The exhibition Open House: A Portrait of Collecting, was a curatorial project I developed at the Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy. The exhibition, on view from January 19 through February 28, 2015, featured a variety of institutional and personal collections. A parallel project, Significant Objects: Meaningful Objects from the PEA Community, which showcased individual objects and stories contributed by their owners, was nestled within the larger exhibition.
The initial question for the exhibition was “How to do things with objects?” As the project progressed, the question shifted to: “How can objects do things to/with/for us?” The etymology of the word collection, “a gathering together,” anticipated the shift: the final project was an inquiry into how objects and collections catalyze affective and material movements: between objects and personal memories, between collector and audience, between private storage and public staging.
The exhibition emerged out of my own experience of being at the Lamont Gallery, a non-collecting gallery that nevertheless had quite a surprising number of collection items in storage. The collection that now exists has the feeling of being unintentional: there is an odd assortment of works, ranging from paintings and prints to masks and small figurines. It was frustrating that the details about the objects’ acquisition and use was incomplete. Why did we have these objects? What motivates people to collect?
As a non-collector, and someone who has an ambivalent relationship with objects, this logistical, professional dilemma became an opportunity to exercise my curatorial curiosity. The questions that emerged led to broader questions about collecting, including: What constitutes a collection? What drives us to consume, save, and keep items ranging from ticket stubs to cut glass? What are the divisions between collections-worthy objects and everyday items? How do institutions use collections? How is a collection understood as knowledge? How do collectors share their collections, and what does this act of sharing produce?
That final question—of how an object can spark a conversation or exchange by sharing it—or open spaces for potential relationship and dialogue—was especially compelling. The curatorial project as a whole was a form of inquiry, a way for me to ask colleagues: “What do you collect?” and “Would you be willing to share this collection in an exhibition?” The collections objects were in motion, small choreo-acts of moving and being moved. They catalyzed us: people, ideas, and discussions.
The mix of collections that were part of the final project was eclectic. My curatorial aim was not to examine, for example, the history of the Great Depression through its material culture (though I did include objects from that era), or to make a case that the use of metal in ritual objects signified a shift in global trade patterns. Rather, my motivations were relational: how could I get people to connect to one another through objects, share some of the Lamont Gallery’s collections to start a dialogue about institutional collecting, and juxtapose collections objects in the gallery space to address aesthetic, sociopolitical, community, and individual desires? In Open House, I attended to arrangement and composition through an emphasis on producing aesthetic and affective situations.
Reflection on the Open House: A Portrait of Collecting exhibition is part of my doctoral research on choreographic curation, Assembling a Praxis: Choreographic Thinking and Curatorial Agency, which is summarized in the Research Summary document. The Open House Linking Paper maps areas of inquiry between the exhibition and my larger research questions.
This exposition is not organized so that the personal reflection is “here” and the public-facing materials are “there.” That is in contrast to how I work. My process is a meandering, embedded, and entangled one. For this reason, each section has both reflective texts as well as materials that were available to a public audience.
In the summaries and reflective texts, I share my observations and highlight the primary themes in that section. Within the texts, there are often links to outside websites which have either informed my thinking or relate to the topic. I do not include them as specific research references—they are there to indicate an expanded field of curatorial operations and to place my projects within additional conversations. These links are there if and when there is a need or interest.
The reflective texts sometimes have “callouts”—links where I have added a personal comment or observation. For the most part when these texts are mine personally (and not examples of text that was available to the public), these are done with a light gray background. Other texts include object information, collector biographical statements, or exhibition signage.
Image-related texts may appear for some images and not for others. This is a personal choice on my part, designed to echo the types of attentional ebbs and flows that characterized the exhibition.
Finally, I should emphasize that this was not a fact-based exhibition or a sociological one. It is a poetic gesture, in installation form. It is experiential. The Research Catalogue exposition for the Open House project reflects these aesthetics.
Observations on the incomplete:
Like many gatherings, my curatorial project documentation and reflection is incomplete. For Open House, I have included only a representative sampling of objects and texts (many pieces had both didactic texts, such as the identifying object labels, as well as personal reflections). The exposition is biased: it is an offering and analysis based on my subjective choices as a curator, orchestrated as a response to my doctoral research on choreographic thinking. The reflection and analysis on this work is always in process. There are gaps and blind spots. There are a few places where there may be too little information, or places where there is too much. Collections are dense. Rooms within rooms within rooms. Thick with possible intersections, extensions, and interpretations.