Inquiry, History, and Dialogue
By Ethan Robey, Associate Director, Master’s Program in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies
For first-year students in Cooper Hewitt’s Master’s Program in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies at Parsons The New School of Design, an interdisciplinary class known as Proseminar lays the foundation for their academic and professional success.
In their first semester, students in the museum’s MA Program in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies take the Proseminar, which leads students through an in-depth exploration of decorative arts history and challenges their understanding of an object’s cultural significance through robust discussion of critical theory. Each student is assigned an understudied object from the collection that serves as the focus of his or her research, ensuring that our graduate students are directly contributing to the advancement of design history and the museum’s shared body of knowledge.
THE TOOLS OF OBJECT STUDY
Over the course of the semester, students learn the nuts and bolts of object study. They have seminars in working with primary sources, such as probate inventories, business records, and trade catalogs, as well as hands-on workshops with various types of objects themselves.
Curators from the museum’s curatorial departments — wall coverings; drawings, prints, and graphic design; textiles; and product design and decorative arts — conduct workshops on various types of objects. Hands-on skills such as these are fundamental for a critical understanding of objects, and in the Proseminar such practical training is complemented by an exploration of various methodologies of design and decorative arts history.
INVESTIGATING AN OBJECT’S CULTURAL VALUE
One of many methods the course introduces students to is material cultural research, wherein objects are understood as documents of the people who produced them. As historian Jules Prown puts it, objects are like historical events that are still happening. A student can consider the physical qualities of the object, its visceral presence in his or her own hands, and use that reaction to suggest what was important to the culture it came from. Contextual research then tests these hypotheses. Student Anna Rasche, working with a Victorian bracelet, for example, found it bulky and unwieldy, likely to catch on clothing, its high-relief decoration prone to collecting dirt. These properties, she reasoned, imply an owner schooled in bodily control, with a staff of servants to keep clothes and jewelry mended and clean.
Another avenue of study considers the role of buying and selling on an object’s meaning. Cultural value is not necessarily inherent to any artifact; meanings can be attached by a system of advertising and marketing. Consumers, too, inject meaning into objects through what anthropologist Grant McCracken calls rituals of ownership, such as maintenance, display, and gift giving.
Proseminar students also read authors who explore effects of gender roles on design history. For example, since industrially manufactured consumer goods are more likely to be preserved than domestic handiwork — historically a woman’s domain — the stories objects tell might seem to reinforce a male-centered image of a society. Design historians such as Cheryl Buckley caution the field against reinforcing these inherent biases.
All the practical exercises and methodological exploration support the students’ object research. Thus the Proseminar contributes to the museum’s efforts to interpret and share the Cooper Hewitt collection. Students write entries for the museum’s popular Object of the Day blog on their research, and at the end of the course, final research papers are added to the respective objects’ collection files. Parsons/Cooper Hewitt MA students carry what they learn in Proseminar to every class they take and into their professional careers.
CASE STUDIES
Huntley and Palmers Biscuit Tin (England), 1906 — Susan Teichman, Proseminar, Fall 2012
In studying this relatively humble biscuit tin, Teichman worked from contemporary advertisements and trade catalogs to determine the object’s social status; it was marketed as a specialty item to be given as a Christmas gift. Teichman went on, then, to consider the object in terms of the growing industrialization of British manufactured objects. “The success of Huntley and Palmers,” Teichman notes, “directly mirrors the expansion and success of the British Empire.” The tins could keep products fresh when shipped to the four corners of the world, and the globe in particular could be a reminder of the expanse of the British Empire to every child who fancied a biscuit.
Handbag Watch, ca. 1933 — Adriane Dalton, Proseminar, Fall 2012
This small watch from the 1930s is a product of the machine age in America, influenced by a fascination at the time for the smooth, unadorned contours of automobiles and airplanes. Through diligent primary source research, Dalton showed that advertisements in its day recommended the watch for a lady’s handbag or as a gift for men or boys. Thus, Dalton posited, the functionalist style of consumer goods in the 1930s “allowed for these simplified objects to maintain their functions while untethering them from gender assignment.”
This article first appeared in the Fall 2015 Design Journal, published by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
