Of Lawn Gnomes and Significance

For once I was not using Pinterest to drool over pictures of cake or plan the ultimate Halloween party. Instead, I was glancing at what the Center for the Future of Museums had pinned under "Storytelling" when I saw a lawn gnome.

I was compelled to follow it. Because hello, it's a lawn gnome.

It led to this post at a blog called "You Learn Something New Every Day." In it, the author describes how her lawn gnome is, on the surface, just a mass-produced plastic lawn gnome. But this tchotchke has a personal story behind it that gives it a special significance to the author. We probably all have objects like this. We might not even think about them until someone is rifling through the junk drawer in our kitchen hutch, pulls out a random object, and asks "Why do you even HAVE this?" The question sparks a memory in your brain and you regale your interrogator with the sordid tale of how you acquired your thimble/Troll doll/snow globe and why you could NEVER, EVER part with it. They put it back in the drawer, eyebrows raised, internally reminding themselves never to ask you casual questions again.

The lawn gnome post was inspired by an awesome project called Significant Objects. The project's website describes it as "a literary and anthropological experiment" designed to demonstrate "that the effect of narrative on any given object’s subjective value can be measured objectively." The guys behind it (Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn) call themselves "the curators." Here's how the experiment works: the curators buy some cheap, random objects at thrift shops. Cheap as in no more than a few dollars and occasionally free. Random as in a jar of marbles, a mushroom salt shaker, or a monkey puppet. They hire a professional writer (some of the names I recognized were Meg Cabot, Colson Whitehead, Sloane Crosley, and Stewart O'Nan) to contribute a short story to give each object "significance." Some of the stories are humorous, some are bizarre, and some are intense reflections on the meaning of life. Then they sell the objects on eBay using the story as the item's description (they do make it clear, however, that the story is not true). The curators' goal was to see if the stories would increase the items' perceived value as reflected in the final eBay selling price; their hypothesis was “Narrative transforms insignificant objects into significant ones.”

The results? "If an increase in the thrift-store objects’ “value in trade” can be accepted as objective evidence of an increase in the objects’ significance, then our hypothesis was 100% correct. We sold $128.74 worth of thrift-store junk for $3,612.51." (The money went to the story contributors and later to various charities.)

I think this experiment is fascinating. Some of the stories are really great. One of their most successful is this Russian figure. They bought it for $3 and sold it for $193.50. The author spins this crazy tale in which the object becomes "an icon of the fourteenth-century Saint Vralkomir of Dnobst, the patron saint of extremely fast dancing."

This shows us that narrative can be very powerful. We can use this in public history to our advantage. If the narrative is insightful and well-crafted, people are going to attach more significance to the objects or history we are interpreting. We should also be careful with this, because people may enjoy the story without questioning its validity. Additionally, we have the responsibility and unique position to attribute greater or lesser significance to objects depending on how we present them. I also think this experiment illustrates just how interdisciplinary public history can be. Creative writing skills obviously proved very useful in writing the stories, but there was also a degree of salesmanship involved. Public historians need to hone a variety of skills.