Category Archives: Director’s Corner

Director’s Corner

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Eliza Reilly, Director

What Do Objects Want?

Last post I suggested that objects shaped and organized human lives, which leads to the idea that they have some kind of agency, or that they have power to influence our behavior and consciousness.  This is an uncomfortable idea, as it undermines confidence in our mastery over the non-human world, and challenges our assumptions about free-will and self determination.  But it is a very old notion that is gaining new ground.  For example, Michael Pollan in his book The Botany of Desire, proposed that the relationship between plants and humans is reciprocal, and they influence us every bit as much as we “domesticate” them.

One could assert that nitrogen based life forms may be one thing, but man-made objects are another.   However, the idea, or at least the conceit, that inanimate objects “want” things, that they have desires of their own, is cropping up in art historical and archeological scholarship, including James Elkin’s The Object Stares Back, and WJT Mitchell’s What do Pictures Want?  Mitchell points out that while a vast majority would agree that they do not believe that pictures have “personhood,” people still “insist on talking and behaving as if they did believe it. “  Few of us are immune to this impulse to personify images.  As Professor John Stilgoe of Harvard demonstrated in a famous psychology experiment, tell someone to take a picture of a loved one–a parent, spouse, child—and offer them ten dollars to gouge out the eyes of the picture.  Hardly anyone will take you up on the offer.

An archeologist, Chris Gosden, has framed this development in a way more directly relevant to our work at the Phillips Museum of Art, and to our course “Museum Mysteries.”  In his article “What do Objects Want,” he writes:

“A building, a pot or a metal ornament …channel human action, provide a range of sensory experiences (but exclude others) and place obligations on us in the ways we relate to objects and other people through these objects.”[i]

The students in “Museum Mysteries” can attest to the fact that objects, especially the unfamiliar and “mysterious,” channel their human action, if only by “refusing” to provide some types of information, and freely offering others.   They also sense that this sense of “obligation” towards an object has some relationship to, and can teach us something about, our human relationships and obligations. As Rob Hassler, a student in the first iteration of “Museum Mysteries” (who is now a graduate student  in museum studies), put it:

One of the things that can often be lost in today’s fast paced, technology-based society, is the inability to stop, look, and examine something. I find that the relationships between humans and objects are related to the relationships between human and human, and how we as a society can interact with one another.

[i] Gosden, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 12, No. 3, September 2005.

 

Director’s Corner

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Dr. Eliza Reilly

The Language of Objects

In the course “Museum Mysteries” students study objects in the Phillips Museum’s collection with the goal of identifying and interpreting them for the general public.  My colleague, Professor Zimmerman, and I like to engage in a bit of personification and say that the goal of the course is to help the objects “tell their stories.”  But the more I think about this process, the more I have come to understand the idea of objects “telling” stories less as a metaphor and more as a literal description of the complicated exchange that is taking place between the researcher and the subject, and more generally, between people and things.

The eminent psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has noted:

“Man is not only homo sapiens or homo ludens, he is also homo faber, the maker and user of objects, his self to a large extent a reflection of things with which he interacts. Thus objects also make and use their makers and users. To understand what people are and what they might become, one must understand what goes on between people and things.”

What exactly goes on, and how can we better understand this profound and reciprocal relationship we have with the things of this world? In my last post I suggested that while things don’t “talk,” the way people do, they definitely communicate, especially if you make an effort to learn at least the rudiments of their language, which is conveyed not in words, but through vision and touch.

In the class we begin by exploring a basic grammar and vocabulary that allows for an “introduction”—materials (what is the object made of), construction (how was it made), design (a clue to when and where was it made), and function (what does it do?)   Once these preliminaries are out of the way, our researchers can get to know their objects better and find ways to ask more subtle (personal?) questions: Was the object rare and expensive, or fairly common?  What social networks did it circulate in?  Does it show evidence of an easy life, or is it scarred by use? Did its status or function change over time?   The answers to these questions will tell us as much about ourselves as about the things we are deciphering.

Most intriguing, and most difficult to discern, is the question of how objects shaped and organized the lives and behaviors of the people who encountered them.  Forks, knives, and spoons have influenced the way people in the Americas prepare and eat their food, but we should remember that the vast majority of humans are in the habit of using other tools for the same purpose, like chopsticks or fingers, and they have developed a completely different set of etiquette and rituals as a result. Europeans came to prefer sitting on chairs to dine, write, relax, and socialize, while other cultures preferred cushions, mats, or stools for these activities—how did these preferences evolve, and what is the role of objects themselves in producing them?

Next blog: What do objects want?

Director’s Corner

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Dr. Eliza Reilly

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning from the Overlooked

I’ve always learned from my teaching, and consider it the most rewarding and energizing part of my work.  But this year I’m involved in a course that has literally changed the way I think about “things” in general, or more specifically about the complex relationships among humans, things, and the history they make together.  In this and following blog posts, I will sketch out some of the insights gained and lessons learned from this experience, which is still in its early phase as I write.

When Professor Alison Kibler proposed that the Phillips Museum of Art host a research seminar in material culture studies using items in the permanent collection, I saw the opportunity to tackle three goals simultaneously:  document the collections, encourage innovative pedagogy, and advance student research.  The timing was perfect, as a distinguished scholar in the field, Philip Zimmerman, had just been appointed our Mellon Fellow for 2012-13. Professor Kibler’s proposed title was “Museum Mysteries, “ which was pretty accurate, as I’d been telling her about the hundreds of unidentified objects in the museum’s vaults.

The museum’s permanent collection has over seven thousand objects, mostly of the type one would expect to find in an art museum: painting, sculpture, prints, photography, furniture, textiles, decorative and folk art etc. But there is also a stunning range of miscellaneous “stuff”–including coins, ladies fans, paperweights, tools, weapons, toys, apparel, and household objects.  Students in “Museum Mysteries” were asked to take responsibility for an item or items in the collection that were truly “mysterious” and answer the questions: What were they made of?  Who made them? What was their function? And perhaps most puzzling, how did they wind up in the vaults at Franklin & Marshall College?

Watching our students trying to pry the answers to these and other questions from their chosen objects over the last eight weeks, it became clear to me that it while things don’t “talk” the way people do, they definitely communicate, especially if you make an effort to learn their language.

Next blog: Learning the Language of Objects