Visible Storage Zines

Archival and Ephemeral Zines

Thanks to The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, I always wanted to visit The Met Museum. When I finally made it, forget cannonized masterpieces of culture, I fell in love with the Luce Center and Visible Storage.

Visible Storage is row after row of objects in glass cases that the museum owns but that individually, are not quite important enough to be on official display. There was extra serendipity when I discovered that Visible Storage was a museum movement begun at the UBC Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, BC, a city I lived in for many years:

“The Museum building, as it was designed in the early 1970s, was not envisioned to have non-public rooms dedicated to object storage, as the collections were meant to be entirely housed in the newly conceived visible storage gallery. 

The premise was that a visible storage system would showcase 100% of the museum’s collections. Thus, researchers and community members could have visual access to material without having to go through museum administration. 

Over time, the collections grew, and a few rooms in the non-public area of the Museum needed to be converted to object storage. In addition, the cases and drawer units in visible storage eventually filled up. Oversize objects were stored on top of cases, and objects were squeezed onto shelves, and stacked 

inside each other, until the available shelf space was full. Storage cupboards were added in the behind-the-scenes areas of the museum to hold further growth of the collections. Even with these conversions, the Museum’s cupboards and cases were crowded. By the end of the 1980s, acquisitions were restricted due to lack of space.

Honarbakhsh et al. AIC Objects Specialty Group Postprints, Vol. 18, 2011

My basement office is crammed with vintage craft books, filmstrips, buttons, other people’s family photos, office signs, rubber stamps, sewing patterns, stencils, instruction booklets, a 1956 yearbook, vintage candy packaging, dollhouse plans… I drag these scraps home to be stowed in my office, to think about, hold, read, research, wonder about, and then put back on the shelf. These scraps of history have always seemed to me to hold a key to understanding that no textbook can touch. 

So the concept of Visible Storage sounds a lot like my office, even the restricted acquisitions, consolidating all my thoughts and feelings about what I’m interested in, how to talk about and display these objects - and how not have them be just MY objects anymore. 

As Carrie Barratt, the Luce Center’s General Manager, explained in 2001:

The Met's Luce Center remains a study center in its rawest form: paintings are labeled, but the tankards and flatware are listed by number only. ''It is rarely the general visitor's destination,''

“But people do stumble in and enjoy it.''

Even at their starkest, glass cases stuffed with objects can be intriguing, inviting people to think about museums and how they go about making their choices. ''What visible storage does is put things out there and lets the visitor shake it out,'' Ms. Barratt said. ''Now suddenly you aren't quite so sure why this is on a pedestal and this isn't. It may be baffling, but it causes people to think.''

NY Times “Museums as Walk-In Closets”, Celestine Bohlen May 8, 2001

I hope Visible Storage makes you think.

I hope you do stumble in and enjoy it.