Family of Objects

In Family of Objects, the Boijmans' collection is seen as a large family, with works of art as family members. Between some collection pieces, the relationships are obvious, for example, if they belong to a series or were made by the same artist. Other relationships remain underexposed. The goal of Family of Objects is to uncover these unknown relationships. The public has a role in this. In dialogue, we search, create and tell stories about the objects. In this way we hope to find new ways of presenting the collection.

The project consists of five phases, in which the public shapes the family tree. In each phase, there are activities in which visitors can participate. In the first phase, Maya, the primal mother of the family, was introduced and the public gave her a character and personality. Then the search for a partner began, so Maya would no longer be alone. In the third phase, with the help of the audience, the family continued to expand with brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, children, (grand)parents and pets. In the fourth phase, participants defined conflicts and museum staff helped solve them by choosing a peacemaker.

Family of Objects is now continuing toward the fifth and final phase which will focus on "the love between man and thing".

Will you help discover new stories - or create them yourself - and share them?

The museum collection has 154,000 (art) objects, world-famous masterpieces and forgotten gems all with stories worth telling. The collection is a shared treasure of every Rotterdammer, and at the same time its importance reaches far beyond the borders. Since its opening, many visitors have been able to discover Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen. With Family of Objects, we hope to reach an even broader group of people. We want to give visitors the space to move from viewer to participant, or even co-creator. Through experimentation we are discovering how to facilitate this co-creation with the public. In the process, we are also carefully scrutinizing our own museum methods.

In-depth

The title of the project refers to Family of Man, the photographic exhibition that photographer and curator Edward Steichen put together for the MoMA in New York in 1955. This exhibition showed what connects people. By viewing the collection as a large family, we look at the same object together in a new way. The theme is universal and recognizable: everyone has family, and every family consists of a web of relationships, states and fates.

Erna Aaltonen, "Maya", 2004.

Maya

This is Maya: a vase made by the Finnish ceramist Erna Aaltonen. Maya plays a central role in Family of Objects. She is a special one; among tens of thousands of pieces of ceramics, she has been a loner for many years. Maya needed a partner to start a family with. In phase one, the audience was asked to describe Maya. Here's the result:

Looking for a partner

In phase two, Maya began looking for a partner. Students from Mariaschool Taandersplein, Melanchthon Wilgenplaslaan and residents of residential care facility Laurens Borgsate helped with the search. They selected thirteen fantastic candidates who were all eager to start a new life with Maya. All candidates were on display at the depot.  They are listed below:

After an exciting battle, in which visitors could vote via the depot app, the website and social media, candidate Irina eventually won. With the students of the Maria School as witnesses, Maya and Irina got married by security guard Harry. For several months they could be admired together in the depot.

Expanding the family

The third phase of the project involved expanding Maya's family. Visitors of the depot came up with character traits and family relationships for many, very different collection pieces. In total, more than 850 family members were added to Maya's family tree. All the contributions were on display with Maya in the depot. Here are some of them:

At the same time, a Rotterdam family was invited to the depot to find collection pieces in which they recognize themselves and their relationships. Playfully, they reflected on their hobbies, values and unique traits. They joined Anne-Claire de Breij for a photo with their chosen collection piece. This created a double family portrait. These works have also been added to Maya's family tree. Here you will see them:

Conflicts and reconciliation

The family of objects has become a social group whose members interact and reveal each time different traits of their unique personalities. As in most families, there is a whole lot of love, but also some friction. Misunderstandings, clashing temperaments and differences may escalate into conflicts. Participants have chosen family members who would not fit in the same room and defined the conflicts.

With the help of curators, registrars, restorers, conservators, including security guards from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, who personally chose the peacemakers for the conflicts- the peace in the family tree has been restored.

For a deeper understanding of causes and dynamics at play in the conflicts among objects in the collection, a group of spoken word artists unleashed their creativity to enrich five stories and shape them into a rap, a poem, a stanza or a short novel.

Family of Objects aims to involve the visitor at the center of our museum practice – no longer as a recipient of factual information but rather as participant in the co-creation of knowledge about the collection. The project encourages visitors to go beyond meaning-making and to focus on understanding the museum object as a catalyst for unique considerations that should be meaningful in the visitor-participant’s own world.

Concretely, this call to action for visitors brings onstage activities that encourage them to actively participate in shaping a whole new interpretation for artworks. Through workshops, guided tours, voting and all the available tools, the audience is asked to share what they see, what they think about it, and to what they relate the object they see.

We- as mediators among the artworks and the audience- are committed to create a new context for the artworks and introduce them in an engaging and stimulating way to allow other kinds of insights about each object, away from expertise and closer to how people perceive things.

The main purpose is to bring people closer to the museum as a space in which objects and people can interact and as a place where the explanatory logic does not hinder creativity and the sharing of experiences. In this regard, the Depot App is a useful digital means through which the barrier of art expertise is torn down through more democratic access to original contents and multiple layers of information about artworks, artists and museum practices.

On the app, Family of Objects is explained and conveyed to visitors through short stories about some of the objects involved. These are described both in their materiality and history, tied with a fil rouge back to the collection and in relation to the new knowledge produced through public participation.