egyediLEG

A Déri Múzeum időLEGes kiállítása - április 10-től június 25-ig különleges és szokatlan rendezést ígér. A tárlat kurátora, Lakner Lajos és a válogatást végző muzeológusok arra biztatják a látogatókat, fedezzék fel a múzeum egyedi „LEGjeit”.

The control of objects  

Museums have forever been founded on the belief that reason is omnipotent, that humans are capable of making sense of the world surrounding them. The primary method of creating such a state of order is  

to classify and organise objects to make collections. Museum professionals first have to decide whether  

the artefact is of great or little importance, in other words, whether it deserves to be preserved or should be consigned to oblivion. Museum collections are therefore created by way of designating objects as valuable, naming them and assigning them to categories in an abstract filing system. The first decision involves  

a disciplinary classification: does the artefact belong in the discipline of ethnography? Of local history?  

Art history? Literary history? Natural history? Applied arts? Archaeology? Perhaps some other field?  

Then further subcategories are created by finding attributes that would group the artefacts together with other objects and ignoring other traits, partly because there is no time to consider each attribute, but also because during classification we do not even notice some of those. We primarily focus on the artefact's possible function or, in the case of works of art, its genre or general theme. Besides this we record quantifiable data: dimensions, date of creation, place and time of find, material. It is only when describing  

an object that we can mull over specific data, but that is seldom practicable. Taking all of that into consideration it may not come as a surprise that the principles of classifying artefacts derive from the methodology of categorisation practised by museums and are not inherent to the objects themselves, therefore they are artificial. Yet, devoid of any control over classification we would only have a chaotic set

of objects and not a collection. Their infinite variety can only be interpreted and processed if we divest them of their unique and singular nature. Therefore, classification is imperative for yielding a human perspective, but the objects don't really care. They know nothing of such an exercise; they resists, as it were, because classification does not change a single thing about them.  

Artefacts have souls. They enter into relationships with other objects, bringing into play the connections and attachments of their former users, who were unique and uncategorizable.

The revolt of objects

We all know the feeling when objects that have proved handy and docile all of a sudden start acting up, moreover, they disobey and resist. They slip from our hands and fail to work like we want them to. We might think that they are deliberately making a fool of us. This common enough experience is not unknown  

to curators of museum collections. When we classify artefacts, they are in order, compliantly taking their allotted places. However, there are moments when museum professionals feel as if the artefacts in their care have their own secrets, which can only be revealed by chucking the meticulously compiled filing system, leaving behind the order of categorisation, and scrutinising the objects in their unique and manifest reality. Not by categorising but by experiencing them, not by pigeonholing but by exploring them. By allowing them to open up and disclose their secrets. As their customary facets slowly unravel, artefacts come to life and

are resurrected. Some really good exhibitions yield exactly this experience: artefacts rendered lifeless  

by necessary classification are revived by a new interpretation or a novel context. Exhibitions facilitate a new experience of objects because rather than displaying types they show us individual, exclusive artefacts.  

The experience is born from our focus (the artefacts garner our utmost attention) as well as the objects' histories. They attract our attention, encourage us to ask them anything. And they respond. This is what happened with the current exhibition, too. We had often wondered what could be the one artefact at Déri Museum which is the greatest, the most astounding, the most… you name it. In search of an answer museum specialists and curators started digging through our storerooms and they soon found that objects were calling out to them. So many artefacts became interesting all of a sudden that it would have been impractical to cram them all into a seasonal exhibition space. Finally what decided the matter was the human connection staged by the artefact, that is, personal commitment. Therefore, the artefacts displayed in the show have been selected on an admittedly subjective basis. And that's all right, not only because a good object resists categorisation by type or style, but also because objects become a part of culture, what is more, engines of culture not by themselves, but through their attachment to human beings. The revolt of objects reminds us never to believe those who say they can control and organise the world. Diversity is the basis of life as well as of culture.

The name of the exhibition is "egyediLEG", which stands for "peculiar, distinctive,the best of its kind".  

Visitors will find the object descriptions in English in the accompanying booklet.