A fireplace opposite white and red life rings brandishing the words 'Canalside Heritage Centre', a wooden chair, and exposed floorboards dressed with a rag rug is how the downstairs room of the Canalside Heritage Centres exhibition presents itself. The exhibition tells the story of the Weir Cottages and the history of the local waterways (Canalside Heritage Centre, n.d.). The first room of the exhibition has been curated to tell the story of life in those cottages: simple, practical, somewhat bare, and directly intertwined with the life on the waterways. Venturing through the wooden door you find the cottage's kitchen. Here, a Belfast sink and a small stove are overlooked by a gaslight on the wall and two wooden shelves. The shelves house a mismatched collection of crockery, some of which is broken, tea strainers, a film camera, and a stack of photographs propped against the exposed brick wall. These objects were recovered from the site during the Wier Cottages renovation (Appendix A). A collection of broken artifacts, puzzle pieces of life gone by, discarded, dug up, and reinterpreted to reimagine the occupants of the Wier Cottages. Ian Hodder's (2012) book Entangled: an archaeology of the relationships between humans and things suggests that objects depend on objects, humans depend on objects and objects depend on humans creating an entangled web of dependencies. This essay will explore how objects and humans depend on each other to create meaning in a house museum setting.
Objects need objects
The objects on display within the exhibition rely on each other to tell the story of the Weir Cottages. The stories we construct about humans are created by piecing together different forms of visual communication that are provided, also known as the ‘semantics’ (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006). The items on the shelves tell a story of domestic life, and the stove and un-plastered brick wall behind ‘relay’ more information about the conditions in the cottages (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006). In The Comfort of Things (2008), Miller interprets the objects in people's homes in comparison to their life experiences. George's home was empty and bare, he compared this to the lack of fulfillment in his own life, empty of achievement. We can suppose how Miller would read and interpret the lives of the Wier Cottages from the objects. Perhaps thrifty and poor, due to the condition of the crockery and the rugs made of rags, caring people with a life ring ready to throw in for a stranger in need. The mismatched selection of teacups ready for guests, invited in to warm their toes on the fire over a cup of tea, temporary relief from the damp conditions of boat cabins (George Smith of Coalville, 1875, appendix B). The semantics of the objects and the stories that are told are examples of how the objects rely on objects to tell their story.
Objects rely on the plurality of objects to tell a story. In isolation or the traditional glass cabinet of the museum, they would just be a broken cup, or a set of tea strainers (Dorsett, 2013), labelless these objects would appear as misplaced refuse. Without these restraints, the objects on the kitchen shelves in the Wier Cottages take on a performative role (Hancock, 2013). How did the cup break? Are they somehow victims of the River Trent breaking its banks (Dobson, 2018)? Individually, objects have meaning by being associated with events or people (Wehner and Sear, 2014). Collectively objects force the viewer to contemplate them as a mass, as Andy Warhol discovered in his project 'Raid the Icebox'. His task was to display items from museums' storage, when faced with the collection of shoes he displayed them together in a heap. The plurality of the objects changed what was valuable in a museum object. Instead of their value being measured by what was written on their tag, the pile questioned the difference in value between display and storage objects (Dorsett, 2013). The plurality of objects in the Canalside Heritage Centre includes the building itself, as they were all found within its boundary walls. The plurality of these objects means the broken crockery is no longer rubbish, together they become puzzle pieces that tell the story of the Wier Cottages. Their arrangement in an imaginary home represents all the occupants and none at the same time, turning ‘home life’ into an idea and therefore an object (Hodder, 2012). Here the objects rely on objects to tell history of the objects (Hodder, 2012).
Objects need humans
In their past lives, before the point of discovery and entry to the museum space where their meanings were stabilized (Alberti, 2005), the objects relied on humans for their creation and to perform their function (Hodder, 2012). The teacups relied on humans to mix, shape, and fire them, ensuring they could hold boiling water, then, humans brewed tea, using tea strainers, and poured it into cups (Hodder, 2012).
Objects depend on humans to give them value. Hancock (2013) gave great value to Virginia Woolf's glasses as they connected her to their previous owner, someone she thinks highly of. According to Marx (2005), these objects have been given value throughout their existence; the capitalist process of production alienated them from their maker as they were given comparatively more resale value than their maker's wage. When the worker confronts these objects again as commodities in a separate world from where they were made the objects become so far removed from the worker they become fetishized. Finally, when preserved in the museum setting, not just as a pair of glasses but as Virginia Woolf's glasses they have gained a value separate from their object selves and have gone through the process of ‘reification’, gaining an idol-like value. The perceived object value is what deems them worthy of being preserved, cared for, and idolized in the museum environment (Wingfield, 2013). When the objects in the Canalside Heritage Centre were collected they went from being rubbish fetishized objects worthy of collection. By displaying them in a museum-like environment, reification gave them a value separate from their object selves, they tell are treasured artifacts of previous lives.
Throughout the journey of their existence, objects depend on humans to give them meaning (Dudley, 2013). The meanings that are assigned to objects very much depend on the person who is experiencing them, the collector of the objects gave them a meaning worthy of being saved from the bin (Muensterberger, 2014). The curator cannot control the meaning given to the objects by the visitors (Fish, 1953), there are infinite possibilities and are entwined with the ‘lifeworld’ of the person viewing them. The visitor's lifeworld is the personal connections they have with that object (Wood and Latham, 2014), a mental map of knowledge based on past experiences both biographical and cultural' (Hooper-Greenfield, 2000 pp.118). In the case of the broken teacups, these meanings are derived from the social connotations of sitting down with people to drink tea, the process of ‘throwing a cup on a pottery wheel and smashing crockery, amongst many others. Although curators cannot predict all the meanings assigned to objects, Fish (1953) suggests that ‘interpretive communities’ allow them to assume some. These are groups of people who may, due to similar life experiences, create some similar meaning for objects. If we take the very ritual of drinking tea as a similarity making an ‘interpretative community’, it is possible to assume visitors will make social meanings in teacups. The teacups depend on humans to assign these meanings to them to make sense of the home environment.
Humans Need Objects
Just as objects rely on humans to give them meaning, humans need objects to make sense of the historical story at the Canalside Heritage Centre. As previously discussed, it is the ‘lifeworld’ of the visitor that allows them to give objects meaning, however, the visitor relies on knowledge of the ‘object world' to intersect their ‘lifeworld’ for meaning to be made. The ’object world' is all the information a museum has and can share about the object (Wood and Latham, 2014), this includes the physicalities of the object (Mitten, 2007) and the object's history (Medina, 2007). This information is processed through the visitor's life world so they can understand the museum's message (Wood and Latham, 2014 Graves-Brown, 2000 in Dudley, 2013). In the Canalside Heritage Centre, the ‘object world’ of the items on the shelves in the kitchen includes their function, for example, many of these hold beverages and food. This information triggers memories in the visitor's 'lifeworld' including food and beverages which enables them to make meaning (Wood and Latham, 2014) and make sense of the history at the site.
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As has already been discussed the visitor needs the object and the information about the ‘object world’ to make sense of what they see in front of them, it is, therefore, logical that the museum relies on the object as an information tool to impart the message of the museum to the visitor (Dudley, 2013). In the recreation of life in the Wier Cottages, there is very little text-based information regarding life in the Wier Cottages, the curators have let the 'objective knowledge' tell the story. Wehner, K, and Sear, M (2013) suggest objects displayed in this way allow the visitor to observe the material conditions, sensibilities, and experiences and invite them to engage empathetically with other people's life-worlds across time and space. In a traditional museum setting, with objects in serialized cabinets behind sheets of glass, the objects lose their sense of physicality and human intimacy (Hooper- Greenhill, 2000). However, the curator's decision to display an imagined domestic setting creates an intimate space (Hancock, 2013) allowing empathetic engagement to take place. Historian Inge Clendennon has pointed out that the problem with allowing objects to tell the story with minimal text is that the conditions surrounding the lives of the people of the past are very different from us today. She suggests further contextual information in the form of text will help people understand this (Wehner, K, and Sear, 2013). I wonder how many people today can understand the trials and tribulations of constantly ensuring you had enough wood to heat your home over the cold winter months.
The project accompanying this essay maps my home by exploring the meaning behind some of the objects it houses and plotting the object known origins on a world map. The project consists of an ABC book with one object listed for every letter in the alphabet, each page has an object photograph, and information about its meaning to me, its material, color, and places it is associated with. These places have been marked on the accompanying map with the letter of the alphabet.
The project has been made physical, rather than digital, to physically engage the viewer in the task of turning the pages and searching for the letters on the map. By interacting with the objects in this way, the viewer will become more invested meaning-making process (Alberti, 2005).
The accompanying information only discusses the owner's relationship with the object. In the same way, objects in a museum become markers for a significant person or event (Wehner, K, and Sear, 2013), and these objects have become a marker for me. They each have a personal meaning to their collector and reflect their personality (Muensterberger, 2014). Do the repurposed curtains represent the collector as resourceful; the plants show their love of nature, and their crochet work indicates creativity? What about the taxidermy and tooth? The meaning viewers make in the objects and about their collector is derived from the viewer's own lifeworld experiences and knowledge of the object world (Wood and Latham, 2014). Releasing the objects from the shackles of excessive text, the aim was to increase the object experience for the viewer. According to the ‘Object Knowledge Framework’ (Wood and Latham, 2014), this freedom should enable the viewer's imagination thus enhancing the meaning-making process, and creating an experience of higher value (Dudley, 2013).
The combination of images, information, book, and maps explores Hodder's (2012) theory of entanglement. The final presentation of the book and map do not only rely on their duality to convey the message of their maker, but these objects rely on the objects featured in their content. These objects, in turn, rely on objects to function. The Lister engine relies on many parts working together to turn the propeller, or to power the alternator to charge the batteries and power electrical objects in the home. The objects featured in the book, relied on their human collector to preserve them, as many of them were gifts, they relied on human friends to gift them. Once they are presented to the world, the objects rely on the humans viewing the book and map and their reactions to inscribe them with meaning (Fish, 1953, Wood and Latham, 2014 Alberti, 2005). Humans rely on objects to convey the messages they interpret from the book and maps (Wood and Latham, 2014 Hodder, 2012). Humans also rely on objects to perform their functions, such as the engine for electricity. The dependency of objects on objects, objects on humans, and humans on objects are therefore completely entangled.
The ABC model of community mapping (Clifford, 2011) was used to choose the objects purely to aid the selection process. In a home museum, the objects are often those which are the most important to the story the curators are trying to tell (Australian ref). For example, in the Canalside Heritage Centre, the teacups indicate the social aspects of life, and the community is an important part of the story they are telling, they haven't included cleaning equipment. By using the ABC model the curator left curatorial decisions to the alphabet, is the windlass as important to the collector's story as the stovetop coffee maker?
Conclusion
This essay has explored the ‘entangled’ meanings of the shelf in the kitchen of the Wier Cottages according to Hodder (2012). It has established that in a museum-like environment, objects need objects to tell the story through the semantics of how many objects together can be read (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006), and how the plurality of the objects changes the meaning conveyed by Dorsett, 2013). Objects need humans to enable them to perform their function (Hodder, 2012), to assign them value (Marx, 2005), and to make them worthy of being displayed in a museum. Humans are needed to collect the (Muensterberger, 2014) and to give the objects meaning, both as the curator and the visitor (Wood and Latham, 2014 and Hooper- Greenfield, 2000). In turn, humans need objects to tell make sense of the world (reference?) and to tell the story of the Weir Cottages (references?). Each of these relationships depends on the other to work. Through semantics, objects rely on objects to tell their story, but they rely on humans to collect, curate, and make meaning in their stories and humans rely on the object world of objects to intersect their lifeworld so they can make meaning. The reliance of one object: object or object: human relationship on another for meaning to be made is what Hodder (2012) defines as 'Entanglement'. Entanglement in the accompanying project can be explored in the object book and map relying on the objects featured to tell the story the curator has put together about the objects in her home that they rely on every day. The object book and map then rely on the viewer to assign meaning to the project.
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