Frozen snapshots
Royal Museums Greenwich, the Museum where I work, holds a stunning collection of 2.5 million objects. One of these objects is Nelson’s coat, worn by Lord Horatio Nelson when he died at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. You can see the bullet hole in his left shoulder, it’s like traveling back in time and space to the moment Lord Nelson was mortally wounded and said: ‘They have done for me at last, my backbone is shot through’. It is definitely a powerful object.
Objects are great storytellers, and this particular skill is enhanced when a museum decides to include the object in a collection. Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai said they are “are congealed moments in a longer social trajectory” (Appadurai, 2006). I like this idea of thinking about objects as frozen snapshots of the past.
“We might think about all the different life-stages of the object from its creation, who made it, why, and where, how it was used and understood, how it was acquired by different owners, what journeys it undertook, how it entered a museum or gallery, its treatment within the institution, whether it was disposed or whether it lives on in a perpetual display” (Mason, Robinson and Emma, 2018).
Like Nelson’s coat, some of these objects have the peculiarity of having a great meaning for the communities they represent. Dr Peter L. Jakab, the chief curator of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, describes this powerful meaning as charisma. This charisma arouses great interest from the public, large enough to have the ability to, for example, silence a gathering. This is a common reaction that happens around some objects and you can observe it in Museums.
It is also important to point out that this meaning could be at the same time controversial for others, and this is a perfect tool to generate debate and encourage to rethink, preserve and learn from history.
Mason, R. Robinson, A. and Emma, C. (2018) Museum and Gallery Studies – The basics. Oxon: Routledge, pp.54-85.
Appadurai, A. (2006). The Thing Itself. Available at: http://www.arjunappadurai.org/articles/Appadurai_The_Thing_Itself.pdf [Accessed 05 Oct. 2020].