Relocating

After a long drive through the rain, we've finally made it to the Sunshine State.  (And we've figured out our internet connection, which was pretty dicey for a while.)

As big a project as moving felt for us, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what happens when an institution needs to pull up stakes, which happens more frequently than I'd realized.  The Field Museum in Chicago moved five miles north in 1921, from its original location at the site of the 1893 World's Fair to its current home in the South Loop.  The Dali Museum, now in St Petersburg, Florida has moved three times--from its original location in Cleveland in 1982, and to an updated facility in St Pete earlier this year.

Thinking about all of that, I'm pondering the ties between museums and the communities they serve after reading this article in the AAM archives.  It covers a number of different scenarios, but the majority of the article talks about museums dealing with the decision to (and the ramifications of) changing their location and moving out of their original communities.  In some cases, like the Berkely Art Museum, the choice is obvious and the impact fairly minimal.  The original building wasn't seismically sound in a region of the country known for earthquakes and the museum is staying on the U of C campus...nothing is lost.  In other cases, like the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum or the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania, moving the physical location of the museum will have a lasting effect on the communities they leave behind.  The town of Mt Horeb apparently depended on the Mustard Museum for tourism dollars (that's one of those sentences that just looks odd when you take the time to re-read it, no?), but the location was making it hard for the museum to survive.  The Mustard Museum chose its own survival, and no one can blame them for that, but it had a large impact on the town that it left.  Their survival was linked, but not balanced--the museum had to leave to survive and the town needed the revenue that came with the museum staying.

So what does a museum owe to its community?  If the collection brings visitors to an out-of-the way place, there's an intangible sense of obligation, but it isn't necessarily fair to ask an attraction to go down with the ship, so to speak, when a location ceases to be viable for its collection.  Having just packed up and hit the road on myself I'm a a little biased--as much as I value loyalty, there's no use in staying put if it means your collections and displays would go unseen.  Which brings us right back to the Chernobyl Question again...there's no escaping the dichotomy of collections and visitorship around here.

a worn spot on stone stairs.

The building I work in is nearly 100 years old.  This causes some issues (the Facilities crew tells me that 100-year-old plumbing all kinds of not fun), but mostly I think it's wonderful.  Not only do our collections preserve history for future generations, our very building is a record of how museums have grown and changed since the early 20th century.  One side of our main hall houses taxidermy animal dioramas that haven't changed since we opened our doors in 1921 while the other side of the hall boast exhibits with time lapse photography, touch screen technology, and virtual cave-painting.  It's kind of amazing.

And of all the amazing things in this building that's been absorbing history for over 90 years, my favorite spot is a side stairwell with a worn spot on the second landing.

The stairwell in question is outside my office, and I walk up and down it several times a day to meet visitors, get the mail, or grab lunch.  It doesn't lead anywhere too special, and it's not a central route to anywhere in the museum.  The fact that it's not particularly well-travelled makes the worn spot even more special to me.  The stairs are original to the building, and carved from a dense grey stone.  (I'll have to find a docent tomorrow to ask exactly what type of stone it is.  The docents will know, they know everything.)  [ed. According to Dennis, it's limestone, local to the Chicago region. I knew the docents would know!] Right near the railing on the second landing there's a slight depression in the stone right where your foot hits as you turn to continue down the final flight of stairs.  It's not deep--in fact, you can only see it when the lighting hits it just right and reveals that shallow bowl in the stone--but I love it.  I love it because that spot has been worn away by thousands of people walking down these stairs over the last century.  No single person created it, but it's a reminder of our collective existence--a record of our time here at the museum.  This little depression has been caused by the minute scraping of governesses in high boots in the early part of the century, and by shuffling school kids in their shoes that light up when they run.  Folks who came to this museum once left a tiny mark when they went down that stairway, and it's a part of the same mark made by a curator who walked that route every day for 43 years.  Each of us who takes that stairway wears the stone down the tiniest fraction.  Each of us leaves just a little reminder that we were here.

In a building as vast as this one, a building designed to house and explain artifacts from the earliest days of this planet, I take comfort in the fact that there's a tiny record of me here.  When I leave, that worn little scuff will remain, and it will grow minutely as others shuffle down the side stairway.  Most of the people who contribute to it won't notice, but together we've all left a little bit of ourselves behind.  That makes me happy.

And knowing that I'll be leaving here sooner rather than later, I maybe drag my feet a little more than necessary turning 'round that banister...just to leave that tiny fraction more of myself here in this building that's seen so much.