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Photography © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved.

To bide some time in the airport recently, I started to read Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (for which the title of this blog post gets its inspiration). Like a number of de Botton’s works I have read previously, I’m always captivated by his alternative ways of seeing. He looks at the details we typically overlook – in a philosopher meets cultural anthropologist meets the layperson kind of way – whether it is the work that goes into building a pylon, designing a biscuit (yes, you can design a biscuit!) or marketing a tin of tuna. All products of our everyday lives (which we all too easily accept without question), de Botton emotionally re-engages us with the meaning and purpose of work and, by extension, relationships, travel, finances and our psychological wellbeing. Not just a plate of tuna, for example, de Botton takes us back to the work involved in farming, catching, cooking, flavouring and tinning the tuna. We might pay less than $2 for a tin, but there is an extensive history behind that tin that we normally don’t give a second thought to before it reaches our supermarket shelves and consequently, our stomachs.

The more I read de Botton’s approach to the pleasures and sorrows of work, the more I thought about objects and material culture in the context of the museum. So much of what is designed and consumed by us is overlooked – from the work that went into the design of our toaster, our car, our lounge suite, our drinking glass, our heating or cooling system, our portable music devices and our television. For example, when was the last time you answered the phone and pondered how it worked? I’m guessing, only when something went wrong with it. Or, when was the last time you questioned the layout of the QWERTY keyboard? Maybe it was when you kept hitting the wrong key! We similarly undervalue tuna until there is a shortage or a pylon until the roof caves in. Okay, perhaps that’s taking it a little to the extreme, but what I’m really interested in as a museum curator, is how to make the invisible visible or the overlooked looked. How can we better promote curiosity and value with regards to the meaningfulness of everyday things? How can we communicate the very personal relationships we all share with objects and also, indirectly, each other? And, how can we foster these for the long term within the museum context?

I now draw your attention to Donald Norman’s book Emotional Design – why we love (or hate) everyday things. In this, he identifies three main levels in our cognitive and emotional system to which we respond to objects. The first level is our immediate, pre-conscious response which is normally triggered by the appearance, touch and feel of an object (he calls this visceral design). The second level is our experience with that object – its use, function and performance (behavioural design) and the third is our reflective, processing abilities. It is here that we use our reasoning and judgement to either form or break a relationship with an object for the long term (reflective design). The more I think about these, the more I question their relevance to museum objects – many of which were once, or still are ‘everyday’ objects. I mean, in a museum context, the sensory elements of touch and feel, use, function and performance are removed once that object is placed inside a showcase. I guess what we rely on then is appearance, memory or a vicarious experience (like watching AV footage) to activate our cognitive and emotional systems – but is this enough?

In this first post of a series of ongoing ones I intend to publish around museum objects and emotion, I’d like to try a little experiment. I’m calling upon all our readers here to share with us the most moving object they’ve seen in a museum. What was so powerful about the object and how did it help to shape your overall museum experience?