Within Our Own Four Walls
Today, like most of my classmates, I spent time trying to figure out what to write for this culminating seminar post. I have spent the last two weeks spilling my thoughts on museum architecture and its relation to the exhibits held within them. I talked about the challenges of working within an old space, my frustrations with choosing access over preservation at times, and my appreciation for museums that choose to use unexpected spaces as galleries. But today, we didn’t visit a museum. I did however, come “home” to my friend’s apartment that I have been living in since two Sundays ago, and stared at the ceiling. Then I stared at the walls. And then I had a thought that I’ve had in the past thought I’d share here. Aren’t our living spaces our own museums? Don’t we chose how to decorate them, what to display, what to take down, what is rotated, what is deaccessioned and what is accessioned?
After teaching my friend what accessioning and deaccessioning meant, we talked about how he chose what he hung and why it sometimes changed. The nails without pictures next to his bed tell the story of a past relationship that took the prints with it. The framed photograph of water ripples above his desk was a gift from his mother after that break-up that he said was there to keep him sane. The Disney stills in the hallway, along with the rubber characters carefully positioned on his shelves remind him of his fourteen-year-old-self and, let’s face it, his current self. I’ve often thought of my apartment as my own museum because I’m a collector of family things. Most of what I have on display and use belonged to a grandmother or grandfather and has a story behind it that I willingly share when I have inquisitive visitors. We all curate our own spaces in which we live. We are our own exhibition designers, registrars, and collections managers. What we don’t all have the ability to do is alter the architecture in which we work. We work with the spaces we have (unless we don’t work for museums and have money to do major home alterations).
We work around the Ikea furniture, the piles of books, and the to-do lists on our refrigerators. And if we want some of our walls to be blank, then we leave them that way — for now.
