Frozen in Time

review by Mark Bedetti

3/17/17

Everyone’s A Critic

            A sixties television, an academy award, and an unbelievable amount of matchboxes made up just a fraction of the artifacts in the exhibit The Undisciplined Collector by Mark Dion. A room jutting off of the top of a staircase at The Rose Museum at Brandeis University is what this exhibit calls home. The room’s wood paneling extended from the floor and all the way up the walls to the ceiling. It was full of dark wooden coat-hooks, wooden display cases, and a tall cabinet with drawers that would close with a satisfying click. Each piece of furniture had its own category of what may have been found inside. The top shelves were filled with older artifacts such as miniature statues and ceramic vases. The lower cabinets had an assortment of awards from Oscars to Golden Globes many of which were donated from Joan Crawford, an experienced and successful actress. Interactive elements of the room such as paintings, magazines, and even clothing date back to the same time as what the rest of the room matched during the sixties. This interactive element created a welcoming and realistic atmosphere making it seem even more like you were immersed in this space at the time. The drawer cabinet along the far wall contained anything from valuable autographs and famous drawings to matchbooks and cocktail stirrers that may not have much value. This clash of objects in the room is what Dion had in mind in creating a space that seemed realistic as “an undisciplined collector’s space” during the sixties. Many of the pieces in the collection were acquired in a similar fashion through donation and were taken from Brandeis’s collection by Mark Dion and arranged just how he wanted it. This decision making created a truthful piece to the name: “The Undisciplined Collector”.