I Was Here

sou·ve·nir

A thing that is kept as a reminder of a person, place, or event

To take as a memento

Humans have an almost obsessive need to capture moments in time, experiences, and places that they have been. At one point, carving names on a tree was thought to be a great way to record your love 4-Eva.

Some painted their names inside the pyramids at Giza, attached a "love lock" to the Pont des Arts in Paris, or left lipstick kiss marks on the tomb of Oscar Wilde. The list goes on, but the goal is always to leave some kind of symbol of a presence.

People also have an innate need to take something away from the places they have been a touchstone of an experience. At one point, early American settlers were encouraged to chisel off a piece of the original Plymouth Rock as a keepsake; this tradition was also honored in the town closest to Stonehenge, where in the past, you could purchase a hammer and chisel to chip off your own memento.

I remember my parents telling me of visiting a Portuguese castle where they witnessed people ripping off bits of a bedspread in a princess's room. I also had a friend who told me a story of a tourist literally getting shot in the butt by a guard for trying to take a stone off the ground at Angkor Wat. The reality is what all these people were doing was collecting souvenirs. And one might argue that the destination stores rise was a great answer to the socially acceptable vandalism of world heritage sites, so no need to kill a tree or get shot in the bum; just visit the gift shop.

Souvenirs and gift shops have sometimes been perceived negatively, the idea of exit through the gift shop and the tourist trap. But in some ways, this is unfair, as the items that some look down on are the small, inexpensive things that celebrate an experience, like magnets and postcards, etc.

Many modern cultural gift stores now carry high-end items like scarves, jewelry, decorative home items, and limited edition artist multiples. Frequently, those kinds of goods, even though they can still act as a touchstone of an experience, can be out of the economic reach for some. For example, if I admire a piece of jewelry that someone is wearing, there is a good chance they will remember exactly where they purchased or received it and will often share a story. But for some, purchasing a necklace in a museum store may not be an option, and a postcard is a more reasonable alternative to remembering their day or something that has inspired them. An artist once told me that a postcard is sometimes the only art that some people can afford. The larger issue facing us in the modern age is not so much the types of products or how they are marketed, but how they are made. The cultural tourism industry is enormous, and we must stop any negative environmental impact in the manufacturing of products

Interestingly, many would classify souvenir items as "ephemera." But in fact, sometimes they are all that survive from the experiences they were created for. Recently I have been tracking some jewelry that we made for an exhibit called GOLD! at the Museum of Science, how many remember that show? It's a good bet that there is documentation in the Science Museum archives, but the jewelry can help tell part of the story because they are direct reproductions of some of the pieces that were in the show. So these objects, for better or worse, become part of the historical record and give us a more robust picture of what was happening at that time.

For example, there is evidence of shopping booths, what we may now call pop up stores, outside of Roman coliseums where fans could purchase things like oil lamps painted with images depicting their favorite gladiator. Maybe this was the birth of the pro-shop?

In any case, there is a lot of evidence to support that humans, for millennia, have been collecting items as mementos to remind them of experiences. It is undeniable that today, many ancient souvenirs are held as artifacts in museums. So indeed, some of the items one might see today in a cultural gift shop, maybe be destined to be under glass in a museum someday to help tell the story of our generation.

I have already started to see this happening with items that I have created for Museum Stores over the years. Some of the things that I have made are now viewed as "rare" and "highly collectible." I recently made some masks for PEM that depict images from the museum, which have already been accessioned into the library collection as part of a group of items that will document the pandemic. Even the information on Retail Reliquary attempts to preserve the stories around the mementos I have created that might help a researcher or the casual observer. Yes, it is also my way of saying, I was here.

I was here; to remember or be remembered, the attempt to leave a mark as to not be forgotten or to collect objects as touchstones to recall a moment and relay that experience to others seems to be in our DNA.