Posts Tagged ‘Closet Archaeology’

Nov. 17 – A Message from Miriam Sicherman, Closet Archaeology Instructor!

Author, educator, and closet archaeologist Miriam Sicherman

I first visited City Reliquary during the Open House New York weekend in October 2016. I’d heard about this little museum many times, but had never made my way to Williamsburg to see it. As soon as I set foot through the turnstile I knew I had entered a space that I could relate to. From the seltzer bottles to the geological specimens to the pencil sharpeners, everything on exhibit showed an attention to how ordinary things, things that most of us take for granted or completely ignore, can actually be objects of fascination and of great value.

Installation view of the Closet Archaeology exhibit at the City Reliquary
Installation view of the Closet Archaeology exhibit at the City Reliquary

This mindset fit exactly with an unexpected project my elementary students had been working on for months. A curious kid, looking for old coins, had begun excavating lost items from underneath the floorboards of the student coat closet. When other kids joined in, it didn’t take long before a 1912 baseball card was found (Charles E. “Gabby” Street of the New York Americans, who became famous for catching a baseball dropped from the Washington Monument), not to mention an endless stream of candy wrappers from bygone brands, schoolwork, stamps, buttons, puzzle pieces, jewelry, bits of newspaper, and even cigarette boxes. These items swept us back to the life of our East Village neighborhood and its children over the course of more than a century. My students all caught the archaeological bug as we peered under the floorboards of more and more closets throughout our 1913 building. We loved finding, looking at, and researching these artifacts, from the cardboard caps of glass milk bottles to the scrawled 1950s spelling tests. And we wanted others to see them, too!

Obviously, the City Reliquary was a perfect place for an exhibit. I spoke with the person working at the front desk that day and the wheels began turning. Working together with me and my students, the Reliquary staff created a beautiful exhibit in the summer of 2017, artfully displaying these bits of detritus from generations of schoolchildren. My own students were thrilled to be taken seriously as junior archaeologists and couldn’t believe it when they learned that more than a thousand people had come to see their exhibit. The lives of schoolchildren past become real to us know through these objects in a way that the written word or even a photo could never approach.

Buttons, puzzle pieces, gum wrappers, and other items found by the closet archaeology students
Photo by Seze Devres for Ace Hotel New York

The items that the Reliquary exhibits with such care and reverence are exactly the ones we might not otherwise notice. Who cares about an old World’s Fair souvenir or a model of the Statue of Liberty? Well, actually, we all SHOULD care. These are the artifacts that teach us about our past, the past that we’re all a product of, even newcomers to New York. By bringing these objects out into the open and focusing our attention on them, the Reliquary gives us back the collective past of our daily life and situates us in history. We can find out what people of the past loved and tolerated and lived with. By extension, it gives us a fresh perspective on the ordinary objects of our own lives, which someday will be historical artifacts as well.

There is no place like the City Reliquary. By keeping it open, we keep the history of the people of the city of New York alive and visible and accessible to all.

Always civic,

Miriam Sicherman

Discover Barren Island with Author Miriam Sicherman on November 21!

On a now-vanished island in Jamaica Bay, a community of new immigrants and African-Americans transformed the city’s waste into industrial products and built a neighborhood from scratch. In her book Brooklyn’s Barren Island: A Forgotten History, author Miriam Sicherman (of Closet Archaeology fame) traces the development of this oft-forgotten community from the 1850s to 1936, when they were evicted to create New York City’s first municipal airport.

We will celebrate the release of Brooklyn’s Barren Island with a talk and book signing by Miriam Sicherman at the City Reliquary Museum on Thursday, November 21 at 7 pm! Join us to learn more about this fascinating fragment of NYC history.

RSVP on Facebook!

Closet Archaeology in the New York Post

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The August 13, 2017 issue of the New York Post has a great piece on Closet Archaeology! See this show until October 15.

Closet Archaeology extended through October 15, 2017!

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Due to popular demand, Closet Archaeology: An Accidental Time Capsule will run through October 15. This show presents 20th-century ephemera discovered under the floorboards of the Children’s Workshop School/P.S. 61 by a class of fourth-grade students led by their teacher, Miriam Sicherman. The students have compiled an archive of everyday artifacts ranging from ca. 1915 to ca. 1991. In addition to uncovering objects of the quotidian past, the students have also reached out and connected with some of the former students, now adults of advanced age, who lost items under the floorboards many years ago.

The Reliquary exhibition has received coverage in Atlas Obscura and Bedford + Bowery. Miriam Sicherman has discussed the project in Social Studies and the Young Learner (Nov/Dec 2015). The project has also been covered by The New York Times.

June 3: Opening Reception for Closet Archaeology: An Accidental Time Capsule

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Saturday, June 3 @ 2 PM
Admission: $5

In the winter of 2015 in the Children’s Workshop School in the East Village, a Manhattan fourth grader peered into the dusty crevices beneath his classroom closet floorboards. He wondered what treasures might have fallen there in the 104 years since the building was constructed. His classmates took notice and joined him in poking under the boards and pulling out artifacts of everyday life.

Through this “closet archaeology,” the students excavated an accidental time capsule built over a century by the students who had also once sat in their classroom. These junior archaeologists have unearthed love notes, spelling tests, caps from glass milk bottles, portraits of silent film stars, penny candy wrappers, and more. They have even found former students, now adults, who remember losing these items. The project was covered in The New York Times. Miriam Sicherman runs the Closet Archaeology Instagram account.

The City Reliquary is proud to present the first formal exhibition of Closet Archaeology after featuring it at Collectors’ Night 2017.

The Opening Reception on Sat., June 3 at 2 PM will include presentations from some of the junior archaeologists from the Children’s Workshop School as well as professional collectors and anthropologists:

Beverages available by suggested donation, with beer courtesy of The Brooklyn Brewery.

See the slideshow below for a selection of objects, and see even more of Miriam’s students’ finds on the Closet Archaeology Instagram.