12). Renate Flagmeier, the chief curator of the museum also gives an account in the catalogue what the „unknown” object can mean from a museal point of view: „... objects, that are not relevant from a design historical aspect, even though become part of the collection, sometimes cannot be inventoried with precise information about their original context of production and use” (6, translation mine). However, as discussed above (and as the guest-curator also acknowledges, Pazarbaşi 11) Museum der Dinge can be considered an „untraditional” institution – besides collecting mostly of objects already „peripheral” from the point of traditional museum values as mostly mass produced, everyday objects. Taking this into account, in what terms can we still speak of the margins of the collection? While it would seem evident that the center of Museum der Dinge’s collection consists of the Werkbund cases, and the Open Storage can be regarded as its periphery, this division between the parts of the permanent exhibition is not so clear cut. The Open Storage also contains „design historically relevant” objects, whereas the „middle row” also houses e.g. „anonymous design”. Moreover, while in the Werkbund cases more objects have labels as in the Open Storage, many exhibited objects in both row of cabinets remain unidentified for the visitors – and in this case, also for the Cabinet participants in their moment of choosing their
object – in „proper” museal manner. The abundance of objects in the Open Storage that runs parallely with the middle row cabinets, also makes it hard to regard them as peripheral. Pearce mentions that when Andy Warhol guest-curated an exhibition for the museum of Rhode Island School of Design in 1969, Raid the Icebox 1, he „decided to display the whole of the reverse shoe collection, which at first seemed to the staff to be a nonsense of duplicates and inferior pieces, offering neither historical nor aesthetic knowledge” („Knowing the New” 94). However, in the case of Museum der Dinge these „unknown” objects that lack a proper museum pedigree and are not design historically relevant, are not in the storage, but shown; even if some of them are shown in cabinets called „Open Storage”, while others in the Werkbund cases. Thus, if we stick first to how the museum director and the guest-curator conceptualized the „unknown” objects as a circumscribable group in the above described terms, Museum der Dinge collects objects that can be considered as challenging even from the perspective of museums of everyday life. These objects problematize their treatment as documents. The uncertainties surrounding them also make it impossible to regard them as typical enough to be collected – their typicality is not bolstered by information. However, as I argued above, the way these objects are exhibited, makes it questionable whether they can be regarded as peripheral in the case of this specific museum. Nevertheless, Cabinet of the Unknown did not even differentiate between the exhibited objects in such a manner. They were displayed completely on par with
each other, placed next to each other on top of simple desks.21 In the temporary exhibition all objects had labels (forming part of the object cards), though all placed together in an „object index”, separately from the objects. As the temporary exhibition took place in a smaller room, opening from the exhibition space of the permanent display, visitors of Cabinet could experience the evaluation of objects in the two exhibitions in tandem with each other. To round up how to think about the periphery of a collection of everyday objects in the above outlined terms, and how it correlated with the instruction to select an object that is unknown for its chooser, I turn to the object cards and the selected „unknown” objects. Motives of choosing on the object cards What can further problematize the notion of „institutional values” were the remarks of the museum team members. A museum team member’s account for example recounted how she chose an object that she herself had acquired for the museum collection from a flea market, without knowing what it was, „under the keywords: unknown / whimsical object”. She likes the form of the object, and how it evokes ambivalent feelings („Egg topper Gourmet”). Another museum team 21 With the exception of five objects that were displayed at „satellite locations”, in the shop windows of participating venues, where cabinet members worked. J. Bennett advocates in terms of practical aesthetics for practices that remain open, situating themselves on a continuum with „real life”, but also keeping in mind their specificities, „not to close this gap” between the two realms (4). The object in the shop window, placed on a small pedestal under a glass bell, established links between specificities of displaying commodities and displaying museum objects, while not equating them with each other.
member wonders why his object „ended up in the museum”, adding that „most people would dump it” („Pouring dispenser”). These accounts de-stabilize the notion that museums necessarily select according to neutral and universally valid values; rather relates to notions of collecting practices as the rearrangement of objects into a system arbitrarily defined by the collector, as discussed by Pearce („Introduction” and „The Urge to Collect”) or Danet and Katriel. Or rather, they posit the scope of museum collecting as another abstract category informing selection, thus de-stabilizing it as a natural given, as a group of things existing as one category before it was assembled into a collection and defined as correlating. The explicitly idiosyncratic arrangement of part of the museum’s collection can also be seen as exposing the arbitrariness of the museum’s taxonomy. A participant who was in an in-between position – another guest curator at Museum der Dinge – was evaluating this practice in the case of a museum as something that should be corrected, pointing out that his chosen object does not fit well into the „Body” cabinet where he found it. As he puts it, „’corporeality’ might be the wrong classification, as the hands as a part of a body are not really relevant for the meaning of the object” („Top of a flag” - with the motive of a handshake). However, the very emergence of such an idea, to overwrite the museum’s categorization, could also be triggered by the museum exposing itself as an arbitrary selector and categorizer. In Bal’s sense, the permanent exhibition of the museum does a „messing-up of categories we tend to self-servingly respect” (67). Many participants also commented in some form on the category of the unknown. There were some who valued the unknownness of the object, and it played a role in their selection beyond just simply following the selection criteria.
They valued it as triggering curiosity, because of its ambiguity, or because it enabled a free flow of associations (whether personal memories, or made-up stories), or an attentiveness to small details of the object.22 Some liked the objects because of a feature that could be understood as peripheral, like its „inconspicuousness” or smallness, the „apparent incompleteness” of an object, that „it looks insignificant”, that it was broken, or because it was a „somewhat repurposed” object: „It was something and became something else” (thus making it harder to stick to the importance of an „original” use). The latter cabinet member also added that she liked her object’s „ugly color” and that it makes it impossible „to tell what is ‘new’ and what is old” („Part of a toy steam locomotive”). Some participants valued aspects, that connect to the above described tensions in the evaluation of objects of everyday life in the museum in diverse ways, opening up other motives for choosing that the embracing of unknownness only. The sense of „uniqueness” that supposedly belongs to handmade objects was revealed in an account mentioning hand-painted details on a liquor beaker, or when someone was drawn to tinkered objects, as in the case of a self-made control stick. (Fig.6.) It also induced curiosity about the maker of the object, regarded as a direct link to him or her, as an anonymous version of Stengs’ „secular relic”. The same motives were revealed in the case of a mass produced, but a bit more „biographic” object (Violette Morin qtd. in MacDonald 148-150), like a small metal box decorated with a figure and carved initials, that triggered associations about the possible personality of its former owner. However, in some cases the object 22 The valuing of the everyday as unknown challenges on the one hand the valuing of the everyday as familiar (MacDonald earlier in this chapter; see also Opie). On the other hand, it also comments on the valuing of the yet unknown (see Carroll „Curating Curiosity”).
that was partly chosen because it seemed „D.I.Y.” later turned out to be a serially produced item, one that sold „exceedingly well” („Mousetrap in shape of a house ‘Capito’”). Fig.6. Self-made Control Stick. Original object photo: Armin Herrmann. Photo taken of the original by author in the archive of Museum der Dinge. The „aura” that MacDonald describes in the case of similar objects as stemming from their „previous life of regular use” (146-147) of what they had already lived through, was also valued e.g. in the case of an object that was supposedly a „Ruler for the blind”. Its chooser expressed his liking of the smoothness of the object’s surface and its oldness, remarking that „You can see that it was very much in use”. Thus, even though Pearce describes them as having „no ’objective’ historical depth” („Knowing the New” 98), the relative „oldness” of these objects can still be a motive for valuing them.
Pearce’s claim that these objects are challenging because they lack „any aesthetic component” are also modified by some responses, in the sense of what Bal describes as the „formalist protocol” (55n15) of the museal value regime. For example, a visitor chose to comment on a „Metal compound with hooks” because it „looks like an ingenious sculpture”. The chooser of the „Handle for bottles” was motivated by the beautiful color of the object, and because it was “also beautifully designed”. On the other hand, other object cards reveal a valuing of aesthetic components more in the sense of J. Bennett’s practical aesthetics, appreciating the sensory aspects of the given objects, and being affected by the material presence of the chosen object not in terms of beauty or an excellence of form. In some cases participants followed the selection criteria but did not value the selected objects because of its unknownness, but in spite of it, emphasizing other aspects that they liked. As the chooser of the „Multiplier for low-voltage current” put it, „The things that I select based on this criterion don’t necessarily include ones that I like. I had previously chosen another and then decided on this because the visual aspect of the object was better”. Another account shows particularly well the ambivalent feelings – a mixture of curiosity and annoyance – that the unknownness of the given object (in this case the „Razor blade sharpener”) triggered: „[I chose it] Because I am not familiar with this object and would like to know what it is … I don’t like it because I don’t know what it is.” The curator’s understanding of the „unknown” as standing for the periphery of the collection was not confirmed by every object choice. Participants also chose things that were unknown to them, but otherwise had a proper museum pedigree: like a juicer by star designer Philippe Starck, the electric coffee grinder „Kopena”, egg boiler „Eiko” with cradle, or the jewelry holder „in” – „out”, that all came with
an exact designation of designer, producer and year and place of production on their label in the object index. While the „whimsical object” of the museum team member seems to fit into the category of peripheral object in the museal sense, from its object card it turns out that the museum as an institution knows that it is an „Egg topper ‘Gourmet’”. These accounts indicate that the category of the „unknown” rather worked as a malleable, open category, as everyone had to choose an object unknown for them. The egg topper is an object that embodies the tension that emerges between a more „objective” understanding of the unknown as an uncategorizable museum object, as not known for the museum worker at the moment of acquisition and even remaining unknown at the moment of choosing, while already known for the museum as an institution. Lastly, visitors’ engagement can also be discussed as a gesture of selection. In their case, the instruction on the wall was simply „Select an object!”. This lead to the addition of responses that revealed that some of the displayed objects are very familiar and well known to some of the visitors, and had been chosen because of their familiarity. The joy of seeing something familiar in a museum exhibition can be traced in many of their responses, adding further aspects to the selection of the „unknown”. How visitors value the familiar – even if it is the most banal object, like an egg opener or a small spoon, or exactly because of this ordinariness – is also mentioned by Opie, who runs a private museum: „...because they’re looking at something that they ... have a relationship with” (Opie 211). This motive also recalls MacDonald’s account of semi-familiar objects. In this sense, the very fact that the objects in the museum are mass produced and thus „extremely similar” to many other objects outside the museum, became a source of value for visitors.
Finders Keepers – valuing the devaluated In the case of Finders Keepers my analysis concentrates on how private collectors evaluate the objects they collect, according to what assumptions do they choose and keep things, and how the curators commented on these. I focus on the accounts that the collectors gave about their motives of collecting. Some of these accounts formed part of the exhibition as text panels, others were only published in the exhibition guide booklet. Some collectors also talked about their collections in video portraits, „showing the collections in their habitat” (as the exhibition’s website puts it). I engage with these accounts in relation to the curators’ account and the exhibition display. On the one hand, the curators exhibited a collection of collections, thereby also evaluating collecting as a practice. On the other hand, they also framed the exhibited objects in certain ways, that sometimes stood in tension with the collectors’ accounts. Departing from the insights concerning the institutional collecting of everyday life, in this chapter I examine whether the arbitrariness of selection and value attribution of collecting differs in the case of private collectors. To engage with this question, I concentrate on the collecting of objects that were not valued by others any more, and focus on the concerns of their collectors. Individual and Institutional collecting practices: the question of arbitrariness Pearce discusses that a characteristics that diverse collecting practices share is that they think in a set of correlating yet distinguishable elements that has its inner logic (building on Russel W. Belk); however, this is subjectively decided upon („The Urge to Collect”). She discusses collecting as a restructuring of „the actual objects in
daily circulation doing their social jobs”, „as they come and go in use”, „structured according to generally understood categories” („Introduction” 2). This restructuring happens „against the cross-references of the individual collector, his (or her) history, psychological quirks and imaginative notions of value” (3). Danet and Katriel defines this as a „superordinate category”, that differentiates an „assemblage of objects” from a collection (225). Pearce does not distinguish in these general definitions between individuals and institutions.23 However, there is a difference between the acknowledgement of the arbitrariness of selection between institutions and individuals. As I summarized in the previous part, museums mostly posit their own superordinate category as a natural given (Bal), something that idiosyncratically arranged museums can challenge, just as the collecting of objects that defy established notions of the museum (MacDonald). Were and Pearce („Knowing the New”) underlines how individuals started collecting the everyday, in the sense of mundane, ordinary objects, much earlier than most established institutions. Accordingly, Were urges museums (departing from Paul Martin) to take note of individual collecting practices if they want to step beyond collecting only things that are already regarded as adequate material for museums (3-4). 23 Although in the quoted sentence Pearce refers to individuals, this scheme is given by her as a general description of collecting as a kind of relationship into which we can enter with objects („Introduction” 1-4). In „Museum Objects”, she also discusses the central feature of museum collecting as detaching „selected lumps of the physical world to which value has been ascribed”, and the organization of these „discrete lumps” into „some kind of relationship ... with other ... material” (9-10).
This can lead to challenges, as museums have a sense of „duty” (Were 10) when they decide upon the collecting of a certain material, informed by their ideas of collecting on behalf of „imagined collective ’owners’”(MacDonald 157).24 Pearce argues that by contrast, private collectors can more easily turn to the kind of objects that challenge both the „values of the marketplace” as well as museum values, because in their case, the „rational” of the collected objects is „based upon what they mean to the collector, not what they might be able to demonstrate to the outside world” (97-98). A similar understanding is echoed by the introductory text panel of Finders Keepers, pointing out that „In a collection, household objects can shake off their everyday significance as scissors, razors or clothes hangers: here the objects are defined not by their function but by their role in the collector’s story”.25 From this introduction, it could seem that private individuals can and do collect whatever they feel like. In the following, I analyze how questions of arbitrariness and justification of concerns to the outside world – attempting to posit the collected category of objects in terms that would also enhance its value in the eyes of others – feature in the accounts given by some collectors in Finders Keepers. 24 Danet and Katriel exclude museum collecting from the scope of their analysis because for museums collecting is „work, not leisure” (222). This distinction is both undermined by more idiosyncratic public museums, and privately founded museums. 25 Sam Jacob, who contributed to the exhibition booklet with an essay, approaches forms of collecting similarly, as an activity enabling „a more productive kind of relationship” with objects, acknowledging their agency, acknowledging their „alien-ness” as „things” (36).
Processes of de- and revaluation: rubbish and waste To engage with this problem, I turn to Jonathan Culler, who in his writings on junk and rubbish examines how objects come to be perceived as collectables, and to Myra J. Hird, who analyzes the same in relation to waste. These theories are not only relevant because they focus on the question of arbitrariness in relation to processes of value attribution and the determination of objects, but because one of the central motives revealed by the collectors in Finders Keepers was the rescuing or salvaging of objects.26 Departing from Michael Thompson’s rubbish theory, Culler discusses how objects can be placed into the categories of „durables”, „transients” and „rubbish” (171-178). Durables are the things perceived as worthy to be cherished, kept, and repaired. Transients are the ones we merely use, regard as having „finite life-spans and as decreasing in value over time” (171) and do not make efforts to elongate their presence in our lives. Culler regards rubbish as the category into which transients enter after they completely lost their value, but are still around us in this weird phase. He argues that their ambiguity as rubbish can open up the possibility of their re-evaluation. Thus rubbish-turned „transients” can become „durables”: one example of which are „collectables” (173-174). 26 Salvaging was not reflected on in Cabinet of the Unknown, although the comparison of an object to „scrap”, remarks like „most people would dump it”, and mentioning the museum’s acquisition from flea markets denotes this motive. At the same time, a similar rhetorics of rescuing is evoked by the museum’s initiative of looking for supporters, who virtually adopt an object from the collection, and thereby become „Dingpflegers” („Object Caretakers”).
Myra J. Hird’s writing engages with waste as a similarly ambiguous category.27 However, Hird focuses on how the process of „rendering indeterminate entities determinate” (454) works in the other direction, defining something as waste. Another major difference between them is that Culler concentrates on rubbish in the sense of „ordinary old junk and rubbish”, which is „inoffensive” and „relatively innocent”, „stuff that is of no real value” – neither use nor exchange value – but still kept around, maybe in less visible places, but not thrown away (170-171). On the contrary, Hird puts a great emphasis on the aspect of waste as discarded, rejected excess.28 Collectors’ concerns in Finders Keepers Whereas in Finders Keepers the notions of salvaging and rescuing things from demolition, not valued by others any more is often mentioned, even within these accounts a diversity of motives and assumptions opened up concerning the prolongation of an object’s life (or visible presence). These accounts also complicate the processes of de- and revaluation, as Culler and Hird discusses them. Although Culler’s understanding of categories are not based on an inherent quality of objects but on their shifting perception, he points out some specificities 27 As Hird writes, „ anything and everything can be regarded as waste, and things can simultaneously be and not be waste, depending on the perceiver” (454). Appadurai similarly approaches commodities „as things in a certain situation, a situation that can characterize many different kinds of things, at different points in their social lives” („Commodities” 13). 28 Whether an author uses rubbish or waste can vary, e.g. Gygi uses the term rubbish, even though his understanding of this category stands closer to Hird’s waste, focusing on the unexpected revenance of discarded, rejected objects.
that are challenged by how some objects in the exhibition came to be „selected for durability” (178) by the act of collecting. He points out that transients can only become durables via the „interchange” of rubbish (179), withdrawn from systems of utility and consumption. However, in the video portrait of rigger and boatswain’s mate Floris Hin, who collects ship ropes, this trajectory appears as a less clearly defined one. He collects the same ropes with which he works on a daily basis when repairing sailing boats. (Fig.7-8.) As he recounts, „I didn’t specifically go look for them”, but rather finding the ropes „while working on ships, lying there in corners”. Some of his collection’s items were kept by him when captains of ships asked him to „take them off their hands” (thus discarding them in a way), and in this sense fit into Culler’s trajectory. However, the line between regarding his ropes as transient pieces of daily utility, or as durable pieces of a collection is more blurred. He refers to using pieces of his collection time and again for his work as a boat conservator. His account in the video also complicates the curator’s claim that in collections objects „shake off their everyday significance” as equated with their function, because in this collection the use value of the ropes is still kept.29 29 The collector of tailoring scissors – the founder of a jeans company – also recalls that the pieces of his collection are regularly used in their offices, even in the case „of some very old and rare examples”. He emphasizes that they see them as „implements to use and not as museum pieces” (Finders Keepers 19). As Kreps and Bal emphasizes, envisioning the use of museum objects as endangering their condition goes against the centrality of protection in Western museums – as a feature that ensures that the material presence of the object in the museum is kept intact (Bal 64-66; Kreps 283).
Fig.7. Video portrait about Floris Hin’s rope collection, screenshot. Video: Mels van Zutphen. Fig.8. The rope collection on view in Finders Keepers. Photo: author.
Amie Dicke’s account in her video given about her collection of used soap bars also test the limits of Culler’s theory, as she collects the soaps not when they are just lying around in a neglected in-between state, but while they are still intended to be used. She collects them right after using them from wherever she feels like (Finders Keepers 37), which somehow seems to skip the phase of rubbish. On the other hand, she motivates her collecting with the urge to preserve that given moment in which she encounters these soap bars.30 The soap bar as an object is also quite specific, as its material form is constantly changing, leading in the end to its disappearance. Thus, it is an object that cannot really turn into rubbish or waste, because it simply does not reach this phase.31 However, the keeping of used soap bars for the moment of encounter, that they are perceived to contain by the collector, can show that „Though the biographical aspect of some things (such as heirlooms, postage stamps, and antiques) may be more noticeable than that of some others (such as steel bars, salt, or sugar), this component is never completely irrelevant”, as Appadurai notes („Commodities” 13). The keeping of soap bars for this very arbitrary reason also aligns with the curator’s understanding of how collected objects get a new significance in the collector’s story. 30 On how items of a collection are perceived by the collector to contain the moment of their encounter and acquisition, that can be revisited as a source of pleasure, see Benjamin. However, in his case the books whose encounter he recalls were not acquired because of this moment, even though later valued also (though not primarily) as triggering memories of it. 31 As a „ primary or bulk commodity” (Appadurai 6) it spends a very short time in the phase of being a new, desirable commodity. Danet and Katriel also mention a soap collector, although in that case the soaps are collected mostly for their smells, wrapped in tin foil to longer preserve it (224).
Another collection that can complicate the theory of Culler is the collection of coffee lids (Finders Keepers 17). As he argues, although the transient-turned-rubbish „exists in a timeless limbo” where it can be „discovered”, „it is never the relatively new chair, which has only lost some of its value, that suddenly becomes a priceless durable but rather the old-fashioned ... that has been gathering cobwebs in an attic” (172). But this clear division between transients and rubbish as related to this understanding of temporality is complicated by „disposables” like the coffee cup lid. A growing number of things that, according to Hird, we only encounter for a very short period in their trajectory, as a „fleeting presence” (Greg Kennedy qtd. in Hird 455), as they „are determinate” as single-serving objects: „we use them, toss them in the garbage and forget about them” (455). Whereas Culler describes rubbish „as decreasing in value over time”, Hird underlines (building on Kennedy) that the devaluation of disposables happens in an instance, right after fulfilling the purpose for which they were intended.32 Culler only acknowledges this problem briefly, but does not elaborate on the possible differences within the category of transients (179); something which becomes a central concern for Hird and Gygi, concerned with the increasing number and proliferation of discarded things. MacDonald discusses how the salvaging of vanishing things, as a central consideration in the musealization of everyday life, is regarded as a „temporal anchoring” (138), a „denial of ephemerality” that „resolidify” things (152). But whereas the soap collector only keeps the soaps because of what value they have 32 As Hird writes, „while most disposables appear the same before and after their use, their ontology has fundamentally changed. Before use, the object is a desirable commodity; afterwards it is garbage. ... What makes things garbage is their unusability or worthlessness to human purposes.”
for her (in this sense affirming Pearce’s claim that in similar collections the only thing objects have to do is to have relevance for their collector), the coffee lid collector Louise Harpman – who is a professor of design – collects these objects as documents of a contemporary way of life and as a specific area of design history. She has even co-written a book about her collection, linking individual practices back to the concerns of institutions. Although she stores the lids under her bed – which is a quite intimate proximity to the collection – she underlines that they are stored in acid-proof boxes, that refers to their professional treatment. Amid quickly changing values musealization is also regarded as formalizing not only the objects but also what counts as valuable (MacDonald 138). Charles Brooking, who collects building components from historical houses that are facing demolition or renovation, can be discussed in these terms (Finders Keepers 39).33 From the video portrait it becomes evident that he values these pieces – window frames and staircase sections – first of all because of their potential educational value, as a depository of knowledge of unique craftsmanship and ways of building. He even moved towards institutionalizing his collection, which operates now as a privately founded museum.34 This further „raises the profile” (Cheetham 130) of similar items as valuables and collectables, „rendering” the category of 33 In the video, he phrases in vivid terms how his salvaging mission to save these details „really is a fight” that entails hard physical work, as he himself detaches the details from the houses. Thus, the „work” involved in rendering something collectable (Cheetham 126) becomes in this sense quite literal. 34 See Bounia on motives for institutionalizing the collection, including positioning it as something that also has a value that others should acknowledge as well. Bounia’s account also offers a point to consider how private collectors’ practices are shaped by reigning notions of „good collecting”.
architectural details to be perceived by others as collectable (126), as museums „normalize” collecting practices (Were 2). Referring in his account to how „the window heritage of this country is being lost”, he positions the kind of material he collects and shares with the public as something that possesses an inherent value, not recognized by the community to which it belongs and which should care for it as well. Thus, his collecting and the need to share it with others, is framed in terms of „possessive collectivism” (MacDonald 157). A similar concern plays a role in the case of art historian Wies van Leeuwen, who compiled – as a byproduct of his work of drawing up an inventory of „valuable buildings” in Noord-Brabant – a „reference collection” of around 350 bricks, from buildings that were being renovated or demolished (Finders Keepers 23). He values brickwork as containing „the real history of a structure”. Even if the single bricks in themselves might not seem significant enough to be kept, the collection as a whole shows „precisely how bricks have evolved over the past seven centuries”; their color also indicates their place of origin, depending on the clay. As Pearce remarks, „the collection as an entity is greater than the sum of its parts” („The Urge to Collect” 158): in this case, the bricks together are valued for things for which the single bricks are not.35 Finders Keepers not only exposed practices of salvaging and rescuing but also cases of the devaluation of private or museum collections. This problem challenges the very core of the practice of museums as institutions fixing and 35 However, the single bricks are regarded as being able to stand for an entire demolished brick structure, and valued for this. See more on the logic of synecdoche – a part standing for a whole, representing it – in museums in Bal (55n15 and 78).
naturalizing the value of things within their walls.36 Even when shifts occur in the evaluation of objects, giving these items away is not a common practice – rather, they are relocated to the periphery of the collection.37 As one of the exhibition text panels wrote about „orphaned collections”: We are now beginning to realize that our capacity for collecting is reaching its limits. Museums are already deaccessioning items, i.e. disposing of parts of their collection. Stichting Onterfd Goed [Foundation for Disinherited Goods] advises and assists heritage institutions in the Netherlands in cleaning up their collections and actively seeks new homes for the orphaned objects. However, while there is a foundation still caring for the orphaned collections of institutions, from some collector’s accounts it turns out that the way they get rid of some of their collections once they do not find it interesting any more, is less bound by obligations of caring for a certain material, the weight of „duty” described by Were. As the collector of the „Imperfections” recalls, „I’ve had 36 The case of devaluated collections is not the same as deaccessioning them for financial gains, or in Appadurai’s terms, to terminate the restrictions that withdrew these „enclaved commodities” from economic circulation („Commodities” 24). As Pomian writes, „museums do not seek to keep works out of circulation for a limited period of time, but for always” (161). 37 Jeannette Edwards describes such a shift in North-English ’Alltown’: „The museum opened in 1873 with a natural history collection ... By 1987, this collection had been relegated to the margins of the museum, and the paraphernalia from a more recent industrial and post-industrial era had taken pride of place.” (qtd. in MacDonald 146).
