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General Introduction

The main exhibition space and research areas of the Museum as they appeared in 2007.

A German critic, W. Bürger [writes] "Our Museums...are veritable graveyard-yards in which have been heaped up, with a tumulour-like promiscuousness, the remains which have been carried thither...all are hung pell-mell upon the walls of some noncommittal gallery—a kind of posthumous asylum, where a people, no longer capable of producing...come to admire this magnificent gallery of débris.” —G. Brown Goode, Museums of the Future, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C., 1891: p. 427

The Collection of artifacts at the Main Street Museum is a unique experiment in material culture studies, consisting of objects of varied origins—man-made (or historical) and biological, botanical and mineralogical.

The Museum forges nimble links and reflects meanings from object to object, from object to viewer, and from the viewer back to the object again. Our website features “wiki” software and includes the catalog of our varied holdings in a manner that is fully accessible and modifiable electronically. Assigning nuanced values to artifacts is increasingly difficult in the environment of most major collecting institutions. The neutrality of theoretical systems utilized by any museum is currently being called into question. As a small independent repository the Main Street Museum has the flexibility—indeed the mandate—to examine the layered and ever changing meanings of objects and their relationships to their surroundings. As the uses for objects are more or less continuously in flux, we analyze these uses through traditional disciplines (art historical, scientific and qualitative methods), but also through psychological analysis as well. Our emotional relationships with objects are formed circuitously. Therefore the meaning of objects is unlocked only through similar, indirect means.

We accession items based on the sustained interest that has been shown them and the attentiveness they demonstrate towards us.

Perhaps the only true meaning in objects lies in the questions each one them asks of us.

Items that are still largely intact are valuable additions to the Museum. Items that are in poor condition are given special attention. The kernel contained within each object is an encapsulated question. We offer no answers here.

Categories including Series and Subseries and Vinculum Categories

Categories are often both overlapping (vinculum) and mutable. At the Main Street Museum they include, but are not limited to: Flora; Fauna; Exotica (geographically diverse objects); Shoes (and Tiny Shoes); Fiber, Textiles and Costumes; Tangled Things; Objects Associated with Famous People; Round Things; Objects with Orifices; Bad Art; Bad Craft; Recreated Artifacts Refused by Dartmouth Realia; Amulets and Sacred Objects; Judæica; Vermontiana; Relics from the Civil War/War Between the States; and Unidentified Mammals or “Flocked Pets.”

Objects as Evidence of Human Culture

Artifacts as Evidence of Religion; Comparitive Religious Studies

• Judaica
• Relics
  • Secular Relics
    • Pieces of Wood
  • Religious Relics
    • Associated Relics
    • Sacred Utensils; Consecrated Objects designed for ceremonial Use

Geographically Significant Artifacts

• The Americas
• Asia
• Europe
• Oceana

Historic Artifacts

• Household Items
• Objects Associated with Vermont or New Hampshire Artists
• Things, or Fragments of Things Once Owned by, or Associated with, Notable People—Particularly Notable Vermonters
• Objets d'Art
• Pictures
• Recreated Artifacts Denied by Dartmouth Realia

Manuscripts and Journals

• The Heather Collection
  • Journals
  • Notebooks
  • Bling
  • Portrait Bust

The Work-day World of White River Junction

• Drugs
  • Aspirin
  • Coffee
  • Hard Cider Bottle
  • Nitrous Oxide Canister
  • Tobacco
• Food

Pet Toys

• Cats
• Dogs

Two Dimensional Evidence Paper; Archive Collections

Photographs

• Documentary Photographs
• Favorite Pet Pictures
• Photographs of Places
• Photographic Portraits
• Unknown People

Postcards

• The Harvey/Muhly Comparitive Postcard Studies and Taxonomy
• Postcards from Around the World
• Postcards from the United States
• Novelty Postcards

Military History Collection

The War of the Rebellion/War Between the States

• Botanical Specimens
• Bullets
• Eating Utensils
• Marbles
• Soil Specimens from Civil War Sites

The Renssalaer William Foote Memorial

• Uniforms and Journals

Armaments and Military Technology

• Actual Miltary Technology
• Substitutes or Stand-ins for Weaponry and Munitions

  (For World War II items see The Leroy Short Sporting and Wild Game Memorial)

Sound (Audible) Artifacts

• 78-80 rpm Recordings
• Digital Files

Art

Two Dimensional Pieces

• Paintings
• Drawings
• Prints
  • Photographs Taken by Artists
  • Digital Prints
  • Lithographs

Textiles

• Fabric and Tapestry
• Costumes and Clothing

Elvis Aaron Presley Visual Art Amalgam

• Relics of Elvis Aaron Presley
• Souvenirs of Elvis

Bad Craft

• Art Ceramic
• Dish and Dinnerware
• Glassware
• Objets d' Art
• Wall Mounted Bad Craft

Cat, or Unidentified Mammal? You decide.

Fauna; Living, or Apparently Once Living, Objects

Teeth and More Teeth

• Adult Human Teeth
• Baby Teeth, Human
• Carnivore Teeth
• Teeth of Ruminants
• More Teeth

The Leroy Short Sporting and Wild Game Memorial

• Antler Cervus
• Artifacts of Geographic Interest
• Fishing
  • World War II

Specimens (or Objects relating to) Birds of the Americas

• Eggs

• Nests
  • Pigeon Nest, or Nests (with eggs)
  • Robin Nests (with eggs)
  • Starling Nest, or Nests, European Starling
  • Wren Nests

• Ornithology
• The Humingbird Collection
• Song Birds
  • Cardinal
  • Indigo Bunting
• Pigeons and Doves
• Raptors
  • Falconiformes, Dirunal Birds of Prey
  • Strigiformes, Nocturnal Birds of Prey, Owls
• Water fowl

Flora; Living, or Apparently Once Living, Objects

Trees; The Animistic Perspective

• The Hall of Fame of Trees
• Pieces of Wood
  • Wood Shavings

Exotic, Tropic and Sub-tropic Vegetable Samples

• The Flora of South Florida and Lousiana
• Theodore Roosevelt in Puerto-Rico
• Other Exotic Botanical Specimens

Flowers

• Flowering Trees
  • Lilacs
• American Flowers Unknown types
• Family Rosa
• Apples
• European Flowers Mixed, Unknown and General Categories
• Lilium
• Syringa

Minerals; Inanimate, or Apparently Inanimate Objects

• Geological Specimens; Rocks
• Relics from Locations of Interest see, Man Made Minerals
• Soils; Loam, Sand and Dirt

Other

• Corals
• Aquatic Mammalia

Vinculum Categories

Tangled Things

• Categories Teeth and More Teeth and especially Color as a Hysterical Reaction, Round Things and Tangled Things created by curation teams of the Robert Hull Fleming Museum, University of Vermont.)