Gloucester, Massachusetts
August 28-September 28, 2015
Host: Rocky Neck Art Colony (Goetemann Artist Residency)
Sites: Rocky Neck Parking Lot, Fishermen's Memorial, Good Harbor Beach, Halibut Point State Park, Main Street, Lanesville Community Center for the Mayoral Debate, Cape Ann Farmer's Market
Press: Gloucester Times, September 11, 2015 "'Cabinet of curiosities': Rocky Neck playing home to traveling mini-museum"
Gloucester Times, September 11, 2015 "The Mobile Museum of American Artifacts Visits Gloucester" (video)
I spent a month at the Rocky Neck Art Colony for the Goetemann Artist Residency, arriving with few plans and little knowledge of the area. I spent the first two weeks distracted by the smell of the sea, going for long walks, worrying that no one would donate, and slowly meeting people. Then, halfway into the residency, one thing quickly spiraled to the next - I parked the MMoAA at Good Harbor Beach at sunrise, attracting over 90 visitors and five artifact donations (wax balls, a blown fuse, copy editing pencils, a silver quarter, arrowheads). The former president of the Lanesville Community Center stopped in while on his morning beach walk, and invited me to park at the Community Center for the mayoral debates the following Tuesday. And so it continued—people left artifacts on my car, showed up at my apartment door with an object in hand, found me walking on the street and delivered an artifact promised to me days prior. I parked at the Cape Ann Farmer's Market, the Fishermen's Memorial, and Halibut Point State Park. The museum spent a total of seven days out around town. The rest of the time, I researched and wrote while the museum rested in the Rocky Neck Parking lot and came to be a landmark for locals over the course of the month. MMoAA's time in Gloucester culminated in a closing talk and exhibit of the 21 artifacts and stories collected there. "Where is the museum??" I overheard a Rocky Neck resident ask her neighbor, just moments after I shipped it off to Colorado (its next stop) on an eighteen wheeler.
Artifact Donations: 21 (Painting in Gloucester, 1999, Silver Quarter, Blown Fuse, Soft-Lead "Copy" Pencils, Wax Balls, Eastern Woodland Arrowheads, Schooner Jib Hank, $1.91, Glass Bottle Caught at Sea, Leather Sachet, English Bookshop Ball Point Pen, Eye Splice with Thimble, Pink Velvet Wallpaper, T-Shirt with Encoded Message, Buffalo Shoulder Bone, Association Coin, Pipe Planters, Bandana, Spinning Top, Wooden Toy)
