Objects Can Tell Stories If Given Enough Room
I have been to countless museums throughout my life and looked into countless wall cases to stare at objects sitting on shelv es, resting on wire mounts, and seemingly floating in mid-air. What I haven’t experienced until today was a need to actually jump into the cases, which, to me, looked like tiny dioramas or theatre sets. Today we visited the New York Historical Society. These cases were a part of their Objects Tell Stories exhibit where they are able to show objects from their extensive collection that are not in exhibitions but tucked in storage, sometimes simply because of their sheer size. Case subjects/object groupings included “Toys,” “Artist At Work,” “Childhood,” “Recreation,” and the like. Each one, it’s own world.
But these cases were not easy to construct, nor were they cheap. This is where I talk about the architecture of the museum. Throughout our tour our fabulous guide and Associate Curator of Material Culture, Mike Thornton, spoke to us about the challenges the museum and exhibition design staff face due to the architecture/age of the building. In a way, they were “locked in” by the 19th century methods of displaying objects. When the building was constructed in 1804, objects were hung on walls, were out in the open, and were basically stacked on shelves waiting to be touched. In order to put in place more modern exhibition and preservation techniques, deeper/closed shelving had to be constructed making for narrower hallways. He also mentioned that the dark wood arches that visitors would see upon entering the museum had to be painted over with white to come off as more accessible and welcoming to new and younger audiences. This exhibit of remarkable cases in particular, became so narrow once these new cases were put in place that it was hard to fit interactives in the center of the room.
These interactives are a modern and necessary way to bring these large groupings of object to life, to interpret them, and to give them a narrative. There seemed to be a real struggle with the original architecture this time, which fascinated with me. It reminded me of how colonial houses have very shallow closets because there were no hangers and your every-day person didn’t have more than one or two outfits that they hung on hooks. Today when people move in, their hangers don’t fit so they have to knock the old closet backs out and expand to make room. How we did things then has quite an impact on how we are able to do them now. I think the exhibit designers and collections staff did an incredible job in creating this gallery of objects, even with the issue of being “locked in” to old architecture.
