Museum:
an institution devoted to the procurement, care, study, and
display
of objects of lasting interest or value; also:
a place where objects are exhibited
Curator:
one who has the care and superintendence of something;
especially : one in charge of a museum, zoo,
or other place of exhibit. (m-w.com)
The mere fact
that I purchase, take care of, study, and display a collection
of interesting objects in my home doesn’t make me a museum
curator, nor does it make my house a museum. And the mere fact
that someone actually owns a building with the word “Museum” on
the front of it, has a bigger collection than I, and has the
title “Museum Curator” on his office door may make him a
curator, and may make his building a museum … but it doesn’t
necessarily make that museum a place of creative education!
The purpose of
this section of the Creativity Crossroads website is to
emphasize the role of creativity in making museum collections of
“stuff” become truly valuable elements in making history
education effective, engaging, and literally fun for people of
all ages.
A few years
ago, I actually toyed with the idea
of becoming a curator of my own museum.
Perhaps my story will help clarify the part creativity can play
in
transforming a musty museum into a dynamic learning center.
My mother in
law, Lucy, was one of those dear people often referred to as
“pack rats.” Well, no, she was not just a garden variety pack
rat. She could have been a contender for the title Queen of the
Packrats. At her death in 2000 at the age of 81, she still had
in her possession almost every item of clothing she had ever
worn since reaching adulthood; more than a half-century of most
of the bills, greeting cards, and other pieces of paper that had
entered her home; most gadgets and trinkets she’d ever bought or
received as gifts; most photographs … including the negatives …
that had been taken by family members for close to a century;
and on and on and on. By the end of her life, she was living in
a small senior citizen’s efficiency apartment. So all this
“stuff” was stored in three large self-storage units in a nearby
town, the largest of them 12 X 20, all of them packed and piled
to the rafters. Most of it had not been seen by anyone,
including herself, for decades.
And then one
day she was gone, and all this “stuff” passed to her son, my
husband. Since he had a full time job, and very little interest
or patience for rummaging through someone else’s clutter, it all
became, in essence, mine to deal with. When the garage door to
the biggest unit was first opened, I was utterly overwhelmed
with the enormity of the task ahead of me! Over a period of many
weeks I dug out, sifted, sorted, stacked, juggled, and trashed
huge amounts of the trivia of life. The content of many boxes
was mildewed beyond saving, or riddled with mousey nests. I
didn’t have to make decisions on any of that. But much of it was
still in the condition it had been in when stuffed in the boxes.
And here is where it became obvious how different this was from
looking through the memorabilia of people that had made it to
museums. Pack rats are notorious for having absolutely no rhyme
or reason to their storage methods. Thus it was all a hopeless
jumble.
Sifting down
through hundreds of papers in a box (and one out of many, many
such boxes), I might find Lucy’s marriage license, or her
husband’s WWII discharge papers … under a stack of utility bills
for some month in 1954. Rummaging in a huge box of photos and
negatives, I would find hundreds of ugly snapshots of
unrecognizable, boring scenery—or even just overexposed solid
black photos—but under them all, one priceless photo of her
mother Elsie standing
in front of a primitive log building
in 1910 with the barefoot, ragtag small group of kids she was
teaching in a one-room school in Wyoming!
At one point I
pulled out of a box an adorable large circular photo that had
been professionally made into a wall plaque clear back in about
1922. It was a ringleted Lucy standing on a porch next to a
wicker doll carriage. While admiring it, I glanced up, and about
12 feet away, in the back of the storage unit, high atop a pile
of junk … was that very doll carriage! Unfortunately, the
carriage was so mildewed and rotted that it wasn’t salvageable
in the long run, but it was an interesting experience
discovering it. (I later also discovered an original copy of the
photo that the plaque had been taken from … it is shown here.)
After prying
loose the jammed drawers in a shabby old chest of drawers, I
discovered some of them full of used or unused “health and
beauty aids” of the 1930s and 40s, such as diet pills, headache
medicines, and hair curlers. (I sensed right away that there
might be a market for these … I was correct. At a later auction
of some of her possessions, these were snapped up by antique
dealers at a good price.) Another box contained a complete
collection of all of the minor memorabilia she’d picked up on a
trip to the Seattle World’s Fair of 1962, including paper
napkins and placemats, international Fair pavilion souvenir
brochures, and more. Still another box contained notes sent to
her by her mother Elsie while Elsie was on a trip to Hollywood
in 1953—on the backs of printed schedules for the TV networks,
where Elsie had gone to be part of the studio audiences of
several popular radio and TV shows of the time such as I Love
Lucy. She even described a specific Lucy episode that
she had attended, so her great great grandchildren can now see
re-runs of that on TV or in video collections, and know GG
Gramma Elsie’s laugh was part of the audience laughter in that
episode!
And another
interesting historical find, among the grocery lists and
crumpled clippings of newspaper obituaries of people Lucy knew,
was a small tan card with information on it from the “Michigan
Office of Civil Defense.” On one side was a picture of what was
obviously a dog-tag-like object, with my husband’s name written
on a line below it, and on the other side the explanation:
“Enclosed is
your blood-type identification tag; you may need it as much in
your daily life as in an atomic disaster. Carry it on your
person at all times.” In spite of the disclaimer, the reality
was that this was, indeed, a tag issued to the children in the
public schools in about 1951 in anticipation of a possible
atomic attack by Russia. My husband remembers having the white
plastic tag when he was perhaps in first or second grade.
Those, of
course, were highlights of my rummaging, and those types of
finds were few and far between. Most of it was much less
exciting and interesting … and educational. A lot of broken,
rusty, crumbled, faded, torn, or ugly junk is just that … junk.
Then again, once in a great while even the ugly junk may not
really be junk. Which I almost learned the hard way!
Toward the end
of the many weeks I had spent sorting through and pitching
“stuff” in the storage units, I was getting ready for an auction
of what was salvageable out of it all. There were a few things
that were obviously of some monetary value … some “carnival
glass” plates from the Depression area that are popular with
collectors, some ancient bedroom furniture that was “bird’s eye
maple,” an original 1940s set of Lincoln Logs, even a treasure
trove of classic comics in excellent condition from the 1950s
and early 60s that had belonged to my husband and hadn’t seen
the light of day since put in storage shortly after he moved
away from home after high school graduation in 1962. I had
consolidated the contents of the three storage units down to one
unit, and was still making final decisions on what was hopeless
trash and what just might be someone’s treasure. One item I kept
shifting over and over from pile to shelf to possible throw-away
box was a glass object about a foot in diameter that looked for
all the world like a giant pale yellow Hershey’s kiss, open on
the bottom. No one I’d asked had a clue what it was. The best I
could guess was some ugly ‘70s era ceiling fixture that would
have gone over a single light bulb. But each time I was tempted
to throw it out with the likes of the frayed extension cords and
women’s extra large purple or orange polyester pant suits, I
relented and tossed it back on a shelf.
When the day
came for the auction, I tossed it on a table of miscellaneous
clutter that I expected might bring 50 cents apiece. But I knew
I’d made the right decision to keep it when the opening bid for
the item was … $100. I may not have known what it was, nor did
the average casual yard sale shoppers who showed up for the
small town auction in the parking lot of the mini-storage. But
the three professional antique dealers who showed up knew … and
started a bidding war with one another immediately. The final
selling price was about $300. The winning buyer then picked up
his prize, and walked over to another table where there was a
non-descript, tarnished brass turn-of-the-century table lamp
bottom without a shade. He turned the Kiss over and sat it where
it belonged, on the lampshade’s frame! Another visitor to the
auction later informed me that the antique dealers had
identified my piece of junk as a rare “Vaseline Glass”
lampshade, from the same time period as the early Tiffany Lamps.
She had seen a similar piece go for something like $1000 on an
“Antiques Road Show” program. Vaseline glass, a special
hand-blown type of pale yellow or green glass colored with
yellow uranium salts, was popular at the turn of the last
century. Yes, the material will register on a Geiger counter!
And yes, this particular lamp shade was the exact color of
Vaseline Petroleum Jelly.
At the time I
had the responsibility of the drudgery to go through the
mountainous piles of clutter in order to dispose of it as
quickly as possible (we didn’t want to keep on paying hundreds
of dollars a month to continue to store it) the work was
physically, mentally, and emotionally draining. My husband had
several health crises during this same period, including a very
close brush with death. And I had no friends or family in our
home town to help me with caring for him—or sorting through the
clutter. But even at that, several times during this whole
process, and once in a while since then, I’ve day-dreamed about
having had enough time, money, energy, and patience to have gone
through every bit of the clutter in Lucy’s storage, and
eventually turn it into a central collection for a “Museum of
the Mid-Century American Housewife.” For she was utterly typical
of the “blue collar worker’s wife” of her time, striving to
imitate the gracious living and glamour she saw in the women’s
magazines, and no doubt doing a lot of daydreaming of her own. I
found one box full of dress gloves of the 1950s and early ‘60s,
all colors from yellow to blue to green, no doubt one to match
every outfit that she might choose to wear to go shopping or to
a tea put on by one of the ladies in her Masonic Eastern Star
lodge. I found a diary she kept one year. Page after page was
filled with nothing more than a description of what time her
husband came home from work, what she made for dinner, when she
did her laundry, when she got her hair done at the beauty
parlor. At one point she was obviously tempted to dabble in
things a bit more esoteric … there was a 1965 letter from the
Institute of Divine Metaphysics in Indianapolis. She must have
thought better of that plan later, for the letter was an inquiry
why she had not followed through on her application to take
correspondence courses from them.
And herein is
the reality of how creativity can be used to provide a “spoonful
of sugar” to help education go down in the realm of
establishment of museums. Some museums, especially in the past …
but also continuing on today … are not a whole lot different
from the storage units that Lucy left to my husband. They have
shelf after shelf and room after room of “stuff,” and may have
done little other than label it all as to what time period it
was from, and try to group items from similar time periods
together. For those who are fascinated by “old stuff,” or
particular kinds of “old stuff,” this may be all that they need
to excite them about visiting such a museum. A Civil War buff
may not need a lot of extras in a museum in order to spend hours
looking at Union and Confederate uniforms and weapons. A student
of ancient Egypt may need little other than glass case after
glass case of funerary items from pyramids to hold him
spellbound for a whole day.
But to the
average museum visitor, this wouldn’t be a whole lot different
from rummaging through the boxes of Lucy’s memorabilia. Without
some sort of context provided to bring the objects to
life, without some sort of explanations how items “fit
together,” without, in other words, someone to help a viewer
understand the answer to “Why should I care about these items?”
such a project would be of little interest to most people. But
stir in some creativity, and suddenly the items can be the
“stuff of history,” that can help people to better understand
their society’s past, and thereby even perhaps be better able to
plan for the future.
For instance, I
gleaned one special small collection of items from Lucy’s
storage that I particularly think would make a dynamite display
in a museum, given enough help from people with the creative and
artistic skills to be able to make it happen. Or perhaps it
could be in a “video museum” … a segment on a History Channel
special on The Old West. Some time soon, I may at least turn it
into a small website on the topic. These items consist of a few
photos, postcards, letters, and books. But what a fascinating
little tale they tell once you put them in context, show how
they fit together, and draw interesting lessons from them!
Lucy’s mother
Elsie graduated from high school in Michigan in 1906. She then
completed her education in what was termed back then a “Normal
School,” which was a training school for teachers. In 1908, at
the urging of a cousin, and at barely 20 years of age, she left
Michigan by herself and headed out by train to a spot in
northern Wyoming, near Sheridan, close to the border with
Montana. There, with the help of a few relatives, she took
advantage of the homesteading laws of the time, and staked a
claim to 160 acres of land by building her own one-room cabin on
it, and living there for five years while teaching in one room
schools serving the rural residents in her area, on both sides
of the Montana/Wyoming border. She would get up before dawn in
the Wyoming winter, slog through snowdrifts and blizzards for
miles on her big horse Dandy to the one room school, and start
up a fire in the pot-bellied stove to warm the room up in time
for the children to arrive. A far cry from—and a whole lot more
adventurous than—the life of a 20-something young woman today!
And at the end of her five years, she was able to move back to
Michigan, the proud owner of 160 acres of land that brought her
a modest supplemental income from then until her death in 1976.
(Most of the time the income was from renting to cattle ranchers
for grazing. But in the mid-1950s oil was discovered in the
area, and for over two decades she received some royalties for a
small oil rig that was installed on her land.)
Only within the
context of this story were some items related to Elsie that I
found in Lucy’s belongings significant, and in a number of ways
relevant to the broader history of America, and a vignette of
life in a specific time period of the country. Among the items:
-
Elsie’s
high school yearbook
-
Meticulous
notes in her beautiful handwriting of material she was
studying about history at Normal School
-
The
original letter from her cousin giving directions on the
train to take to get to Wyoming, and warning her that “All
kinds of clothing is high here so you better bring enough
with you but don’t bring nice ones. We don’t dress up much
here.”
-
A 1912
postcard on which she subtly brags, “I’m going over to vote
today. Will write soon.” (In 1890, Wyoming had become the
44th state and the first to grant women the right to vote.
It would be 1919 before women in Michigan would share that
right. She also had the opportunity to vote for the first
woman mayor in Wyoming, and one of the first in the nation.
-
Pictures of
three different one-room schools in which she taught
-
Picture of
her standing in the doorway of the little cabin she built
(And, almost fifty years later, a picture of her standing by
that same crumbling cabin on a visit with Lucy to see the
old homestead.)
Pile all of
these items on a shelf (or scattered in boxes, as I found them),
and they would be individually devoid of significance. Enlarge
and/or frame them attractively, string them together with some
multi-media backgrounds, use them as blueprints for some
dioramas or models for animation, add some background music from
the Old West and some explanatory blurbs by a dynamic narrator
on the history of woman’s suffrage, the Homestead Act, the
settling of the West, and more, and suddenly you have brought a
tiny slice of history to life, as seen through the eyes of one
adventurous young woman.
It is that kind
of creative approach, enhanced by the skills of writers,
artists, animators, builders, and more, that can be applied to
the field of museum presentations, and move them beyond
storehouses for the clutter of the ages. Many modern museums
have made that move, and are an integral part of the educational
process of making sure that the heritage of mankind is not
forgotten, and continues to fascinate generations to come.
We invite you to virtually visit some of these museums on the
cutting edge of using A Spoonful of Sugar to Help the Education
Go Down!
Pam Dewey
