When I was a kid I never thought about how the contents of a museum come to be the actual contents. I had vague notions of Indiana Jones escapades, organized expeditions of discovery, and dusty research to assemble artifacts’ histories. But I never thought about the curation aspect of a museum.

I suppose I just thought, “someone collected some stuff, and this stuff on display is that entire collection.” Somewhere along the way, I became aware that what’s on display is [usually] just a small part of what the museum has in its collection. That’s a gateway to realizing that curation is a thing; That there is a person (or a team) doing the curation.

The fenced path into the Trinity Site led directly to its centerpiece: a dark lava-rock obelisk, a kind of sinister twin to the Washington Monument. It was placed exactly where the hundred-foot steel tower that held the bomb once stood. All that’s left of the tower are a few wrist-thick bits of steel that once made up part of its lower legs. The rest was vaporized or otherwise destroyed by the blast.

~ Ross Andersen, from America’s Strangest Tourist Destination

I actually shuddered thinking about people taking selfies in front a monument at ground-zero. But, I think my sense of awe for history is abnormal.

This planet is genuinely strange. If we were all flown to the moon or to Mars and walked around on them, they wouldn’t seem that strange to us because there would be no yardsticks or anything to measure their strangeness by—they’re just vast museums of geology. Whereas the Earth is a deranged zoo, and somebody left the doors of the cages open. We have real strangeness because we can measure the degree to which things are or are not what they ought to be.

~ J. G. Ballard

True story: I once saw someone break off a piece of the Punic Wall of Cartegena. I was flabbergasted. The Punic Wall is from circa 200BCE. I actually got mad. No, it was not an American, but it was a tourist. They broke off a bit of the wall in an area where you could—but holy shit you should not—touch it, crumbled it up, and had a sort of miffed, “meh, this is boring” response. To add future injury to this insult, they had a small child with them who learned that such behavior is acceptable.

[…] we don’t usually think about much outside our immediate surroundings. Typically, it is our nation that defines us geographically, and it is our family, friends, and acquaintances who dominate our social thinking. If we think about the universe, it is from an astronomical or from a religious perspective. We are locally focused, evolved from social apes who went about in small bands. The further away or less visible other people are, the harder it is to worry about them.

~ Nigel Warburton, from Cosmopolitans

I’m occasionally startled by connections. In the above case, that linked article is by Warburton. Who, as it turns out, is one of the two philosophers behind Philosophy Bites.

Years ago, one of the most profitable things I ever did was subscribe to a little podcast called Philosophy Bites. And then listen to all of them. I’m still not an armchair philosopher, but there are now a crap-ton fewer unknown-unknowns.

The beginning of philosophy is this: The realization that there is a conflict between the opinions of men and a search for the origin of that conflict, accompanied by a mistrust towards mere opinion, and an investigation of opinion to see if it is correct opinion, and the discovery of a certain standard of judgement, comparable to the balance that we have discovered for determining weights, or the rule, for things straight and crooked.

~ Epictetus

How can one read that, and not think: “I should read more stuff that is not recently published.”

Sometimes I think I missed my calling as a museum curator. When I take the time to think about all my projects, I see a tremendous amount of curation in progress. On the other hand, being a curator at just one museum might have been really frustrating; I’ll never know. I do know I have a lot of fun memories, from all sorts of museums. And right this moment I’m resisting the urge to figure out where museum curators hang out online so I can start hanging out there.

‘Perception’ here is about how we sense, how we receive information of any kind, before we classify that information or data, form opinions or feelings or judgements. Opinions, feelings, judgements are quite another type of perception. This sensory reception/perception precedes and shapes that (opinion, belief, judgement) perception.

All else is downstream from there.

~ Andrew McLuhan, from Perception (n) versus Perception (v)

To be fair, I nearly chose this to quote from that article: “This is a common pitfall around here: set off looking for one thing, find a dozen others.” The article is interesting either way.

I don’t know. Maybe all of this (all of my life’s curation and writing and work, not just this stuff today about museums and curation) is simply about one’s journey of increasing self-awareness and increasing sense of place in the Universe?

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.

~ David Foster Wallace

Where was I? Museums.

I delight in visiting smaller museums. Perhaps it’s because the imprint of a single curator is present upon the collection and displays? I’m not certain.

I am certain I thoroughly enjoyed the Atomic Museum in Las Vega, Nevada. (I recommend the small detour from the main strip to visit it.) I also loved the Corning Museum of Glass, where I took a lot of photos too.

Or, maybe it’s all just wonder?

Wonder is sometimes said to be a childish emotion, one that we grow out of. But that is surely wrong. As adults, we might experience it when gaping at grand vistas. I was dumbstruck when I first saw a sunset over the Serengeti. We also experience wonder when we discover extraordinary facts. I was enthralled to learn that, when arranged in a line, the neurons in a human brain would stretch the 700 miles from London to Berlin. But why? What purpose could this wide-eyed, slack-jawed feeling serve? It’s difficult to determine the biological function of any affect, but whatever it evolved for (and I’ll come to that), wonder might be humanity’s most important emotion.

~ Jesse Prinz, from How wonder works

Every week as I wrap up an issue, I look back over what I’ve assembled and I hear David Byrne: “Well, how did I get here?”

Until next time, thanks for reading.

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