Commercial America

Through June 12, free, Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut St., 215-701-4627, slought.org.

by Shaun Brady

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Published: May 5, 2010

visual art

Museums are the places where a culture's detritus goes to find its final resting place and valuation, but what happens when the museums crumble away? The meta-archivists at Slought are tackling that question with "Commercial America," a — well, they hesitate to even call it a show — a display of objects formerly housed at Philly's long-defunct Commercial Museum. The city dispersed most of the artifacts to other museums and cultural institutions, but the dregs remained in storage for 19 years before being discarded in February. Slought's show is thus made up of items that were 24 hours from being garbage, and will be exhibited as-is, sans context or descriptions. Antiquated dioramas, wicker baskets, horse saddles, even filing systems and letters from the museum's files — in other words, a bunch of stuff, lifting the curatorial filter and allowing each viewer to devise his own narrative for a gathering of ephemera.

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