Loaded Out: Making a Museum
December 13, 2007 — May 23, 2008
Dr. Robin Nagle, holding an artifact from the exhibition
“Making a Museum: Materializing Regimes of Value with the New York Department of Sanitation” was a Museum Studies class at New York University co-taught by Haidy Geismar and Robin Nagle, anthropologist-in-residence at the New York Department of Sanitation. The class visited several DSNY Benevolent Society meetings and welcomed a a number of guests, including: DSNY artist-in-residence Mierle Ukeles, DSNY recycling advisor Samantha Macbride, historian Benjamin Miller, and DSNY director of public relations Vito Turso.
The aim of the class was to develop a series of materials drawn from archival and contemporary research into the history and importance of the DSNY that would provide a blueprint for the formation of a DSNY museum. The class culminated in an exhibition that ran from December 13, 2007 to January 13, 2008 in a former DSNY Derelict Vehicles Office on West 20th Street.
Press coverage of the exhibition from the Washington Post and New York Times:
No Trash Talking at This Museum to the Clean Team
Collecting the Trash: Its Science and Value
The following summer, New York University also hosted a companion exhibit to Loaded Out in the windows of the Kimmel Center, running from March 28 2008 - May 23, 2008.
Press coverage of the window exhibition from the New York Times:
archival photo of the “white wings”, from DSNY archives