I would say that I am a person who doesn’t collect things traditionally. I
would admit that I own individual items such as books, DVDs, mugs and video
games. I have a reasonable amount of them, but I don’t group them together to
call them a collection. Because I believe that’s too much of a hollow
statement, you could call any group of items a collection.
For an example of a collection I chose to bring in a book, as one could
perceive it to be a part of my ‘collection’ of books. In class, labels were
given to different types of collections, these were as follows:
National – things that representative of a nation.
Domestic – things that are more clearly defined or things that can be found in
a home.
Belonging – things that are representative of a shared identity.
Conceptual – things that are part of a bigger conceptual idea.
The book I had brought in was a 2009 RSC version of William Shakespeare’s
Macbeth. Personally I believe this is a good example of an object that can
easily fit into any of these labels:
National – it is part of English literary history.
Domestic – It is part of my collection of books.
Belonging – could be representative as part of a collection for a person who
claims they belong to a theatrical identity.
Conceptual – It is part of William Shakespeare’s collection of works.
It strikes me that these labels are too flexible and are ultimately pointless.
If we are going to look at the notion of “what a collection is?” there is no
answer because a collection is anything you define it to be, depending of
course on your own personal perception.
This lesson was also our first chance to experience and interpret the museum.
Personally what struck me the most was not any of the artefacts in the
collection, but the space itself. Walking around and experiencing the museum
got me thinking of the purpose and framework of a museum. What stood out the
most was the sounds that followed me around the museum, particularly the (what
seemed to be) extremely loud footsteps and creaks of the passers-by. Obviously
this is to be expected of a museum. Yet I thought; whereas you would consider a
museum, perhaps like a library, to be strictly quiet, these noises seemed
contradicting that purpose. It made me wonder if this is a problem for
spectators or if it is expected as part of ‘a museums’ framework.
