The act of archiving

“Is it part of the Field Museum?”

“Is it something from the Collections?”

I had taken Clutch Gallery to the Field Museum where at any given time that I opened it to a viewer, it seemed that more questions arose than what I could answer. 

Any explanation I gave seemed to only add to the confusion of it.

And I began to question it myself. What exactly distinguished the art within Terra/Form from the artifacts that surrounded it? One could say that the artifacts held within the Field Museum are artifacts because they incorporate aspects of cultural heritage. But I could make the same argument for some of the objects in Terra/Form even if they represent a more personal response to our culture.

Or was it  due to the way the objects were collected and the public’s perception of them? Was it how the objects came to be?

 The contextual explanation of Terra/Form and its fruition began to make me think about the act of collecting. Why do we feel compelled to collect objects and archive them in a particular manner? The psychology of collections tends to fall back on the idea that when we experience chaos in the world around us, collecting objects allows us to find an outlet of personal control.1 It provides us with a comfort zone and one that we can refer back to when we need to be reminded of a moment in our lives. In a lot of ways I think Terra/Form can be a reflection of those feelings and needs- the aroma of a family history, the remains of a path that had been taken before.

 The collections housed within the Field Museum, although now they are carefully archived based on the most current scientific requirements, had similarly humble beginning as Terra/Form- a woman or man feeling the need to gather something she or he found along her or his own personal journey and carefully keep only to open it up to future generations.

Jordan Whitney Martin

1. McKinley, Mark B. "The Psychology of Collecting | The National Psychologist." The Psychology of Collecting | The National Psychologist. N.p., n.d.
Web. 05 Dec. 2014.