My work week was oddly disrupted by a trip down to New York for the Foundation, but seeing the other scholars made up for it. The lunch and dinner weren’t too shabby, either. It is plain to me now why so many people flock to the world of finance.
I finally got the chance to actually look at and handle some letters written by Mrs. Gardner herself, new letters that no one has seen for quite some time, perhaps a full century. I find it persistently strange reading, transcribing, and analyzing these old letters and diaries. Did Mrs. Gardner write these supposedly private papers with the awareness that they would, in the future, be used to define her in a most public manner? Most clues point to yes. Mrs. Gardner was famous in her own time and was not only aware of the prospect of her “archival portrait” but was an active constructor. Her “official” biography by her adviser and the first director of the Museum, Morris Carter, publishes many of her letters to friends and family. We also know that she requested friends to burn other letters that she had sent them, keeping private elements private via elimination. She documented her own constantly-accreting history by clipping out the endless stories and gossip of the Boston print media. (“MRS. JACK: NOW QUITE A JIU-JITSU EXPERT” no not even kidding)
But what to make of the private elements that slip through the fingers of the subject’s self-constructing hand? When can we even know we’re looking at something she would have wanted erased from history? The thought that keeps passing through my head: will I one day be reconstructed and judged through my artifacts? The Gardner museum is a realization of “fame”, the immortality granted an individual by the dissemination of their identity through many generations of a population. How American to suppose that might ever happen to me.
Funny to think, also, that those future generations won’t be leafing through letters on Japanese paper but instead consulting computer science historians who have knowledge of ancient email formats.
Quiet weekend otherwise. I finally settled on a Jack Spade bag for my new laptop, and tomorrow I’ve got a Legal Seafood date with the grandparents.
edit: Got the actual title of the article from my notes.
2 Comments
July 22, 2008 at 12:01 am
i loved this post! i miss you! come to williamstown!
August 21, 2008 at 11:52 am
[...] with Alan at the Gardner showed just how doable, or at least engaging, the job of reconstructing this woman’s past [...]