Advent: A Museum of Things
Most British museums do something for advent these days. Usually they select a choice item from the collection to reveal each day as part of an advent calendar on Twitter. I'm looking forward to seeing the first doors open today. But I also discovered a charming, personal advent idea this weekend in Berlin, at the Museum of Things.
Yes, the Museum of Things. Possibly my most favourite museum ever. Off a busy street in Kreuzberg, East Berlin, up an unprepossessing staircase, is this open storage and archive belonging to the Werkbund. Originally set up in 1907, by a group of artists, industrialists and politicians, the Werkbund had a utopian aim to encourage functional modern design. They cared about aesthetics, materials and production, and wanted education in objects to form part of individual self-expression. Werkbund member Gustav Pazaurek even created the 'Department of Aesthetic Aberrations', which categorised four groups of bad objects: material mistakes, design mistakes, decorative mistakes and kitsch.
The museum partly tells the story of the Werkbund, and the current exhibition Made in Germany: Politics through Things. The German Werkbund in 1914 highlights the project to turn a derogatory British label into a badge of quality. The history of design is made part of a narrative of the First World War. But beyond that, the museum tells the story, and highlights the beauties and dangers of 20th and 21st-century material culture, the story of industrial mass-produced things. What I loved was the 'open storage' displays of the collections, with a central spine of cases telling the story of the Werkbund set against a long wall of cases jam-packed with objects arranged by category.
They are arranged by material, purpose, attribute and history. You have bulk goods and package goods, tools, mechanical things, electrical things and insulators; things for measuring, counting and weighing; things made of enamel, aluminium or early plastics; toys, toasters, DIY things, natural things (which include bird cages and toy farms alongside specimens); body shapes and body things; things from day to day life in West Germany, and East Germany; consumer culture from West Germany, and East Germany; plastics from West Germany, and East Germany; empire things, WW1 things, and WW2 things; objects that imitate or quote others; and the Çokçok Collection: a group of everyday things from Istanbul. It's overwhelming, and beautifully and brilliant.
But what of advent? During our visit, staff at the museum were busy sorting groups of objects on tables and shelves at the side. They were wrapping these in purple and gold paper, and then grouping them in piles with a number up to 31. The museum was creating a sort of community swap advent calendar, where visitors were invited to bring unwanted possessions, which were then wrapped and given to others. So, each participant receives a mystery thing each day during advent.
Who wants chocolate when you could open this sort of surprise everyday? And what a great way to think about the commercialisation and materialisation of Christmas.
