Museum curators must have a warped relationship to reality. To view the objects they display as actual objects of the world, they’d not do their profession any good service. The objects they display must be viewed as objects of a fantasy land. The entire goal of a museum, art or history, is to transport the ticket holder into something more valuable than the world they came from. I can’t help but feel that I’d be bad at such a job. Where is the line between worlds – fantasy vs real, scholarly vs entertainment, social vs independent? While juggling the real and unreal, these wardens of wonder need a sense of inspiration and industrial design as they build their sets and pick their objects. They must have some empathic foresight into the ticket holder’s wants and they must work under the limitations of the museum’s management. They, they, they are the key to how one feels browsing the objects of yesterday and the art of the cosmos within the confines of a specific exhibition hall; and like I said, standing in the grandiose chamber of the Bishop Museum in Oahu, I feel I’d be bad at their job. What about the others – The Ticket Holders?
Why is a whale hanging on the ceiling? Most museums I’ve stumbled through, with an affiliation to the sea, have created some version of whale-on-ceiling. Do they share architects? Here in the Bishop Museum, 5000 miles from Nantucket, a sperm whale is suspended from the rafters of the main chamber’s ceilings. One enters the place and, by some invisible pull, is forced to look up. I look around. There, 40 feet above, a soundless whale is suspended, in poise and perfect motion, in a void, like the submarine sea, air, floating by cables, perhaps, with no battle wound, fiberglass or bones, whole or half or both, for to-be awe-inspiring, where maws agape, and upwards breathing, and ticket holders think the thoughts relative to phrenological truths, hanging loose, in speech, in want of deep phrase, though blow air through teeth to quell unease, sounds gnashingly shallow, projected up in the hollow, “Wow,” “Dang that’s big,” or “Is that a whale?”
In Aldous Huxley’s “Doors of Perception” architecture, specifically religious venues with stained glass, are built to make man feel small, and stutter in the ripple of the universe. On the opposite side of the library, Ayn Rand paints the inverse; her architect builds to celebrate man as the center of the universe. Her whale is hung by a noose. His is out at sea, breaching the surface to grab the light.
Spatial awareness washes over us in the museum’s great hall. Size, in its enormity, reminds us comparatively of our own size. But this measurement is unimportant after deep inspection or brief silent moments. Substance is the prolonged interest, and bears more matter. Does a whale, unalive, suspended on the ceiling, reassign our understanding of air? Is this the cheap trick of designers to place us under a water world, with a whale above? “It’s like we’re swimming, or “it’s like she’s swimming over us,” so hopes the aforementioned designer wishes someone squeaks… I see air.
So, maybe woman walks through the transitory entranceway and, exposed to the chamber, with whale flying above, falls for the designer’s ploy. All at once they imagine their own bubbles floating upwards. Their weight decreases and they buoy around the depth, taking view as if a fish with a brain. They no doubt would think this about the whale:
“How could it be suspended? Should it not be anchored to the deck? Tethered to the bottom, so as not to float to the ceiling, bloated and gaseous.”
[They’d remember that story about human Texans in 1916 who, with a proper noose and gallows, hung a circus elephant who had apparently “murdered its keeper,” blind-fold and all.]
“This whale cannot be hung, when the trap door opens, it’d fly away like an albatross. And there’s no neck! The electric chair would not work properly in such deep water. The next best bet would be a roman crucifixion. A cross of course would work in the sea as easy as it’d work in heaven, it’d just be easier to raise, and sharks, instead of black birds (perhaps flying over from the Impenitent Thief), would come to pray. Nailed down, only our whale’s head would float, and it’d be forced to constantly view what us mortals crave. Or, if Ahab, we could trick ourselves into sailing the down the ebb of the spiraling river to Pandemonium.
So the Bishop museum starts on the Ocean Floor and up we go, past the 2nd level of man, and to the 3rd level, the territory of Polynesian gods. This is where we see the backside of the Whale: its skeleton and its tiny plastic heart. What do you want from me designer? I don’t know. I don’t get it. Could you suspend reality as you suspend this whale? Could you hang it?
Bradley Angle
About the Author
My professional focus is on behavioral attributes of mariners in the 21st century. I believe floating platforms can be viewed as laboratories. The cool thing about vessels, in a historical and modern sense, is the documentation that goes along with any voyage (navigation, action, personnel, etc). Moving deep into the world of social phenomena at sea, there is a constant connection to stories, not just their content, but their author’s attitude. I want to collect as many sea stories as possible and I am already doing so. While collecting these stories, I’d like to collect info on the authors too. Have an interests in sharing a story or helping us with our collection and publication efforts? Contact us throuh the link at the bottom of this page!
