Adding By Subtracting

By Michael Bouman
March 24, 2007

Two weeks ago I visited Chillicothe again at the invitation of everyone's favorite dentist, Jack Neal. Jack is the curator of the Grand River Historical Society Museum. He has the natural friendliness that you would imagine of a dentist who an entire community thinks well of. (I had such a dentist when I was growing up...a man who loved to put a young patient at ease before the drilling. I felt so at ease with my family dentist that I dared myself to endure fillings without anesthesia. Dr. Raines was game if I was, and so, with chortles and chuckles to accompany the whir and zap of the drill, he got me through all of them.)

I went to Chillicothe not for dental work, but for something much more challenging; the prospect of change. I went to conduct a workshop with the museum trustees. They have taken very good care of the town's museum, and Jack, at age 85, has been central to the "bank account" of good will this museum enjoys. But the question on everyone's mind was the future. How could this institution imagine the future it wants and build toward that future?

In the past year I think I have figured something out about adding value by subtracting something. It's something I do with other people's sentences, though less often with my own! I pare away unnecessary words. I destroy adjectives. They tend to appear like new dandelions in April. I crush the passive voice, turning sentences inside-out to make someone or some thing DO something.

In the spring cleaning of a household, we all know the routine of (finally!) tossing the sales flyers and mail-order catalogues that we place here and there to prevent our tables from levitating. We add value by subtracting clutter.

In the garden, we do the same thing, unless we have a collection. I have both a collection and a garden in my back yard. The garden is sometimes interesting to my visitors, but my collection never is. It's something only I can love, and it does not work as a display. To make my daylily collection interesting to a visitor, I have to tell a few personal stories about the plants, or about my history with a plant's breeder.

In my "garden," I create interest by taking away weeds and by spacing the plants so that the eye can take in a plant's beauty. I arrange plants in a way that creates visual interest, don't you? I'm not so good at it, but I do know enough to allow space and to combine things in ways that add up to something pleasurable, soothing, or surprising.

In the past year I have learned to talk a lot less at the workshops I conduct. I frame questions instead. I let other people do the talking. I listen. Always, I hear very interesting stories and I learn something I can use in the next workshop. I have learned to make space for the other guy. This makes me ready to become a museum volunteer.

The museum in Chillicothe repays more than one visit. So does a conversation with the museum trustees! We sat and talked about what the trustees like about the displays in their museum. I wanted each of them to select one object of special interest, but not one of the trustees could isolate just one object. They asserted a love of the totality of memories they experience when they are in the museum.

There's a 1940s soda fountain in one room. One of the trustees said, "I was a soda jerk behind that fountain. That's where I met my wife!" Another trustee made reference to a display of military uniforms. "I served in Korea," he said. "A year or so ago I met a Korean man and we began to talk, and I told him I had served in the Korean War. He fell over himself thanking me for that service. He told me what our intervention had meant to his family. It was one of the most important moments of my life. I had never received any thanks for my service, and I had never talked about it. That chance meeting gave my military service an entirely new value."

The trustees pointed with pride to an exhibit one of them had created about service in World War II. It is a small-scale display of just a few kinds of objects. As in a successful garden, these objects were arranged in a pleasing relationship without any crowding. I could imagine any number of conversations that a museum guide could launch with a visitor at that exhibit.

I saw a cadet's topcoat from West Point. Next to the topcoat was a photo of the young man from Chillicothe who went to West Point. He is pictured wearing that coat. Think of the conversations you could have about the meaning of West Point in the small towns of America.

The museum visitor is a learner. The museum trustee who served in Korea would make a wonderful guide for such a learner. He could talk about military training. If a footlocker were available in the display, he could point out the correct arrangment of things to pass inspection. He could talk about "spit and polish." He could tell the necktie story he sent to Reader's Digest, preferably with a military necktie at hand.

The story goes like this...."Our first inspection was coming up and I had to admit to my buddy that I had never tied a necktie. He said, I can help you out, but you'll have to lie down. Lie down? Yes, it's the only way I know how to put a necktie on someone. I helped my dad in the funeral parlor, you see."

As the workshop approached its conclusion, I asked the trustees to think of one thing they could do to "add value or create more interest." One man immediately said that he thought more interest could be obtained by subtracting duplicate objects. "We don't need to have more than one parlor organ on display over there," he said. This is a voice every museum should listen for. This person has a sense of letting objects have placement that enhances their value.

Less equals more. If you are a museum volunteer, I invite you to see what interesting things start to happen when you tell less of the story of your town. Are there fifty-one exhibit rooms in your museum? Show a visitor your favorite three or four of them and tell what you especially like. Then make room for your visitor. Together, you will both learn a great deal.