Unmentionable: The Indiscreet Stories of Artifacts

Description

Explore the difficult, unusual, and uncomfortable artifacts in your museum’s collection with Unmentionable’s framework and graphics.

In a museum setting, once ‘unmentionable’ topics are connected to physical objects that illustrate a moment in time, or a social movement, or a person, or a place. While many subjects are no longer shocking per se, seeing the object that represents that story can be uncomfortable to look at. It can also be difficult for a museum to figure out when to display that item and how to tell its story. And that’s what Unmentionable: The Indiscreet Stories of Artifacts is all about: the unusual, icky, scandalous, disturbing, awful, uncomfortable and surprising artifacts in museum collections all in one place.

A few artifacts may not have been displayed because the item represents or illustrates a controversial moment in history. Some artifacts have been displayed before, because they’re cool looking or relate to a certain period, but the story of the artifact itself—what it is, what it was used for, who owned it—wasn’t fully explored because that story was not necessarily a pleasant one. Other items may not seem so scandalous now but were at one time because they are the type of item that was not generally discussed in “polite” society. There are artifacts that are commonplace, things we’ve all seen before, but don’t really think about what the item is for or how it was used.

The exhibition highlights not only the stuff we don’t talk about but gives a peak behind the curtain of museum collections and practices. Just because an artifact could be considered scandalous, outrageous, gross, unseemly, odd, disturbing, controversial or unimportant by some doesn’t mean we shouldn’t collect it. Those artifacts could and will become important to future generations to understand what a place, a people, a person, or eras were like.”

Diane Curry, the originating curator

The exhibition is designed to mimic the concept of the “cabinet of curiosities,” and each artifact is treated as a specimen. Each object receives its own detailed label with the object name, date, catalog number, category, description, curator’s note, and donor. The design can easily be adjusted for any gallery space and exhibit furniture.

Unmentionable: The Indiscreet Stories of Artifacts is modeled on the original exhibition from the Hayward Area Historical Society in Hayward, CA and facilitated by Exhibit Envoy.