Museum 2
I regretted saying it as the words were coming out of my mouth. Panicking, I searched for some verbal rewind button (which I never found). I’m the type of person that says absurd and ridiculous things all of the time, but I’ve always tried to stay on the safe side, that is, never entering the realm of entirely pseudo-intellectual musings. Sara stares at me, her voice and eyes beckoning, ‘What the hell did you just say?’
What the hell did I just say?
Just seconds before, as Sara, Erin and I stood in part of the ‘London as Global City’ exhibit in the Museum of London, I had actually felt the need to ask the question, ‘What if the Museum of London was in a Museum?’ I don’t think I initially understood the question I’d posed, and it took Sarah herself a couple of minutes to process the question as well. When she asked me to repeat what I’d said, I tried to escape with a simple ‘never mind,’ hoping my stupid comment might be lost among maps, grand pianos and glass fixtures. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that, however ridiculous it may be, there actually is something interesting about the question I’d asked—it really propelled me to think about museum culture.
The typical objects often found in museums are circulated frequently throughout popular imagination. While this list is far from entirely inclusive, works of art, belongings of famous people, and artifacts from indigenous or somehow otherwise exoticised cultures are often some of the first objects that come to mind when the word ‘museum’ is overheard. While all of these (and any of the other seemingly infinite museum subjects) vary in size greatly, what is the size limit? Both the Dickens House Museum and Soanes House Museum could be easily placed in larger museum settings (the latter might especially benefit from it). But what does it mean to encounter an object in a particular museum? A fork belonging to Charles Dickens might easily make its way into the Dickens Museum, but the same fork in the Museum of London might mean something entirely different. How do we decide which museum (or other space) is most appropriate for a particular object to inhabit? How does a museum as a single object (and not just a collection of other objects) function, and might it, like the artifacts it houses, be collectible?
I realize I’ve generated many more questions than answers, but that might be the best for now. I’m still relatively inexperienced at visiting museums and understanding how I need to navigate them in a way that is suitable for and appropriate to me. I don’t mean to suggest that entire (or even partial) museums might one day be singular exhibits in a museum of a much grander scale, but my initial question does lead me to ask, ‘are there limits? What are they? What are we excluding?’
posted by PatrickMcKelvey @ 6:26 PM
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