What We Do with Things

Coconut Palm Husk or Shell (Cocos nucifera L.), Culebra, Porto Rico. Fibrous shell of the nut. Dehydrated. Some previous water infiltration and decomposition evident.

Over more than a decade an amalgam of artifacts has been amassed at Main Street Museum in Vermont consisting of objects of varied origins—biological, mineralogical, and historical. Artifacts from the local area, from the State of Vermont and from far-flung regions around the world are displayed in a manner that encourages their contemplation and study. Display cases, preservation workspaces, a reading room, and ample storage drawers encourage contemplation and study. Both the physical design of our space and the collections contained here are informed at least in part on the Wunderkammern which have historically merged wonder with exegesis. This Museumological focus is designed to reflect the entire universe (as it has been understood by different people in different times.) This miniaturization of the cosmos requires a corresponding expansion of the human memory. There are only two plots in the world. Someone goes on a trip. Someone comes to town. The stories behind objects are more interesting than the objects. The truth is always stranger than any plot we could make up.

We assess items based on the sustained interest shown them. If respect is the first criterion for the operation of the Museum, and love's ultimate derivation is respect, then we are a collection based upon love.

Description of the Collections

Tulips, Pistil, inferior ovary and three lobed stigma, stamen, anther and filament. Perianth segments red, with black bases edged with yellow. In tulips, the perianth is considered the corolla and calyx together. Genus Tulipa, family Lily. Liliaceae.

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Tulipa, is the genus name and is the same for all tulips. It is derived from the Turkish word "tulpend" or turban, which the flower resembles. Foster tulips are native to Turkestan, in an area now called Kazakhstan. Garden tulips are generally derived from two species, Tulipa gesneriana and Tulipa suaveolens. Some other wild types sometimes contribute genetic material as well. Truncate bulbs, like, tulip, daffodil and onion have outer bulb scales which are dry and membranous. This covering, or tunic, provides protection from drying and mechanical injury to the bulb. The fleshy scales are in continuous, concentric layers so the structure is more or less solid. Bulbs have a special way of producing more of themselves. They can be propagated easily asexually, or without starting from a seed. Each year as they grow they form new bulbs that grow off the mother bulb. These can be separated and grown as a new bulb. Tulip breeders use all kinds of propagation methods from crossing two plants and collecting the seed to technical laboratory tissue culture techniques.
Harvey/Muhly, Randolph/Tunbridge, Vermont

The Collection of artifacts at the Main Street Museum is a unique experiment in material culture studies, consisting of objects of varied origins—man-made (or historical) and biological, botanical and mineralogical.

Categories are often both overlapping (vinculum) and mutable. At the Main Street Museum they include, but are not limited to: Flora; Fauna; Exotica (geographically diverse objects); Shoes (and Tiny Shoes); Fiber, Textiles and Costumes; Tangled Things; Objects Associated with Famous People; Round Things; Objects with Orifices; Oxidization (another vinculum catagory); Bad Art; Recreated Artifacts Refused by Dartmouth Realia; Amulets and Sacred Objects; Judæica; Vermontiana; Relics from the Civil War/War Between the States; and Unidentified Mammals or "Flocked Pets."

The Flora and Fauna collections represent invasive species from the infrastructure of an economically marginal Vermont downtown. Our dried cats are not true mummies; they are merely dehydrated. Our local collections of knotweed, dogweed and loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) are presented alongside historic and geographically significant specimens representing the various cultures of the earth. Paving stones from Rome and cobblestones from our local railroad underpass are preserved here as well as asphalt from Los Angeles, New Orleans and Baltimore. Coffee cups and aspirin bottles from now defunct work places in White River Jct. are displayed alongside bricks from Monticello, masonry from the Alamo in Texas (and the Forteleza in San Juan), and dried rose specimens (family Rosaceæ) from Robert Todd Lincoln's—and Jefferson Davis's—houses.

The Museum forges links and reflects meanings from object to object, from object to viewer, and from the viewer back to the object again. Our website will be featuring "wiki" software and will include the catalog of our varied holdings in a manner that is fully accessible and modifiable electronically.

Assigning values to artifacts is increasingly difficult in the environment of most major collecting institutions. The neutrality of theoretical systems utilized by any museum is currently being called into question. As a small independent repository the Main Street Museum has the flexibility—indeed the mandate—to examine the layered and ever changing meanings of objects and their relationships to their surroundings. As the uses for objects are more or less continuously in flux, we analyze these uses through traditional disciplines (art historical, scientific and qualitative methods), but also through psychological analysis as well. Our emotional relationship with objects is formed abstrusely. Therefore the meaning of objects is unlocked only through similar cryptic means.

We accession items based on the sustained interest that has been shown them and the attentiveness they demonstrate towards us. Perhaps the only true meaning in objects lies in the questions we ask them and in the questions each one of them asks of us.