What Can a Guy Who Finds Strangers on the Internet Teach Us About Finding Stuff for Exhibits?
Have you found josemonkey yet?
If not, here's the elevator pitch: somebody sends him a short video (usually a few seconds of a parking lot, a backyard, a stretch of nondescript highway) and he tells them, often within striking distance, exactly where on Earth it was filmed. No metadata, no GPS tag, no cheating. Just the stuff that's "in the frame."
The magic (and it really does feel like magic the first time you watch it) is that there's no magic at all. He talks you through the whole thing. A particular species of tree narrows the hemisphere. The style of a guardrail, the color of a license plate, the font on a road sign, a half-glimpsed logo on a passing truck -- each little clue lops off another chunk of the globe until there's basically one place left standing. He gave a TEDx talk about the privacy implications of all this, which are real and worth taking seriously. But what keeps me watching is watching josemonkey think.
Because here's the thing, fellow museum folks: finding things is our job too.
Think about the last time you were handed a mystery photo from a collection. No caption, no date, a handful of people squinting into the sun in front of a building nobody can identify. What did you do? You read the shadows. You read the clothes. You zoomed into the storefront reflected in the window behind them. You noticed the streetcar wire, or the model of the car at the curb, or the way the trees were leafed out, and you started lopping off chunks of the possibility space until you had a decade, then a neighborhood, then a name. Same instinct. Same joy. We're all just geolocating in our own way.
And it doesn't stop at photo research. This is the exact muscle we flex every time we go hunting for objects to put on display. You need a period-correct milking stool for the dairy exhibit, or a plausible surveyor's chain, or a lunchbox that reads as "1962" to a fourth grader from across a gallery. You don't magic it into existence; you go clue by clue. What did the real thing look like? What material, what patina, what maker's mark? Where would one have survived, and who's selling it, and how do I tell the honest reproduction from the pretender? That's josemonkey-brain, pointed at eBay and estate sales instead of a highway shoulder.
Sourcing materials for a build is the same game one more time. Somebody points at a picture and says "make it feel like that," and now you're hunting for the specific laminate, the right weathered barnwood, the fabric that reads right under gallery lights and survives ten thousand small hands. Clue, clue, clue, answer.
I'll admit there's a Cheapbook-shaped reason I love this. None of what josemonkey does requires a fancy budget. His whole toolkit is paying attention, free maps, and stubbornness.
That's an enormously encouraging thing to remember when you're a small institution with a big idea and a tiny purchase order. The most valuable piece of research equipment in the building is still the trained eye of somebody who refuses to stop looking. No line item required.
So maybe the real lesson from a guy who finds strangers on the internet is this: the finding is the craft. Whether you're chasing a location, a caption, an object, or a scrap of the right material, the skill is the same: look harder than seems reasonable, follow the little clues, and don't quit until the answer has nowhere left to hide.
What's the best bit of exhibit detective work you've ever pulled off?
What was the clue that cracked it open? Tell me in the Comments Section below!
I collect these stories the way josemonkey collects rooftops.
Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!
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