exquisite things { from the haffenreffer }
connecting collections | collecting connections
play | about

This is an exhibition of things, the ways we connect to them and the ways we create meaning by making connections between things.

The objects in this exhibition were chosen using a variation of the game exquisite corpse { info }. Nine people (the museum's curator and eight students) each selected one thing - in sequence, one after another. Rather than following a specific theme, each person chose an object based on how they thought it connected to the object chosen just before them. The result is not only a collection of objects from the museum, but also a collection of relational spaces between things: how connections are created and how we perceive meaning through those connections.

We welcome you to encounter these things for yourself, wonder why they were chosen and tell us what you think the connections are. You can add your connections to our growing collection by playing the game here { link }.

{ exquisite corpse }

Invented by the Surrealists in the 1920s, exquisite corpse, in its original form, was a game played by multiple individuals who, by building on each other’s work in turn, created a new collective work that no one would have imagined on their own. Traditionally played with words (and later adapted to images), players would write a text, conceal the majority of it, and pass it to the next player who would continue to write from where the previous player left off.

In this exhibition, we have adapted the game exquisite corpse and applied it to the selection of objects from the Haffenreffer Museum’s collection.

By the students of ‘Things: The material worlds of humanity’
John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities & Cultural Heritage
{ info }
Instructor: Dr Ian Russell { contact }

Special thanks to Erik Nazarenko and Elli Mylonas for web development support.

email your comments to haffenreffermuseum@brown.edu

designed by iArchitectures (2010)