Review of the First Person Museum

First Person Museum. First Person Arts. Seth C. Bruggeman, Julia Foulkes, and Tom Sugrue, historical consultants; Katthleen McLean and Elizabeth Tinker, museum consultants; Dana Dorman, museum coordinator. Painted Bride Art Center (Philadelphia, Pa.), November 5-December 18, 2010.

The First Person Museum touts itself as “a museum of the people.” Exhibiting sixteen “ordinary” objects—from a wedding ring and a tie-dyed t-shirt, to a fishing license and a passport—alongside “the personal and societal stories that give them their worth,” the First Person Museum seeks to uncover “the worth of our homes, our things, and our stories,” as one of the large exhibit texts declares. Judging by the publicity material and the captions contextualizing the exhibit itself, museum coordinators want visitors to recognize that our stuff and the memories it engenders do not simply reveal our values, but society’s values as well.

     This attempt to link individual objects and their stories to broader concerns within the body politic seems like a gallant endeavor, and certainly one akin to “doing history,” which I would define as “the situating of a particular circumstance from the past within a social, cultural, political, and/or economic context through careful and responsible scholarly inquiry.” But the First Person Museum is not strictly a history museum, a fact made patently obvious by a quick glance at its five exhibit goals:

• Visitors will recognize that they endow objects with value.
• Visitors will understand that the person and his/her story is the focus.
• Visitors will be able to articulate an emotional response to the stories in the exhibit. 
• Visitors will understand that the meaning of an object is influenced by time, place and experience.
• Visitors will think about their own stuff differently.

None of the exhibit goals expressly identifies the acquisition of historical knowledge as a hoped-for result of museum patronage; none of the goals explicitly anticipate the exhibit leading visitors to a better understanding of the social and cultural influences that give “meaning” to our “stuff.” How, then, does history figure into the First Person Museum?

To answer that question, one must first consider the overall design of the First Person Museum. Arranged as a series of domestic tableaux spread across three rooms within the Painted Bride Art Center, the exhibit layout incorporates furniture not typically utilized within museum space: couches, wing-back armchairs, dining room tables, TV stands, and the like. The objects are arranged within this simulated domestic space as though in their “natural” context: a pair of boxer shorts in the top drawer of a dresser, a stuffed animal seated on a child-sized wooden rocking chair. A tasteful glass case encloses each object. Colorful, well-designed panels introduce each object and its owner with a brief quote about the item. The main gallery space displays thirteen of the objects; an ancillary gallery space displays three objects, along with a wall-length series of “object stories” that did not make it into the museum proper. A third room of the exhibit, while not displaying objects, serves as “media center”; it houses a desk at which visitors can put to paper their own object stories, as well as a sitting area and flat-screen TV, which plays a loop of short-form documentaries about some of the exhibit’s objects.

     The layout of the First Person Museum challenges traditional conceptions of museum space. The domestic atmosphere exudes a warmth not commonly associated with museums. The assortment of couches and chairs offer visitors the opportunity to sit down—a simple improvement over the typical gallery arrangement, but an important one, as it invites longer-lasting engagement with and reflection upon the exhibit pieces. With the exception of the “media center,” which wastes valuable space and could be better utilized for the exhibition of additional objects, and the installation of one object (Carla’s wedding ring), which separates the object itself from the introductory panel and thus generates some disorientation, the museum seems well-arranged; it makes excellent use of a limited space without creating congestion and while limiting confusion over exhibit flow.

Visitors explore the main exhibit space at the First Person Museum.

At the same time, the layout raises a number of questions about the ethical dimensions of museum design. How does placing the objects in a contrived domestic area alter the nature of the objects themselves? Do the “universalizing” connotations of the “familiar” domestic space encourage visitors to make unfair or simplistic connections between themselves and the owners of the objects? And how might this affect the way that visitors regard the objects and their owners?

     The second “element” of the exhibit, the object stories, are presented in a variety of ways. Some are short-form documentary films shown on small televisions that fit nicely within the domestic scene; others are brief audio pieces played through headphones; others still are condensed to fifty words and installed on panels. This multifarious approach to information conveyance works well. The combination of text, video, and audio offers visitors a variety of ways to “consume” the object stories. Surprisingly, the audio from the documentary films (which is not channeled through headphones like the audio-only presentations) saturates the room without reaching the level of cacophony; it did not impinge upon the ability of this reviewer to read the text captions or to carry on conversations with other museum visitors. Additionally, the text panels are designed in a visually striking and eminently readable way.

     Completing the exhibit design is the history contextualizing each object. One caption per object, approximately fifty words in length, addresses some aspect of the “thing”: for a set of black dolls, the focus is representation; for a wedding ring, the focus is marriage. In terms of setting the object within a “societal story,” as the museum purports to do, some captions are more successful than others. For instance, the panel accompanying Renee’s boxer shorts succinctly and intelligently links the personal story of the object owner to a longstanding cultural preoccupation with “comfort objects.” The caption accompanying Jon’s fishing license situates the object as a product of changes in cultural life (fishing’s move from survival tactic to pastime in the Middle Ages) and American politics (the bureaucratization that created state commissions on fish and game). And the caption contextualizing Amy’s birth certificate supplies surprising and thought-provoking information about the social turmoil out of which the object came. As before, the graphic design of the history caption panels is clean, visually appealing, and very readable.

     How effectively does the First Person Museum accomplish its goals? In some instances, it demonstrates significant effectiveness. For instance, the layout—by focusing on a limited number of objects and providing multiple means by which to engage the  objects’ stories—clearly makes the object owner and his/her story the focus of the exhibit. Furthermore, the multiple invitations for visitors to share their own object stories serve as potent (but unobtrusive) reminders that people endow their objects with value. The history captions accompanying each object do, to a certain degree, help visitors understand that objects’ meanings are influenced by time, place, and experience, though this could be more developed. Unfortunately, this reviewer cannot speak to the effective fulfillment of the more subjective goals (visitors’ articulation of an emotional response and changed perspective on their own “stuff”).

     Funded by grants from the Engage 2020 Innovative Grants Program and the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, the First Person Museum exhibition at the Painted Bride Art Center serves as the first of several exhibitions to come. One hopes that future iterations of the exhibit will reconsider the effectiveness of the domestic tableaux and provide more effective histories while continuing to offer visitors an inviting, informative, and preconception-challenging museum experience.