“Hidden Treasures: What Museums Can’t or Won’t Show You”
By Harriet Baskas; Globe Pequot Press, 175 pages
I’ve often wondered what it would be like to work behind the scenes at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. How fun it must be to handle “new” acquisitions, getting a first-hand look at something that may have been buried for thousands of years, or touching an item that may have altered the course of human history. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen the film “Raiders of the Lost Ark” so many times, but I always imagine a museum’s back rooms stacked from floor to ceiling with boxes, trunks, and crates full of never-before-seen treasures. The sorting and cataloging may take time, but eventually everything will be prepared for a triumphant public unveiling.
Well, as it turns out, the truth is a little bit different. Museums often do have items sitting in back rooms, away from the public view, but not every item, or even every collection, is necessarily going to make it to a display area. The reasons for this are many — not enough room, too fragile, too expensive to make secure, or even too controversial. If it weren’t for people like Harriet Baskas, the author of this week’s book, and who happens to possess an abundance of curiosity, you and I might never know about President Harry Truman’s portrait on the head of a pin, the matchbox flea diorama, or Katharine Wright’s knickers. Don’t worry — more on those knickers in just a bit.
“Hidden Treasures” takes the reader on a backstage tour, so to speak, of the employees-only areas of selected museums across the United States (the fascinating Wellcome Collection located in England receives an entry, too, so the focus is not exclusively North American). Baskas, an author, radio producer, and contributor to National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” programs, shares the stories behind museum objects seldom revealed to visitors.
Some are creepy, like the doll named “Jimmy.” He spends his days behind closed doors at a museum in Kentucky because, according to the museum’s director of collections and exhibitions, his corpse-like appearance “just scares the heck out of the museum team.” Not surprisingly, some museum objects remain hidden due to their unusual artistic presentation or to their association with controversial subjects. Medical specimens in particular are carefully evaluated by museum curators before becoming available for display.
