The Museum of Broken Things challenges people's notion of value through a community-curated collection of broken items (re: broken as defined by the donee). We will then refurbish the items we collect based on the stories passed down to us from their owners, as well as the material history of the object itself. We plan on retelling the story of the modified object through both physical displays around the city and also on social media with the intention of creating new value and finding new homes for these "broken" things. Our goal is to have this exchange system be self-sustaining with a steady flow of people all over Pittsburgh wanting to trade their stories for new ones, collecting refurbished artifacts along the way.
After receiving feedback from our mid-semester presentations and doing further research, we found a few examples that had similar names to our Museum of Broken Things (one being the museum of broken relationships that opened in LA a few years ago that showcased items left from old relationships; now defunct). Because the name was so similar but our purpose and mission are different, we wanted to reflect this change in our branding.
With a focus on retelling/passing down the story of the original object, we decided to change our name to Chronicles of Rejected Things. We also omitted "broken" from the name directly because it was confusing for people due to the connotations that "broken" implies.
In addition to rebranding, we also reframed our goals slightly to better reflect what we were learning and gaining through our object sourcing.
<aside> 💡 After visiting several yard sales and estate sales and getting to hear so many unique stories, we began to see a collection of unique interactions emerge as ways to tell (or reveal) these object stories. We realized that while some of these interactions might still entail a physical transformation of the object, the refurbishing/ repair aspect is no longer a central component of our concept. Instead, we want to focus on the ways we can bring out the value behind discarded or "rejected" objects' simply by revealing their stories and peaking people's curiosity to engage with these things that might otherwise go unnoticed, unvalued, or disregarded.
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