What It Says On The Tin

Most of the time, re-boxing items and organizing shelves is deeply satisfying. But sometimes I am a little sad to say goodbye to ridiculousness of the old boxes. As annoying as it can be, you sort of have to laugh when you discover aging boxes helpfully labeled "miscellaneous feathers and fur bits" or "stuff from green table, moved 4/22/72."

This week I said goodbye to a personal favorite.

There is a section of accessories that is sort of a big mess, but which a few volunteers are helping to inventory. It includes a mix of archival boxes and boxes that were made long before anyone had an inkling that "archival" was a thing. On one of those shelves was this box:

Ok, sure, I thought to myself the first time I spotted it. Could be a muff with some pheasant feathers. Could also be something completely different and it is an old label. Let's find out...

WHOA...

THAT BOX DELIVERED ON ITS PROMISES. It is basically just AN ENTIRE PHEASANT that you can put your hands inside.

It is SICKENING, both in the traditional use of the word, and the drag queen use.

So now it has a better box and a label with its picture on the outside. Which is better for it, but there was something about the old box and the WHOA THE BOX DIDN'T LIE surprise that every time had me like:

Angry Dispatches From The Prada-Free Zone

This week I found myself enraged by an article published over a decade ago.  On Monday I met with the director of my museum to talk about the possibility of doing a major fashion exhibition in the future. He liked my idea but also encouraged me to think critically and ponder some tough questions before preparing a more official proposal. 

One of the issues he brought up was the fact that some of the themes of my proposed exhibition were similar to a 2001 show MOHAI did called Who? What? Wear!. I had heard about it, but what I didn't know was that it had gotten a snarkily scathing review in the New York Times.  He encouraged me to read the review and acquaint myself with what I would be up against. 

The piece in question was written by Alex Witchel and titled "Seattle Style: A Contradiction In Terms?" Let me walk you through it. 

It starts like this: 

The first name this town ever had was given to it by settlers in 1851: ''New York Alki,'' which translated from Chinook jargon means ''New York . . . Someday!''

One hundred and fifty years later, the question remains: But when?

Wow. Awesome. She starts out by making it sound like Seattle has desperately, pathetically, always wished it was New York. I have usually heard the translation as "New York by and by," which to me has a cooler "just wait this city is going to be awesome" connotation than "Someday!" which sounds like it is being sung by a starry-eyed cowboy in a musical. 

The next line goes right for the jugular.

The delay was painfully evident at the Museum of History and Industry's current exhibition, ''Who? What? Wear!'' 

Can we just pause here for a moment and bring up the fact that in 2001 MOHAI had way fewer resources that it does now? It was a small museum with a small budget in an aging venue. You are really going to judge the progress of an entire city based on one one exhibit in an underfunded museum?  

At a time when fashion has been invading museums and the Jacqueline Kennedy exhibition is packing them in at the Met in New York, the home of Eddie Bauer finds itself wrestling with the sticky questions, ''What is Seattle Style?'' and, perhaps more to the point, ''Is there a Seattle Style?''

Oh, here we go. MOHAI a fair comparison to the Met and Eddie Bauer as the one and only point of reference for clothing in Seattle. I'm shocked that grunge didn't get mixed in there too. 

For a while she diverts to explain that her only knowledge of the city comes from a 1960s TV show and that for assistance she recruited Stranger editor Dan Savage as a companion for the tour. 

Mr. Savage qualified as a tour guide in this Prada-free zone was that he freely admits to being clueless about clothes.

PERFECT. 

Seattle style, which seems to have two claims to fame: Eddie Bauer, with his insulated down jackets and outerwear, and Kurt Cobain, with his secondhand flannel shirts and ripped jeans, which inspired the grunge craze.

After making fun of the fact that there was no one else in the museum, Savage starts spouting some pretty brutal Seattle shade:

"Seattle thinks it's Paris but it's really Dubuque...Seattle has that Podunk thing going on -- the people running it haven't ever been anywhere else. Anybody who's been to the Art Institute of Chicago or the Met in New York, to say nothing of Europe, would walk into the Seattle Art Museum and have to take a fistful of Xanax."

Yep. Seattle museums are smaller and less lavish because we are all homebound hicks who down't know any better. 

At that moment, Leonard Garfield, the museum's executive director, appeared, clearly unnerved at the prospect of having the town malcontent aim his ire at the rain poncho and stirrup pants from the Century 21 fashion show at the 1962 World's Fair, which was to have introduced Seattle Style to the world.

Ok, fact check. The fashion show at the the World's Fair was sponsored by Vogue and starred ready-to-wear clothing from all over the country. Any snark about those clothes should be directed toward the American clothing industry, not Seattle. 

Then, some more bitchery from Savage:

"It's like the Victoria and Albert concept applied to a place where people have only been wearing clothes for 150 years,'' Mr. Savage observed. ''Until the 50's, all of Seattle was Times Square, filled with whorehouses, and now they're trying to stamp that out..."

LOL NOTHING TO SEE HERE BUT US PROSTITUTES

...After surveying different displays of Earth shoes, a christening gown and an evening gown on a mannequin wearing a paper hat fastened with a brooch, Mr. Savage threw up his hands. ''I lived in Europe for four years,'' he said. ''You see the Vatican Museum, and even the Egyptians at the Met in New York bores you after you've seen what the Pope got first. So displays like these, applied to Grandpa's closet, are just weird.''

Ugh, tell me about it. Any museum less dazzling than the V&A, the Vatican, or the Met should just shrivel up and die already. 

After Savage explains that Seattle is transitioning into becoming a big city, Witchel concludes the review this way:

It still has a way to go. At the front desk, I asked a receptionist if the museum had a restaurant where we might sit down and keep talking.

She smiled brightly. ''No, we just have junk food in vending machines,'' she said.

Ah. Maybe someday.

Ugh. Condescending crap like this is what gives New Yorkers a bad name. 

Now, I understand that I am a "Let's give everyone a medal just for participating!" sort of person, and that sometimes reviews are about handing out harsh truths. Seattle is not New York. True. Who? What? Wear! was probably not the most polished of exhibits, and whatever I create won't be on par the Met or the Museum at FIT either. True. 

But looking at one exhibition to prove a point about style in Seattle? Measuring all museums against the top institutions in the world, and assuming all shortcomings are proof that the local idiots must not know any better? Picking someone who doesn't care about clothes as the ideal informant about fashion in Seattle? Doing no research and relying on old cliches about Eddie Bauer and grunge? 

This is me applauding your amazing, insightful review

Oh, and BTW we aren't a Prada-free zone and weren't in 2001 either. You could buy Prada at Barney's in Seattle in the 1990s and Nordstrom sells it now too. Also, be careful what you say. The Schiaparelli and Prada exhibition at the Met was possible thanks to funding from Seattle online retailer Amazon.com. 

It made me all the more excited to try to prove this kind of thinking wrong. Seattle is different from New York yes, but its style is interesting, complicated, innovative, and sometimes devastatingly glamorous. You'll see. I'll have my revenge...Alki. 

The New Normal

Now that I'm done with my posts about Grand Opening and New Orleans (GONO for short), I guess I have to catch you all up on all that has happened since then.

Right now at MOHAI, the most common phrase in conversations and all-staff emails is "the new normal," as in "we are still figuring out the new normal," and "I hope this isn't part of the new normal," and "me eating cake for lunch is the new normal." Basically, grand opening was such a massive success that we are drowning in public interest. Attendance is crazy, phones are ringing off the hook, and emails are pouring in. People want to book school groups, plan tours, rent event spaces, buy memberships, and donate artifacts, and our staff is struggling to keep up.  We know that opening created a peak in interest which will die down eventually, but we have no way of knowing when and by how much. Is this a passing phase, or is it the new normal?

Because of this wave of excitement, MOHAI made a second appearance on everyone's favorite local daytime talk show, New Day Northwest. For me it meant getting to the museum by 6:30 am to oversee the process of de-installing and packing the artifacts, unpacking at the studio and arranging the artifacts on a table, and then standing like a bouncer and slapping away hands that wanted to touch. Someone tried to set down three cups of water for "just a sec" next to the c. 1900 Nordstrom baby booties and I think my forceful "NO!" freaked her out a little. While I have a fondness for the booties, as far as everyone else was concerned the big deal artifact we brought this time was the basketball championship trophy won by the Sonics in 1979.

Yes, first put on your gloves

Now you may touch

Ok, I'll admit, it is pretty cool. My supervisors wanted only MOHAI people to handle and move it, so I got to carry it out to the table for the taping. I couldn't help but think to myself "There are lots of NBA players who have never held one of these, yet here I am, holding this...and all it took was a degree in fashion." 

The New Day Northwest clips were a pain to imbed last time, so if you want to see the whole thing, here is the link: http://www.king5.com/new-day-northwest/MOHAI-186973551.html

Trophy-holding aside, the new normal for me is mostly going to involve another major move project. The entire costume and textile collection has to be moved out of its old storage facility and into a new one. It is exciting, because I can't wait to start going through all the cool stuff we have, but totally overwhelming because there is just so much stuff. Some of it is organized, but there are lots of weird things stuck into strange places and vestiges of projects long past. The whole place is like a monument to the old normal. I found a box of random items with a note that said "these were on the front table when I started so I moved them here" and then some initials and a date from 1996. I also found a dress balled up in a clear garbage bag with a post-it note on the outside that read "Bugs! also stains." 

Among some mannequin props I found an entire shelf of things that looked like this:

If you can't tell what you are looking at (and why would you?) it is two different shapes of wood forms with custom pads that fit over. The one on the left has a round pad that has a drawstring on the top and bottom, and the one on the right has a pad (behind it) that looks like a tea cozy. 

On the way back from New Orleans I lost my phone and then got talked into making the leap to smartphoneville. I still wasn't sure it was the right choice until I encountered these things. I was able to take a photo, email it to the former manager of the costume collection, and receive a response about what the heck I was looking at, all on one device. The answer? The one on the left is hips and on the right is shoulders, and they were stuck on wood poles to create makeshift mannequins. Ingenious yet depressing! 

Yes, it is a brave new future at MOHAI, and I decided that mine is not going to include padded pole mannequins. 

Fond Farewells to the Elevator Machinery Room

When I talk to Seattle people about my job, one of the first things I get asked is, "Oh! Have you guys moved yet?"

What they mean is "has MOHAI moved to its new location and opened to the public?" but what I hear is "please tell me lots of details about the MOHAI move process" (I'm the worst).

The fact is, there is no one move. Soon after I started, we moved artifacts out of an old storage location and into a new one.  This summer, staff started moving to our new Georgetown facility. The first wave of artifacts soon followed, and are still arriving in batches. Of course artifacts have also been moving to our new building in South Lake Union, and the rest of the staff will move there in about a month.  And yesterday, I moved.

At "old" MOHAI in Montlake, I had my own little office, complete with dim lighting and loud elevator noises. Here is how it looked just before the movers arrived:

And here is my new space:

First off: LIGHT. I brought my whole arsenal of lamps with me from my old office and now they are just lined up helplessly in the corner. Second: WINDOWS. Yeah, ok they aren't to the outside, but no collections person expects that. I have a great view of the hallway and collections storage, and that is a heck of a lot more cheerful than a cinder-block wall. Third: HUMAN INTERACTION. There aren't people visible in the photo, but there are lots around. The rest of my department moved to the new space months ago, and I've been spending a lot of quiet days alone in my old office. I'm looking forward to feeling more connected and not worrying that if I fall asleep at my desk I might get forgotten and locked inside the building. Here, if I fall asleep at my desk, everyone will see and make fun of me (the windows help with that). 

Four: NO MORE ELEVATOR NOISES

Woman Discovered Unconscious On Top of Museum Artifact, Artifact Unharmed

One of the main reasons my museum is moving is that a freeway extension is about to built right on top of us. The upside is that right before we vacate we can do things like roller skate through the building and write on the walls, but the downside is that nothing is getting fixed any more and the place is sort of going to seed.

A couple months ago a visitor stole the faucet handles in one of the bathrooms. Only one handle was replaced since there is only cold water in the building anyway. When the movers needed to have better access to a large cabinet, they just cut a giant hole in the wall. Things like that. Now the creepiness level has been raised because the museum is closed to the public and some of the staff have moved to the new off-site building. So large areas of the museum are dark and I'm often the only one down in my department.

Last week I was alone in collections, vacuuming an artifact. There was a strange smell in the area which hadn't been there before. I kept trying to ignore it and tell myself it was nothing, but it was really bothering me. It also smelled vaguely like gas. So it was that awkward moment where you don't want to be that person who has a "delicate" nose and complains about stupid things, but you also don't want to be that person who dies in a back corner of the museum and isn't found for three days.

Our regular facilities guy is rarely in the building because he is busy with our two other buildings (you know, the ones that aren't going to be demolished in six months), so I sought out our exhibits head who is knowledgeable about the building as well. The boiler room is right next to the conservation lab (awesome!) so at first he was unconcerned and thought it was just a regular smell emanating from our ancient heating system.  Just to be safe he decided to take a look around, and I went back to what I was doing. It seemed like he had been in there a long time, and I started to wonder how long I should wait before assembling a rescue mission. But right as I was imagining dragging him to safety before the fumes overwhelmed me, he came out wiping something smelly off his hands.

"Well, it was probably good you said something."

Turns out there was a small leak and something gross was dripping. The facilities guy clearly knew about it because he had put a bucket out, but the bucket had just now overflowed. So the full bucket was moved out of the way and replaced with an empty one.