Just as the National Museum of American History saves objects to tell the nation’s stories, individuals save objects to tell their own personal stories. Souvenirs, heirlooms, mementos—these objects have many names, each suggesting a different kind of memory. By tying one to the past—one’s own past, that of one’s family or community—they help remind people of who they are. One of the most touching scenes in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath depicts the Joads deciding what to take with them when circumstances force them to abandon their home and possessions and leave Oklahoma for California. Every one of the “doomed things” seems precious: some they received as gifts; some belonged to family members; some they used. All are reminders of their lives. “How will we know it’s us without our past?” they lament.39
Why objects relating to important events in the nation’s history belong in a national museum is clear, but why the Smithsonian should collect individuals’ personal treasures is less clear. Remember the warning of Ellis Burcaw, the museum expert: no personal memorabilia.40 But by collecting this kind of relic, the museum can preserve and present the stories of individual Americans. National relics, properly analyzed, lead to political history. Personal relics lead to the nation’s social and cultural history. Understanding what objects have been important to people and why can provide insight into not just how people lived but how they thought about their lives, what they thought was worth saving.
In 1977 and 1978 the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton undertook an extensive survey of people’s attitudes toward the objects in their home and discovered just how important things are to people. “Men and women make order in their selves (i.e., ‘retrieve their identity’) by first creating and then interacting with the material world,” they wrote. “The nature of that transaction will determine to a great extent the kind of person that emerges. Thus the things that surround us are inseparable from who we are.”41
And people surround themselves with a vast range of things. Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton devised a complex nomenclature for artifacts that connect people to the past, a nomenclature that suggests the range of uses of personal treasures. Mementos are general reminders of the past. Souvenirs represent the memory of a place. Recollections are memories of a specific occasion. Heirlooms are something handed down in the family. Another category—“had it for a long time”—suggests that the object has gained its importance simply by possession. Objects with familiar, ethnic, or religious associations constitute another category, as do collections and gifts.
All of these terms suggest that personal treasures, like relics, are artifacts that have stories—memories—tied to them. When separated from their owners and stripped of their story, they are mute and meaningless things. But with the stories intact they are reminders of one’s lives and loved ones. “The souvenir and the collection,” writes Susan Stewart, a philosopher of artifacts, “are objects generated by means of narrative.”42 As with relics, the story is an essential element. The Smithsonian has long preserved the stories of objects owned by famous individuals, but in the case of “everyday” things that belonged to “ordinary” people, it took curators many years to realize the value of preserving the narrative along with the object.
Gold nugget watch and fob, 1886. A. W. Callen of Junction City, Kansas, had this watch and fob encrusted with nuggets from his Colorado gold mine. In 1886 he presented them to his children as birthday gifts. His daughter received the watch, set with four rubies and a diamond; his son received the fob, inscribed “with Love from his Father ‘Old Grizzly.’ ” The pieces were handed down in the family to Robert Callen King, who bequeathed them to the Smithsonian in 1963. (photo credit 8.1)
Girl’s blue jeans, 1970. In 1973 Brigid McMenamin wrote the Smithsonian: “This may be an unusual request.… My favorite jeans will be three years old this spring … they’re so thin, my mother wants to throw them away … is it possible that you may be able to use them in a display?” She had worn the jeans everywhere and had even fought with school authorities for the right to wear them to school. “These jeans aren’t art, but they’re a sample of costume in America … best of all, they’re authentic.” (photo credit 8.2)
Almost anything can preserve a memory—a seashell, a pressed flower, a piece of wedding cake, a lock of hair, a child’s artwork. In capturing certain periods in people’s lives, rites of passage, and key moments, mementos remind people of who they used to be. They are also reminders of others dear to them. A young girl wrote in the 1840s: “How many passages of my life seem to be epitomized in this patchwork quilt … that bright copperplate cushion which graced my mother’s easy chair … old brocade-looking calico, presented by a venerable friend … a fragment of the first dress which baby brother wore when he left off long clothes.”43
Mementos, which are by their nature intensely personal, take on new meanings in the museum as clues to understanding American culture. They document various expressions of identity and ways of remembering the past. In the museum objects once used to preserve personal memories—a biker’s denim vest, a teenager’s patched jeans, a soldier’s scrapbook—become touchstones for national memory. They serve as reminders of a bygone era, of the people Americans used to be.
Hell’s Angels jacket, 1960s. This denim jacket was worn by a member of the notorious Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang, which mingled and occasionally clashed with the hippie counterculture of San Francisco during the 1960s. In 1989 this jacket arrived at the Smithsonian with a letter: “The enclosed … is an authentic jacket owned by Hairy Henry or Hank as he was more commonly called. Each patch bearing a man’s name was worn in memoriam for his lost brothers. Hank has since passed away and I felt you were the appropriate entity to receive this jacket.… I hope you share my belief and give this a place.” (photo credit 8.3)
Some mementos are easier to understand than others. The souvenir calls to mind a specific place or event, a memory of times past. It is a badge of honor, a proof of a journey. Souvenirs are the material culture of nostalgia, authentic experience preserved in an artifact. They bring the past and present together, magically combining the two. The function of a souvenir, Stewart writes, is to “envelop the present within the past.” This is what gives the souvenir its magic. But it is, of necessity, a “failed magic,” for the souvenir cannot bring back the past; it can only generate a desire for it.44
Souvenir pennants, 1940s–60s. Popular items from the 1940s through the 1960s, pennants have since given way to T-shirts and other mass-produced collectibles at souvenir stands. For some tourists, adding such a souvenir to their collection can be more pleasurable than the trip itself. These pennants were collected by an American family during their travels and donated to the Smithsonian in 1977. (photo credit 8.4)
To bring back a souvenir to remember a trip by, to try to pack an authentic piece of the place into one’s suitcases, is a natural human impulse. A whole genre of objects has evolved to satisfy tourists’ craving for souvenirs. “Tourist art” or “airport art,” as these artifacts are called, has long been derided as inauthentic. Recently, however, tourist art has aroused interest among anthropologists, for it raises profound questions about the nature of authenticity. What was once intended as a precious commodity for an elite in one culture becomes a symbol of a different sort of elitism—the ability to travel—in another culture. The identity of the producer becomes part of the status of the consumer.45
Souvenirs of travel are well represented in museum collections, where earlier they often served to represent foreign places, not always accurately. Sometimes these objects say more about the tourists themselves than about the places visited. Indeed, many old Smithsonian collections of the “exotic” are, in fact, collections of tourist art.
In the years 1910–19, for example, the Smithsonian became a storeroom of sorts for the textiles, manuscripts, stained glass, and ceramics purchased by Alice Pike Barney, a Washington, D.C., artist and socialite, on her trips abroad. (She lent them to the Smithsonian and then asked for them back when she wanted to redecorate her house.) These artifacts—“a collection of miscellaneous antique art objects and antiquarian furnishings,” as the curator tactfully described them—were initially considered authentic art. But further analysis revealed that many were fake or at least much less ancient than Barney supposed. With the passage of time, however, these objects have become interesting again, as examples of what rich Americans thought appropriate to collect.46
Mass-produced souvenirs of travel, which date back to the beginning of tourism, serve not so much as a way to collect culture as a way to remember the experience of the trip. In the United States the souvenir industry developed rapidly during the nineteenth century, as visitors flocking to sites such as Niagara Falls, Yosemite, and Mammoth Cave sought ways to take the spectacular views home with them. By the 1890s souvenir stands teemed with china plates, silver spoons, beaded whimsies, stereographs, postcards, and other aides memoire. The variety of souvenirs continued to expand during the twentieth century. In the 1950s, for example, no self-respecting tourist would neglect to buy a souvenir pennant to show off his or her travels.
World War II GI’s photograph album, 1944. In 1979 the Smithsonian acquired this album, an American soldier’s souvenir of his time in Europe during World War II. Since the Civil War, Americans’ experience of war has been captured, brought home, and remembered through photographs. The Smithsonian has many war photographs in its collections, mostly the work of professional media or government photographers. Yet the museum has also collected amateur photographs taken by the soldiers themselves. These personal snapshots, pasted into scrapbooks or packed away with other battle souvenirs, reveal aspects of war not seen in official images. (photo credit 8.5)
The remarkable thing is that even the humblest souvenir—a mass-produced pennant, a stone picked up from the shore, a ticket stub—can hold potent memories. Susan M. Pearce describes the mnemonic power of souvenirs in bittersweet terms, as “samples of events which can be remembered, but not relived … they are lost youth, lost friends, lost past happiness; they are the tears of things.”47
Perhaps for this reason the National Museum of American History contains many souvenirs of war and military service. Men and women who served their country as youths hold onto reminders of their career. The military history collections include Bibles, scrapbooks, carved bullets and shells, and clothing, memorializing every aspect of wartime experience.
Sword surrendered by Japanese officer, 1945. On August 22, 1945, on Aka Island, near Okinawa, Japan, Colonel Julian G. Hearne Jr., commanding officer of the Twenty-fourth Infantry Regiment, accepted the surrender of Japanese troops under the command of Major Yoshihiko Noda, the first formal surrender of a Japanese army garrison in Japanese-held territory at the end of World War II. Major Noda turned his sword over to Colonel Hearne (below), and the other Japanese officers turned their swords over to other members of the U.S. regiment. In 1981 Colonel Hearne gave the sword to the Smithsonian, writing that “the sword really belongs to the American people.” (photo credit 8.7)
Collections are another kind of personal treasure, not necessarily a reminder of an individual or family past but a form of self-expression. There are many theories about why people collect, from the psychoanalytic—“All collectors are anal-erotics, and the objects collected are nearly always typical copro-symbols,” offered by E. Jones in 1912—to the capitalistic—“A man’s Self is the sum-total of all that he can call his,” offered by William James in 1892.48 These may or may not be good explanations, but they certainly are not complete explanations. The act of collecting represents much more than a stage of psychological development or the measurement of self-worth.
Marjorie Akin, in an article appropriately titled “Passionate Possession” (1996), outlines a variety of reasons that drive people to collect.49 For some it is a sense of personal aesthetics; they enjoy looking at the things they save, arranging them in a pleasing fashion, and contemplating them. For others it is a sense of control, order, or completion. This is often the case with children’s collections. As William Ackerman, executive director of the Children’s Museum of Manhattan explains, “Developmentally, kids generally start collecting at around age five or six. They do it, for one reason, because a collection is a world that they can control.… A collection is theirs, they created it. They decide if it is good. It is an expression of who they are.”50
Button collection, about 1935. The inscription above this collection—“Who’s got the [button?] Betty Jane has the [buttons!]”—reflects a young collector’s pride. But for Betty Jane Meggers, collecting was more than just a hobby; it was a part of family life. Between 1914 and 1970 William and Edith Meggers collected numerous toys, gadgets, souvenirs, utensils, and other artifacts, all of which they preserved in their Washington, D.C., home. (According to Betty Jane, her father “never threw anything away.”) In 1974 the “Meggers Museum,” including Betty Jane’s buttons, was bequeathed to the Smithsonian. (photo credit 8.8)
Other collectors are driven by a desire for a connection with the past. Sometimes this is a personal or family past; sometimes it is an ancestral past, real or imagined; sometimes it is just the past of history books. Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, whose Presence of the Past (1998) analyzes a survey of the ways that Americans connect with history, found that a collection was a common way to forge links to the past; thirty-nine percent of Americans had hobbies or collections related to the past.51
Some collectors have a straightforward motive for collecting: making money. Related in a complex way to this impulse is another kind of profit: increases in symbolic capital or status. This is the kind of collecting that Thorstein Veblen described so well in his 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class, particularly the chapter on conspicuous consumption: “Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods,” he remarks, “is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.”52
And finally there is collecting for the thrill of the chase. Collecting is fun, and finding the right object that fills the hole in the collection provides a sense of accomplishment.
Radiator emblems, 1910–40. By scavenging junkyards and trading with other collectors, Hubert G. Larson collected 278 radiator emblems from classic automobiles. When he donated his collection to the Smithsonian in 1964, Larson wrote: “I have shown about 100 of these at various hobby shows and have found that people seem very interested in recalling cars of earlier days.” (photo credit 8.9)
Personal aesthetics, profit, fun—all are good reasons for individuals to collect. But not for museums. Although curators are often delighted to acquire private collections, museums and individual collectors collect for very different reasons. History museums collect to preserve, understand, and interpret the past.
Sometimes, because different ends can yield the same results, museum collections look identical to personal collections. Curators of the history of technology, for example, often attempt to create a systematic collection, to have one of every kind of object in a series. For individual collectors, systematic collecting usually serves to satisfy personal desires and interests. But for the museum, such systematic collections help illustrate the evolution of a particular kind of technology.
Sometimes museum collections look completely different from personal collections. The boxes of shards or bits of twisted metal that make up archaeology collections, the archival collections packed with manuscript pages and clippings that only a graduate student could love—only a few dedicated collectors would find these articles worth their space. The stories these collections tell are less popular and in some ways more difficult to tease out. But they are important stories nonetheless, and these collections can be treasures too—research treasures.
Some mementos and souvenirs become heirlooms. Heirlooms suggest a different kind of nostalgia, not for a personal past but for a family history. Objects inherited from ancestors bring with them a patina that suggests not only the artifact’s age but also the family’s distinguished lineage and ancestry.53 John Cheever’s short story “The Lowboy” describes an inherited antique lowboy “as a kind of family crest, something that would vouch for the richness of his past and authenticate his descent from the most aristocratic of the seventeenth-century settlers.”54
Seed pearl jewelry, 1836. On her eighteenth birthday, in 1836, Mary Lucile Stevens received this set of seed pearl jewelry from her mother. The pearls were passed down through the generations, ceremoniously presented to daughters of the family on their eighteenth birthdays. In 1984 the sons of the last woman to inherit the pearls donated them to the Smithsonian. (photo credit 8.10)
But personal treasures are, by definition, personal. The meaning does not always move with it. And without a meaningful story they are only things. For them to make sense in the museum, curators must collect not only the artifact but also the story.