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Anna Ghublikian Cultural Heritage, Curation and Creativity Object 1: a silver (pewter?

) teddy bear ornament [Provided by: Ria Fulton] Object 2: a postcard featuring an image of Providence Waterplace Park I chose object 1 in a class exercise. Upon initial inspection, I noticed a hole attached to the bears head which indicatedto methat it was most likely meant to be attached to a string and used as an ornament of sorts. The inscribed detailing seemed to be done by machine by inspecting the other side, I noticed a stamp indicating the company, Gloria Duchin, that produced the object. Knowing a bit about the economic and industrial history of Providence and, more specifically, the exact ways in which the object came to be in Rias possession, I was able to draw certain conclusions about the various cultural discussions one could have about the ornament. The ornament was recovered during an excursion into one of the now mostly vacant buildings in the jewelry district. Beyond producing objects such as this ornament, Providences long history of jewelry making and other metal-work contributed immensely to the diversity of the city and its residents. Even today, as Providences industrial makeup has changed, people are still engaging with this once booming sector of economic production. The Art/Place project in the jewelry district is but one example of the dialogues about this bit of cultural heritage that remains contemporary in both academic discourse and everyday life of the city, yet for the purposes of this exercise, I limited my further extrapolations about these dialogues to the particular approaches that Ria and I had in common when considering the ornament. Being outsiders (and here I use the term merely to indicate that neither of us are from Providence and relocated here with the specific intention of attending Brown

University) we were both very curious about what the ornament could tell us about Providence, its history, its culture, and its character. To a Rhode Island resident, the ornament could stand for something deeply personal, while for us it stands more a snapshot of a particular moment in history, a moment that certainly resonates into the present. And as we explore this history through such objects, develop our own perspective from which we experience this unfamiliar place as it becomes home. Our interest in material culture led to kindred interpretations of the ornament that addressed the relationships of mass-produced, kitschy objects and the larger social, political, and cultural conditions of their production. Of particular interest to us was the state of the environment from which this particular ornament came. Collected from a vacated warehouse littered with similar objects (I have a Samuel Adams bottle opener from the same site), it raises questions about both the place itself, and the relationship of forgotten or unused spaces and the things recovered from them. My cursory discussion of the ornament only begins to reflect the infinite possibilities and perspectives for engagement. Yet as curators we make choices, and for my second object, I chose a postcard I found in the Eastside Marketplace. Until then, I hadnt settled on what my second object for this assignment would be, since many objects could have elicited an interesting discussion. Recalling the ways in which Ria and I felt that the ornament characterized Providence, I was drawn to the postcards because they also (at the very least least attempt to) represent certain characteristics of the city. Similar to ornaments, postcards belong to that very large, but still significant, category of affordable objects that are often used in memory practice. Both objects are, to some

degree, designed for interpersonal exchange. People send postcards to one another; people give ornaments to one another. When I looked at the reverse side of a postcard of Waterplace Park, I noticed that the photo was published in Newport and printed in Italy. I was then inspired to consider the relationships an object may have to multiple places and multiple cultural groups. It is this particular connection that drew me to selecting the postcard to present alongside the ornament. While the photographic subject, the textual content (see reverse side of postcard), part of the production, and the finished product is about Providence, it could also be said that it is of equal cultural importance to some people in Italy, or to people elsewhere around the globe who might be recipients. I was suddenly made aware that much of my initial interpretation around the ornament was in relation to Providence, yet it was perhaps made for distribution in some place other than Providence. Though this particular ornament never made it beyond the environs of Providence, it can stand for all those that did and, furthermore, for patterns of production and exchange of which Providence and many other places are a part. The postcard I chose lays bare some of these patterns in a way that the ornament, possessing only a stamp of origin, does not. By shifting the scope, I do not mean to de-emphasize the importance of Providence, but rather resituate it. It is through this re-situation that I hope encourage a dialogue that illuminates the other layers of site-related meaning that objects, particularly the ornament and the postcard, can have. Setting these objects in relation to one another and presenting one dialogic possibility between them is not about justifying a position or decision, but rather to

encourage more dialectics that explore the mille-feuille of interpretations around them. Such has been my aim here.

Object 1: ornament

Object 2: postcard (front)

(reverse)

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