Things that Matter: Community Collecting and the Material Culture of the Everyday by Ellen M. Snyder-Grenier In recent years, as many history museums have tried to transform themselves into more inclusive institutions with greater ties to the communities around them, community collecting has drawn increased attention. This paper will examine the significance of contemporary community collecting for museums and the rich interpretive potential in the objects and stories that emerge from such initiatives. It will explore the benefits of undertaking such projects, today--before objects' personal meaning is lost and must be re-constructed, if at all, by future students of history and material culture. And it will look at the tremendous meaning in what is often considered commonplace and everyday. The presentation will draw upon three distinct community-collecting projects. The first was organized around a specific cultural community (actually, a series of communities): the Latino communities of Brooklyn. Sponsored by The Brooklyn Historical Society in New York, this project created new ties with a longstanding community. It also explored the importance of the everyday. Instead of highlighting, for example, the high art of residents' homelands, the project focused on collecting more commonplace objects. These included such items as earthenware pots from Mexico and diminutive Salvadoran souvenir cards-inexpensive, widely available, and everyday in the sense that many people have them, but bearing almost sacred qualities for new immigrants who carried them thousands of miles to a new home. The second community is defined by age and geography: New Jersey teenagers in the postwar years. In this project at The New Jersey Historical Society, discussions of representation, memory, and nostalgia emerged out of interviews with former teenagers who brought forth and talked about the material culture of their teen years: letter sweaters, electric guitars, prom dresses, and more. Given that most of the items were mass-produced, it became clear that personal reminiscence was the only way to discern the real significance that these objects held for their owners. This meaning sometimes broke with Madison Avenue's intent, and revealed telling issues involving gender, cultural background, and more. The third community this paper will explore is one defined by the workplace-in this case, a mammoth postwar superhighway and the most heavily traveled toll road in the nation: the New Jersey Turnpike. In the New Jersey Historical Society's "What Exit? The New Jersey Turnpike Project," workers for the Turnpike Authority were solicited for objects and oral histories. The results helped shed light on the ways material culture was used by subgroups within this particular community as a way to humanize a sometimes impersonal environment. Objects collected include "Spuds," the stuffed dog a toll collector dressed up and displayed in his booth in an effort to customize his space--ultimately creating an informal community of commuters around his booth. Ultimately, this presentation will use these projects and others to explore contemporary community collecting and how the products-the stuff of everyday life-can help museums to build collections, reach out to new audiences, provoke dialogue, present multiple voices and perspectives, and collect meaning before meaning is lost. Back to conference agenda