Should Finders Be Keepers?

It goes without saying that objects are everywhere and are intrinsic to everyday life. We design and make them, use them, store them, and eventually dispose of or resell them. In fact, a surprising number of people collect objects, and it is this collecting of things that the ‘Finders Keepers’ exhibition in the Museum of Architecture is centred around.

During a trip to Rotterdam in November of 2017, I visited the Museum of Architecture, Design and Digital Culture. Although there were many different exhibitions at this museum, it was ‘Finders Keepers: The Life Of Things’ that made a lasting impression on me. MacGuffin magazine collated over 5000 household objects from over 40 personal collections featuring everything from pencils to mobile phones and from coat hangers to traffic cones.

The exhibition explored many themes. It gave the viewer a close-up look into the motivations and habits of collectors, told the stories of individuals who find meaning and satisfaction in surrounding themselves with objects, and celebrated the aesthetic pleasures of repetition and order.

‘Finders Keepers’ could be described as an exhibition of hoarding, a habit largely disapproved of in western society, often portrayed by the media as an unhealthy addiction. In the consumerist society we live in there is a pattern of production, consumption and waste, and our desire to have more and more ‘stuff’ can lead to anxiety and financial troubles. With the availability of cheap manufacture and a seemingly unlimited supply of products at our fingertips, we have developed a ‘throw-away culture’. Environmentalists and anti-materialists argue that we need to stop accumulating possessions just because we can. Unfettered consumption is both environmentally damaging and can create a dysfunctional, materialist dependency. There is however, some counter balance to this concern that comes from the application of the digital, virtual world. Fewer and fewer people are ‘owning’ books, CDs etc because they can access them online. Therefore, it is likely that our concept of and need for ‘ownership’ will change.

The ‘Finders Keepers’ exhibition celebrated the nostalgic and sentimental appreciation that people can have for everyday objects. The owners and curators of the collections found meaning and purpose in objects that would be seen by many to be of no real worth. As a designer, the ‘Finders Keepers’ exhibition resonated with me because it explored the idea that design can be more than just an endless conception and manufacture of new objects. In fact, it showed that preserving, repurposing and finding use for existing products can be equally as interesting and challenging in terms of design process. This may well provide another counter balance to the endless materialist search to own more and more things.

‘Finders Keepers’ exhibition in the Museum of Architecture.