I recently came across the Museum of Jurassic Technology (http://www.mjt.org/). I loved reading about the surreal exhibits and a jaunt through the gift shop recommended reading will leave you laughing. Being a modern kind of girl, I was drawn to the exhibit of modern materials, called “Rotten Luck: The Decaying Dice of Ricky Jay” which is about his collection of dice made of modern materials like Celluloid and Cellulose Nitrate which is falling apart and there is really very little that can be done about it.
It reminded me of the recent Slate article about plastics degradation. The article was so popular that I received a few e-mails from friends outside of the conservation field asking me what I thought of it. Plastics are problematic because at a certain point I don’t think you can really bring them back. You can see in the slideshow of images of Ricky Jay’s dice that once detrioration goes so far, there really is nothing left to consolidate. Ricky Jay and the Museum of Jurassic Technology are resigned to let the dice deteriorate while on public view. This decision sounds a call to art conservators, scientists, and artists-we must decide how to deal with the deterioration of plastics in museum collections.
Daniel Cull | 02-Aug-09 at 10:35 pm | Permalink
Thanks for bringing this museum to my attention, I think it’s wonderful.
I also think this is a really interesting exhibit not solely for the plastics question, although that looks set to become a bigger and bigger issue over the next few years. I wonder what interesting research projects will be happening over the next few years?
But also the simple idea of exhibiting decay… wow… for a museum to do that is amazing, and so far from the norm of ‘conservation’ and ‘longevity’…. its almost too much for conservation to fathom. But decay is part of life. So on the grander scale to exhibit without this aspects of life I wonder are we missing out on an important part of culture? I like the way that the MJT are not only resigned to let it happen, they have in a way made it a major factor of the whole exhibit, and it really makes you reconsider so much about exhibits… great stuff.
Cheers, Dan.
Rose | 31-Aug-09 at 11:59 am | Permalink
Here is another article about conservators at the NMAI working on plastics created by a contemporary artist.
http://blog.nmai.si.edu/main/2009/08/one-word.html
I love the quote from ‘The Graduate’ now I wish I had thought of that first.