First Person Museum
Capturing our exhibit contributors with his camera, Jacques-Jean Tiziou is a major artistic presence at the new First Person Museum. He has provided portraits for five of the story-tellers and their objects as well as participating in the object selection process and early planning of the museum.
Jacques-Jean, or JJ, has been involved with FPA since 2005 when he won the photo contest associated with our festival. The theme was “lifting the veil” for which he avoided the more literal interpretation and instead submitted this image ( http://tinyurl.com/25azg8e) which depicts the incision in the skin made while removing an ovarian cyst. In 2007, a friend who was working for FPA encouraged him to sign up as a subject for the “Objects of my affection” video project, where filmmaker and photo archivist John Pettit made a short documentary about his photo archive. http://www.viddler.com/explore/FirstPersonArts/videos/25/ )
When I asked JJ what he hoped would come from the show, he said “I think that there’s tremendous value in listening to our neighbor’s stories. The people on the street aren’t just bags of meat in your way… they’re potential storytellers, dance partners, friends and collaborators. We live in a world where it’s easy to be caught up in celebrity gossip and cultures of competition; in order to fix some of the things that are wrong with our world, we need to foster a culture of collaboration, and work in community. That starts with listening to each other.”
Museums are about telling a meta-story, and so I’ve been asking people what connections they see between the objects. JJ made an interesting observation- that many people have submitted objects that they associate with an important in their life. He said “I think that to really get to the most interesting stories, these objects need another layer of questions to draw out the particular stories about these individuals that exemplify their impacts… these are the things that other people will most be interested in and able to relate to.”
Placing our everyday objects under a bright light forces our attention. JJ hopes that with that focus we might begin to reevaluate how we assign value to the things in our life. He mentioned the role of story teller that the media plays, often establishing our conventions for us, dictating what is and is not worth noticing or holding value.
JJ wants us to question what the media dictates is important: “Are there things that we are valuing maybe more than we should?” and “Are there other stories that are going untold that maybe we should make an extra effort to seek out? As my friends at the Media Mobilizing Project (http://mediamobilizing.org) like to say, “Movements begin with the telling of untold stories.”
Take a moment to vote for JJ’s amazing project, How Philly Moves. It’s eligible for $50,000!
- Morgan Berman
Get in gear with this week’s featured story from the First Person Museum Online Gallery. This week’s tale is more than classic! “Gentle Crosshairs” comes to us from Andrew from New York City. Take a ride through Andrew’s story about an unconventional hood ornament that once sat perched on the edge of a 1975 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. But this hood ornament is not just special for evading the late ’80′s and early ’90s fad for hood ornament theft. Read the story behind Andrew’s gentle crosshairs and learn about a comfort and luxury that exceeds even powered leather seats.
Now it’s YOUR turn! Upload your story to firstpersonmuseum.org and be featured in a Museum! Read through stories by other Museum contributors or upload your own using media including a photo of yourself, your object or video. Who knows? Next week’s featured story could be yours!
Theme: Good Times
Object Type: My Wheels
In the winter of 1997, I set out to buy a sensible car and, instead, fell in love with a 1975 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. A couple thousand bucks got me two tons and twenty feet of harvest gold luxury, replete with four-way powered leather seats, sun roof, and a working 8-track stereo. To my enormous delight, the car remained intact save for one glaring flaw: It hadn’t survived the late ‘80s and early ‘90s fad for hood-ornament theft. With at least ten feet of hood, the missing crest made it nearly impossible to determine where the world started and my Cadillac stopped.
By chance, at a flea market, I discovered a lovely chrome swan, lightly pock-marked and imperfect, but with a delicately arched neck and a dramatic spread of wings. It made a stunning, if unconventional, replacement, rivaling the luxury and prestige of any not-quite-classic vehicle anywhere.
The Cadillac and I moved a lot in the late 90s, and the swan perched on the hood as a gentle cross-hairs on my various aspirations, pulling up targets and driving them down. Anything was possible in that car. In the fall of 1998, I drove across the country, up through Canada (where I evaded a speeding ticket because the speedometer wasn’t graduated in kilometers) and down to my new home in Los Angeles. From Venice, I barreled south along the beach to the Palisades and north on the Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu, the chrome swan leading the way. Gradually, though, the stuff of adulthood crept into my possession, eventually exceeding the ample trunk capacity of the Cadillac and forcing a painful choice. In advance of a move to Philadelphia, I reluctantly prepared to part ways with the car, listing it in the Auto Trader at an ambitious $2500. One Saturday morning, I pointed the swan towards a diner in the Valley and sat down for breakfast with Frank, a retired janitor who looked wistfully at the car through the diner window while pushing eggs around his plate. It was his dream car, the first vehicle he’d lusted after as an adult, but there was a problem: He could do $1500 up front, but he’d have to make payments on the balance. For my taking on the risk–for trusting him–he’d even pay $2700. Frank’s palpable love for the car made the deal, and, impulsively, I shook on it. We agreed to meet at a mall in Santa Monica the following week.
Frank had brought a friend–a fellow retiree–and over lunch we talked cars and life in Los Angeles. At a break in the conversation, Frank looked around furtively and leaned in: “Are you ready to make the swap?” He was afraid we’d be seen with cash and robbed. With his friend standing guard at the door, Frank and I swapped paper and shook on the deal in the mall bathroom. In addition to the cash in hand, he’d make eight monthly payments of $150 each. We walked together to the car, and lingering over the swan for a moment, he looked at me and said he’d like me to have it. He’d already found an original Cadillac replacement, and he had no use for it. “To remember this great car” he said.
The sensible, utilitarian little pickup truck I bought as a replacement lacked a hood ornament or badge of any kind. No cars have them anymore. They’re too ostentatious, maybe, or too vulnerable to theft. Frank made every single payment as promised, calling to make sure the check had cleared and updating me on his life. In ‘retirement’ he’d started a small solo janitorial business–he just couldn’t sit still, it turned out, or play golf like his buddies. The car, of course, was everything he’d hoped.
For ten years, the swan has occupied a nook or shelf, a memento of my days on the wide-open freeways of L.A and of something else as well. Once an emblem of ambition, movement and change, the swan reminds me now of my deal with Frank, of the virtues of simple human trust and a confidence in people, that, as it happens, is a comfort and a luxury exceeding even powered leather seats.
Read Andrew’s official entry.
-Becca Jennings
Hold the phone! This week’s featured story from the First Person Museum Online Gallery comes to us from Dan from Bala Cynwyd. Travel back in time through a story about a rotary phone that is squat, black and solid — much unlike its owner. Gather ’round what Dan calls “a household altar” for a tale that pays homage to a grandmother and the pre-satellite era.
Have you uploaded your story yet? Drop the First Person Museum a line at firstpersonmuseum.org along with media including a photo of you, your object, or video. Choose from Themes like “You Can’t Go Home Again” and Object Types like “From Long Ago.” Operators are standing by! Who knows? Next week’s story could be yours!
Theme: You Can’t Go Home Again
Object Type: From Long Ago
My grandmother’s phone is squat, black and solid, and in that respect it was unlike her, a tiny Italian woman with narrow birdlike bones. Otherwise, however, they were in parallel: built of stronger stuff than their modern-day equivalents, and hard-wired once and forever into a tidy house in Ardmore. It bears an exchange number, MI for MIdway, which is vastly more permanent than fungible 64.
It works by means of magnets and metal, dense with respectable copper, resting firmly on hard rubber feet, an artifact of an age of clear cause and effect. A household altar to the electromechanical mystery of the single, totemic Phone Company. First the old AT&T was slain, then the very wires themselves, and the phone and my grandmother were both thrust into a contingent, unreliable era of cells and satellites. “You’re walking on the street in Canada? You sound like you’re right next door!”
Like her, the phone ended its days affixed in the same place but severed from its context, cast out from the eternal verity of the 215 area code and into the distressing meaninglessness of 610. People say it was a stroke that carried her off, three days short of her ninetieth birthday. I know better. It was ten-digit dialing.
Dial up Dan’s official entry here.
The Museum is officially open at the Painted Bride Art Center. (230 Vine St.) Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 12-6. You can also visit whenever there are performances and events during the First Person Festival. Thanks to everyone who came to Friday’s opening night reception.
See you at the Museum!
-Becca Jennings
See a familiar face on the EL this week? Now you can catch a sneak peak into the First Person Museum on your daily commute. First Person Museum Septa ADs went up this past week, featuring stories from Nakiyrah, Grace, and Jon — a glimpse into just a few of the stories and objects you’ll see showcased at the First Person Museum (November 5 – December 18.) Look for them along the Market-Frankford and the Broad Street Lines.
This past summer First Person Arts hosted nine storytelling events throughout the city called StoryCircles. Our Septa stars were among the participants who told their stories at these events. Grace graced us with her presence and her story about her family’s cream and sugar bowl at a StoryCircle hosted by Ayuda Community Center. Jon shared his story about his grandfather’s fishing license and we first met Nakiyrah and her baby doll at the Village of Arts & Humanities’ StoryCircle.
Witness Nakiyrah’s, Grace’s and Jon’s full stories, the objects behind them and more in person at the First Person Museum Opening Reception, November 5 at the Painted Bride Art Center (230 Vine St) 5-7PM.
-Becca Jennings
Every week we’ve been featuring a story from the First Person Museum Online Gallery. This week we’re highlighting Anittah from Philly. I met Anittah this past weekend at The Food Trust’s Headhouse Farmers Market. Anittah was one of the Sunday shoppers who shared her story with us in exchange for one of our First Person Museum tote bags. A perfect swap for toting home some amazing locally grown produce! Check out Anittah’s fashion statement in this week’s featured story about an empowering Grey Shirt Dress.
Theme: Empowered
Object Type: Stuff I Wear
“I knew I would buy it the moment my eyes brushed past it. It was my first day in Moscow, all alone, after four days in xenophobic St. Petersburg with friends. “Oh, you think you are some sort of girly girl now?” My mother laughed at me when I’d returned to Brooklyn and telephoned her to report that I was throwing a tea party and would be wearing my brand new dress.
Yes, mother, I may be 5’10″ to your 5’4″. I may have hairy half-Gr*ngo arms to your hairless smooth Thai ones. I may sweat and grunt and feel jealousy at the glances that the cheerleaders get when I am huddled over a dry erase clipboard while any basketball coach diagrams our next play. But that does not mean I cannot also be a girly girl — That 3″ heels cannot sit patiently next to my high-tops in my closet, that I cannot eventually learn how to saunter into a fancy restaurant in my brand new grey silk shirt-dress.
So I knew that I would buy it the moment my eyes brushed past it, because I no longer cared about “boy or girl?” And when my mom made that comment it only stung a little bit.
Five years later the dress still hangs beautifully in my closet above the high-tops.”
Read Anittah’s official entry.
Would you like to be featured in a Museum? Upload your story today to the First Person Museum Online Gallery! Choose from Story Themes like, “Empowered” and Object Types like, “Stuff I Wear.” Upload media including photos of your object or video.
Stay tuned! Next week’s featured story could be yours!
-Becca Jennings
Mirror, Mirror, small and chic, who’s the featured story this week? Straight from the First Person Museum Online Gallery, this week’s featured story comes to us from Melanie in Washington D.C. Melanie’s object reflects the story of a woman who, according to Melanie, was a “feminist before the word existed.” Look into the story of a grandmother who in her 90′s regularly beat the 70-year-old men in her building at poker in this week’s story about a compact mirror that’s not just for special occasions.
Mirror, Mirror
Theme: Generation to Generation
Object Type: Always By My Side
My grandmother was a feminist before the word existed. She supported her parents and siblings through the Great Depression, and she rejected numerous marriage proposals from men offering to leave their wives for her. But she didn’t marry until she was 40–it took her that long to find the right guy. She had my dad, her only child, when she was 42. When she was in her 90s, she regularly beat all the 70-year-old men in her building at poker.
After she died, in 2004, my dad asked me to look through her costume jewelry to see if I wanted any of it. Nestled among the jewelry was her compact from the 1950s, with the image of a couple kissing in front of a waterfall. It was one of her favorite items–I remember, from when I would visit as a child, that the compact used to sit on her dressing table among her perfume bottles. And my dad tells me that, when he was a little boy, she used to put this compact in her fancy going-out purse on special occasions.
Now the compact lives in my purse. Every time I look at myself in it, I think of her and the way she lived her life. That’s something for every day, not just special occasions.
See Melanie’s official entry.
Now it’s YOUR turn! Share your story and be featured in a Museum! Upload your story today to firstpersonmuseum.org. Choose from Story Themes like, “Generation to Generation” and Object Types like, “Always By My Side.” Upload media including photos of your object or video.
Who knows? Next week’s featured story could be yours!
-Becca Jennings
Every week we’ve been featuring a story from the First Person Museum Online Gallery on the First Person blog. In this week’s tale, a lucky curbside find meets writer’s block remedy. Read up on how a “fledgling wordsmith” took writing BACK from the computer in “A Magical Typewriter Adventure” uploaded by Rae from Philly.
Rae is no stranger to First Person Arts. As a frequent StorySlammer, Rae takes her storytelling skills from the page to the stage and has earned titles of both “StorySlam Winner” and “Audience Favorite.” Rae also performed at Queer Memoir: Sticks and Stones this past July. Hear the story that named Rae “Audience Favorite” in the video below.
A Magical Typewriter Adventure
Theme: Empowered
Object Type: Lost or Found
“As a writer, I — among many others, I’m sure — often find myself mired in “writer’s block.” Like most young, fledgling wordsmiths, I had been using a computer and word processing software to compose, or attempt to compose, my masterpieces.
Once completely sucked into the bog of writer’s block, my wandering, multitasking, young ADD-generation mind would, like some kind of subliminal psychological experiment, move the mouse, click on Mozilla Firefox and ouila! I’d suddenly find myself awakening from a three-hour-long Facebook coma. My word document would still be stark and mocking, my deadline one day closer, my self-loathing brimming over the top — but hey, at least I knew that that my friend’s mom just baked a loaf of her special banana nut bread. Sigh.
One afternoon I was lamenting my dilemma to a friend. Fatty B is an old fashioned fellow and a writer as well. He suggested that I start using a typewriter. “We gotta take writing BACK from the computer!”
It sounded like fine idea, but as a writer — and an unpublished, unnoticed, and unpaid one at that — I had zero money for one. Still, I really liked the idea.
One morning, after a beautiful breakfast with my friends from home who were in town, I’d seen them off and I was walking to my writing space. I was pensive and yearning quietly in my mind for a way to make my writing work. I needed something…
…and there it was. On the curb was my Smith-Corona Spellmate 700 typewriter with a sticker on it that said “works.” If that’s not a sign to keep writing, I don’t know what it is! I couldn’t believe it! I scooped it up, took it to my writing space, and I’ve not gone back to a computer since.”
See Rae’s official entry.
Do YOU have a story about an object that carries special meaning in your life? Share your story and be featured in a Museum! Upload YOUR story to firstpersonmuseum.org. Choose from story themes like, “Cautionary Tale” or “Generation to Generation” and object types including, “From Far Away” and “My Wheels.” Upload media including photos and video of your object. We look forward to your stories!
-Becca Jennings
One of the components to the interdisciplinary behemoth that is the First Person Museum is the in-depth historical research provided by the Public History students in Professor Seth Bruggeman’s class at Temple. Their research of the societal and historical implications of each object in the exhibit complements the personal stories shared by each object’s owner.
As a part of their graduate seminar in material culture, the students were paired up with museum participants who have contributed an object to the museum. Each student keeps a blog page documenting their research findings. Their work is comprised of tracing the objects’ historical and cultural context along with their developing understanding of the personal relationship between the object and its owner. Below is a review of some of their blogs and the work they have produced so far. Their findings will accompany the items when the First Person Museum exhibit opens on November 5th.
Amy’s Birth certificate (Sara B.)
During her exploration of one woman’s birth certificate, Sara makes some important points about the changing role of this document and how it has, as a result of the battle to discredit and defend one man’s legitimacy, “earned a place in pop culture and political history.” The birth certificate has taken on additional meaning in recent years, in part thanks to our country’s growing susceptibility to the viral dissemination of crack-pot political theories. In the 2008 election cycle, Barack Obama’s citizenship came under constant assault from groups known as ‘Birthers’ for their mistrust of his status as a legal U.S. citizen. While this historical context is intriguing on its own, one of the most interesting things about the intersection between Amy’s certificate and President Obama’s is the issue of race, how both Amy and Obama are children of mixed-race parents and the different ways this is represented on their birth certificates. The way we use or fail to use language to define a person’s race is an important and powerful factor in everyone’s life. The historical research on these objects teaches us about how our country and other countries have chosen to use or not use race as an identifying marker at birth. And in this way we can use the more ‘ordinary’ birth certificate of a woman and possibly learn something about how we authorize and legitimize race and citizenship in our country.
Beth’s sock (Jenna)
Then there is the sock exhibit. A seemingly simple object, this story deserves the gentle attention it is receiving. Not only does this student provide some fascinating information about the history of socks as objects of function and fashion (even delving into the research on the recently discovered ancient footwear owned by a cave man named Otzi) but the story behind this specific sock centers on two women and a friendship that was cut tragically short, interrupting the completion of Beth’s sock. To read more you can visit Jenna’s blog page here.
Bill’s pen (Emily)
Emily does a great job conjuring up some of the associations we have with pens in our culture and how this may or may not relate to the specific personal story behind Bill’s pen. Particularly interesting are the gendered connotations that come with an expensive pen used for business or given in a business relationship. Throwing in a dash of psychology as well as gender deconstruction we are left to think about how something as small as a pen can say so much about a person’s job, education, gender and influence.
Catalina’s pan (Gail)
Gail writes about a pan native to the Dominican Republic called a cardero, which is commonly used to make sancocho, “a savory stew of multiple meats and root vegetables sometimes considered the 
national dish of the Dominican Republic.” What is interesting here is how an object like this, one that originates from a different culture than the one in which the research and project are conducted, is that it is difficult getting any ‘academic’ sources to detail its origins. What would it feel like to choose a most precious item to display in your country and have that country fail to provide any significant familiarity with its existence? Luckily, the sancocho does have some compelling historical information available- particularly the speculation that this dish was formed out of the only available food to slaves- their owner’s scraps. Gail does an excellent job exploring the social context of the stew and its role in Dominican culture as a social magnet of sorts, unifying families and communities around a meal as diverse and flavorful as their country.
To read the blogs mentioned above and to browse the entire collection, visit the Studies in American Culture blog at http://studiesinamericanmaterialculture.blogspot.com/.
- Morgan Berman
This week’s featured story from the First Person Museum online gallery is by JJ Tiziou from West Philadelphia. JJ Tiziou is a photographer who claims to have never encountered an un-photogenic person in his life! His images are used both in corporate and editorial contexts as well as arts and activism. He uses his work to celebrate the beautiful people around him who are working to make the world a better place.
Now, JJ is helping us celebrate the stars of the First Person Museum by photographing the people and the objects behind the Museum. See more of JJ’s work at the live exhibit at the Painted Bride Art Center November 5-December 18, or check out his online portfolio here.
Image Archive
Theme: From the Heart
Object Type: Always By My Side
One of the things that is most important to me, and that I most like to share, is my image archive. In this digital age, it has become somewhat of an intangible thing, existing as bits of data on hard drives in multiple locations. I keep backup copies of it off-site, and constantly migrate this data into newer storage mediums. It is a million two-dimensional compositions carved out of the time and space of my life, linking me to countless amazing people and events through the threads of memory. In the end, the objects that store the images themselves are inconsequential- it is the images that are important to me, and even those are only important because of the people in them.
See JJ’s official entry.
Do you have a treasured possession that you’d like to tell us about?
Upload your story to our online gallery at firstpersonmusuem.org
Read our interview of JJ about How Philly Moves.
-Becca Jennings
Aaron Goldblatt - designer of the First Person Museum- is a partner at Metcalfe Architecture and Design. After “just sort of falling into a job” at the Please Touch Museum here in Philly, Mr. Goldblatt became responsible for the collections, and eventually became the head of exhibits. He has since worked at the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Wagner Free Institute of Science of Philadelphia. He has been a long-standing member of First Person Arts. His long-time friendship with our Executive Director, Vicki Solot won him an invitation to our brainstorming conversations that were held at the beginning of this project.
As he explained to me, the project was originally conceived as a reexamination of artistic explosion during economic upheaval. Mr. Goldblatt recalls that, while the original concept was much more amorphous, there was an initial interest in making it “have something to do with the economic melt down we were seeing around us, making connections between the explosion in the arts in the late 20s and early 30s with the great depression- and what was happening today- that was as far as their thinking had gone.”
When I heard this I thought about how people in hard economic times are often compelled by necessity to find new use for old things- to reinvent objects and the role they play in our lives. Taking an everyday item, or a personal possession and labeling it as an exhibited item is certainly an economical reinvention. This is definitely an identifiable theme in the new exhibit.
The formation process began by assembling historians and folklore types. Mr. Goldblatt recalls being the “only museum dork in the room.” He says that the idea of a ‘people’s museum’ was not on the table at the time but during the conversation he started talking about “the notion of value” and how the political right has been monopolizing the concept for a what seems like several generations. Appalled with our country’s penchant for equating value with money, Mr. Goldblatt labeled this tendency “bankrupt.” He sees this new museum as a chance to reestablish what is important to us as a people.
One source of inspiration was a project from the early 1980s called A People’s Museum.
“I’m told it had to do with gathering people together to exhibit “things of value to regular folks, not for artists or scholars, it was for the neighborhood.” It was this memory of an avant-garde museum that inspired First Person Arts to imagine their own people’s museum. Mr. Goldblatt recalls Vicki Solot calling him up after the meeting and asking if he objected to her using the idea, to which he responded “Of course not, its your project not mine.” To which she smartly replied, “It’s your project if you would like to work on it!”
One particularly interesting nugget is that we are not making a distinction between museum and exhibit in the project. As Mr. Goldblatt states: “It’s a museum in ideology, but practically it’s an exhibit. It’s an arcane distinction, who cares?” For most Philadelphians who have lived in a city over-flowing with art museums and galleries, this is fairly counter-intuitive leap. Mr. Goldblatt explained to me why this distinction is an important thing to consider and possible deconstruct, “Like most technical languages, its useful in that community, but outside that community it’s useless- it’s for the museum curators to make these walls- and they have reason to- but for most people technical languages are only useful within a very small sphere- and in some ways that’s one of the nice things about this project, its using some of the technical language of museology- i.e. objects in cases- and sabotaging it a little bit for the purpose of democracy- to democratize that formal language.”
I asked him later if he had ever worked on a project where the objects on display were of such a personal nature like they are in the new First Person Museum. His response perfectly illustrated how much we all overlook in most exhibits. When we peer through those thick glass panels, and read those little white placards illuminated by fluorescent bulbs- we only see one side of the story. He explained that all items are of a personal nature to someone. What is different here is that in this show “The fact of their personal nature is the point. Doing a project for Penn that has a collection of Native American objects- those are intensely personal objects- but that’s not the purpose of their being in the collection at that museum- that’s not the purpose of their study or display.” The First Person Museum is going to be directly addressing this common blindspot, pushing the boundaries of personal and public.
Assuming every project has a goal, and most project coordinators have their own particular idea of successfully achieving that goal, I asked our designer what success would look like to him regarding this project. He said he would consider the show a success when “a visitor looks at it and thinks about his or her stuff more than the stuff before them. The objects are less important than the relationship between a person’s story and the object.”
We talked about how the project has evolved, and how constraints have led to a new way of doing business. Mr. Goldblatt compared this museum to past projects, “Whats so different is how gorilla warfare like it is. Our time budget is way worse than our financial!” The rapidity of the project’s unfolding has fostered a frenzied environment of creation. He warns “Its going to be cool, but its a little bit of a risk.” Having not seen the objects puts this museum designer in new territory. He won’t be able to do the final graphics until the very last moment. “I love that, its a little scary, its a little higher risk than I’m used to working. It’s a prototype. Vicki has been saying that all along- what we have been working with as a prototype strategy works with the notion of democratizing the idea of a museum.”
- Morgan Berman
