The “First Person Museum” is an interactive multimedia museum devoted to telling the story of people and their objects. The museum was developed by First Person Arts, a Philadelphia area organization dedicated to converting the “drama” of life into memoir and documentary. Assistance in this project was provided by various community organizations throughout the Philadelphia region. The museum is hosted by the Pained Bride Art Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s Old City district. Like most history museums, the First Person Museum focuses on objects of value and importance; but there is an interesting twist. Value and importance are relative terms here; they are specific to the object’s owner. First Person Arts claims that the museum is unique, the first to tell exclusively the stories of everyday people through objects that have special meaning to them.
The First Person Museum has five goals, many of which reflect the mission of First Person Arts. These goals are for visitors to realize that objects are more than commodities, that visitors endow objects with value. The story and the person are the focus of the exhibit (and not the object). First Person Arts wants visitors to connect with and react emotionally to the stories on display. They want visitors to realize that meaning is contingent, based on time, place and experience. The final objective is that visitors will think about their own objects differently. The goals work together to create an active provocative museum experience. However in order to be achieved they require the active participation of the visitor—this is not a place for those looking for a passive museum experience. The goals must be inferred from thinking about the stories.[1]
History in the First Person Museum has an interesting context. The primary mode of history is “personal history,” it is called “story” by First Person Arts. Thematic histories of the objects also appear in the exhibit, in sections entitled “a little bit of history.” Each of these “bits” focuses on theme in the history of the object. For example “Shanise’s rhino” has a caption discussing drug promotions, as that was what the stuffed rhinoceros originally was, while “Kathy’s Pendant” has a caption that discusses the cultural implications of the object. These captions feel a little extraneous at times. First Person Arts has placed the emphasis of the museum on interpreting the story of the owner, leaving history to take a secondary and hard to define role. Although their role is vague—especially in museum’s goals—they add another layer of complexity to the stories and help people understand the greater value of things.
The museum contains about eighteen objects from “everyday people” throughout the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Various community organizations held “story circles” where representatives from First Person Arts recorded the stories of community members. The eighteen or so stories that ultimately were chosen intentionally target a broad range of themes and the authors are from a variety of socio-economic groups. Objects serve as the catalyst for interpretation in this museum. Each tells an important story about the present owner—many (but not all) of the stories involve the connection between the present owner and the object’s previous owner/owners. These stories are told in many different forms of media, some are video (shot by David Kessler), some are audio (recorded by Samara Freemark), some include photographs (shot by J.J. Tiziou) and some are just text panels (written by Diana Marder); all the stories are told as monologues.[2]
The exhibit’s design is interesting. Instead of standard museum cases—which can be very expensive—the exhibit utilizes used furniture. The furniture pieces are arranged in various “domestic vignettes” with the object placed in a location they could appear in the home. For example, “Yari’s baby clothes” are in an open dresser drawer and “Shanise’s rhino sits on a baby rocking chair. This sort of in situ display evokes a sense of domestic tranquility. Objects like Yari’s baby clothes only reinforce the notion of domesticity. However not all the objects reinforce this, some jolt the visitor’s emotions, fulfilling that difficult to achieve goal of the museum. For example, on a coffee table lies an unfinished hand-knit sock owned by Beth. The visitor finds that “Beth’s sock” once belong to Beth’s friend who died of cancer. The sock was given for Beth to finish in memory of her lost friend. Even more “jolting” is “Carla’s Wedding Ring”. At first glance Carla’s wedding ring is unobtrusive, sitting in a jewelry box on an end table. But when the visitor picks up the headphones to listen to Carla, they find that this is more than a simple wedding ring. The story the rings tells is one of abuse and divorce, not a happy marriage that the placement might suggest.
The museum is fairly well designed, but has several issues. The majority of these problems stem from the space of the Painted Bride. The most egregious is that the building is not handicapped accessible. The main exhibit space is also quite small, which means that several objects could not be displayed in the main room. The exhibit continues in a side room without warning or continuity (if designed differently this side room might actually serve as a better home for the exhibit as a whole). Most of the main exhibit space is organized with a central aisle dividing the objects. However midway through the exhibit there is a “living room” that obstructs the central aisle and pushes circulation to a walkway on the side. This would not be extremely problematic, except that there is a split display for Carla’s ring directly at this spot. A table on one side of the walkway has the object, while the interpretive text is on the wall on the other side. Not only is this confusing to understand Carla’s ring, forcing one to step across the walkway to see all the parts of the display, it adds to the congestion at this location.
Upstairs in an underutilized loft space is a television that airs all the video stories that are in the exhibit (also available downstairs) and more importantly postcards to “tell us your story.” Here is where the exhibit tries to share some authority with the visiting public—instead of just the “everyday” people whose objects are on display. The visitor can tack this story to the wall above the desk, and many of these will be published online at the museum’s website. There is one difficulty with the comment cards, next to where the visitor writes their own story is a check-off list of themes it can fit in. Although most object stories could conceivably fit the categories provided (they are extensive), not all could, and it quite literally boxes one into a corner. Object stories can also be entered directly on the museum’s website.
The exhibit has one last issue. The stories can be stereotypical, and the in situ display nor the exhibit interpretation helps—especially if the visitor does not fully understand the exhibit. For example, the story involving “Catalina’s pan” (a type of pan known as a cardero and is common to Hispanic countries) discusses Catalina’s experience as an immigrant. A more dangerous stereotype occurs with “Renee’s boxer shorts”. Renee is an African-American woman whose son was convicted of multiple drug felonies. Her story only serves to augment the stereotype that all African-American men are drug dealers, and aspire to nothing more. Of the issues with the exhibit, this is the most intractable and hardest to compensate for, although it does happen somewhat. Renee’s son eventually “straightens out” and becomes a productive member of society. One can only hope that the visitor does not generalize these stories to an entire socioeconomic group—the museum does not encourage this in any way.
Despite its flaws the First Person Museum is a poignant reminder of the relationships that people have with objects. It is a demonstration of what value can mean in different circumstances to different people. This museum provides a refreshing and interesting twist on the history museum. While it is not for those seeking the jewels of power and fame, or a passive museum experience; those looking for an active experience in an experimental museum dedicated to the people, should attend.
