CITIZEN CURATED
is an experience and a service that blends oral history collection, estate planning, and personal history curation
As your personal ethnographer, I will curate your most treasured items.
The end result is a personalized "ethnographic visual scrapbook”: a curated look at your personal artifacts, featuring both curatorial prose and visual documentation --- photography, audio and/or video capture.
How it Works:
Based on anthropological methodology—or ethnography—each “citizen” being curated will be asked a series of questions to help identify the objects or “artifacts” that tell their story.
Each highlighted artifact will be accompanied with a synthesis of factual information regarding the treasured item (origin, dates, creators/designers, materials, etc., as would appear on a museum placard) plus the personal stories that give them their unique pricelessness.
The final product is personalized "ethnographic visual scrapbook”: a curated look at your personal artifacts.
Commissioning a Curated Citizen project is just as much about engaging in an experience as it is producing a record of that process.
Why do I want to be a “Citizen Curated”?
Whether as a gift, a personal time capsule, an exercise in self-discovery or as a tool of estate planning, at its heart, Citizen Curated works to preserve and conserve the authentic history and legacy of real people — histories that will be lost if we don’t set out to capture them.
Tool of Self Discovery
A good ethnographer is almost like a therapist getting to the heart of what you value!
Milestone Gift
Serving as a time capsule, a Citizen Curated project can be created around the unifying thread of a specific time or event to be celebrated.
A Citizen Curated experience is a unique, personalized, and sentimental gift ideal for anniversaries, graduations, baby showers and weddings.
For the Modern Nomad
As society becomes more migratory, creating a Citizen Curated project is in many ways emotional insurance — a grown up lovey. Citizens are able to keep valued objects close despite distance, able to be shared with others.
Estate Planning
Too often critical information about personal artifacts is lost when a loved one passes.
Citizen Curated will provide a dual pronged service of capturing this critical information for families and future generations, while also cataloging a loved ones possessions as a proactive approach to estate planning.
“It’s as if Marie Kondo, from the Life Changing Magic of Tidying, annotated all of your sentimental clutter BEFORE helping you decide what to keep and what to throw away.”
The Story of an Artifact
LOVING CUP
To embrace my husband’s Irish cultural traditions into our wedding, we decided to include a loving cup in our ceremony.
The use of the wine cup or Loving Cup at a wedding is an ancient tradition. By the 15th century it was common for the Celtic people to toast each other with a ceremonial Loving Cup. The purpose of the Loving Cup ceremony is for the bride and groom to share their first drink together as wife and husband and to show the coming together of two families.
This loving cup from the late 1800s was a wedding gift . We will pass it on as family heirlooms to our children.
“GOLDEN NUGGET”
This "golden nugget" was a prize earned in a vending machine while visiting my great grandmother (Sophie) in Miami, Florida when I was about 5 years old. While I can’t remember if someone told me it was a real golden nugget or if in my child vision of the world I decided it was, I’ve kept it ever since in a little maroon velvet sachet with the rest of my other prized possession from childhood.
GRANDMA’S ENGAGMENT RING
This ring was my maternal grandmothers engagement ring, which she designed herself in 1955, highlighting her new initials. She gave it to me as a gift in my early 30s. I particularly like it because it is so ahead of its time in terms of style. I had to joke with my grandma that she was a little bit gangster back in the day.
By using the word “artifact” we are giving reverence and weight to the true value of these items and preserving their embedded significance.
Inherited.
Objects can chart the journey, struggles and successes of our families.
Chosen.
Objects connect us with the events, trips and every day adventurers that make up our personal narrative.
Gifted.
Objects represent life milestones, momentous occasions or an intimate gesture.
KALIMBA
This kalimba, which an Afro-Caribbean musical instrument, was a decoration in my grandparents house in Massapequa, New York. It sat on the white upright piano in what was called the “playroom.” I love this little instrument all through my childhood and my grandmother gifted it to me when I finally had a home of my own.
While the label on the back says it was made in South Africa by the Hugh Tracey African Musical Instruments LTD, who began popularizing these instruments in 1954, this Kalimba is likely from the early 1960-1968 when they became popular in the U.S. There is another sicker from Carroll Sound in Palisades Park, NJ where it was likely purchased.
TAG FROM WEDDING DRESS
“I bought my wedding dress for $300 at a pop up shop at 69 Mercer Street (Soho) between Broome St and Spring Street in New York City.
It was early 2009 and an unknown fashion editor was selling her holdings with the financial recession as the backdrop. I was walking with Jason, my new fiancé, and spotted the 1930s white silk bias cut dress on a mannequin in the window. Not a drop of lace or embellishment to be found, no tags to indicate the designer, only the age and style of garment. And while you aren't meant to have the groom see you before your wedding day I tried it on with him, the very first wedding dress I ever tried on. It was fated.
I’ve kept this tag as a memory of that day, but I know without the story being told here, anyone else would think it was just a scrap of paper for the trash.”
FIRST ANNIVERSARY
My husband gave me this necklace as a gift for our first wedding anniversary. Bought it a little shop in Dublin Ireland, when visiting his parents, part of its significance to me is that even at the beginning of our marriage he knew me so well —- understanding I like things that are a little usual and handcrafted. It would probably be something I would have admired but not bought myself.
Does the average person really have things worth curating?
We all have sacred objects. What makes an object irreplaceable often has nothing to do with its monetary worth, in fact, in many cases it is the opposite. Here value emanates from an objects emotional significance and the stories behind it.
The Gumball Machine Engagement Ring
“Jason and I had been dating for almost 2 years. He had just bought an apartment that I was planning to move into, at least for part of the time. We began to do all the domestic shopping of a nesting couple, spending the day at a furniture warehouse in Brooklyn.
We were getting to the point in our relationship where we would either get engaged or I would break it off.
As we walked back to the train we went into a bodega for a drink and spotted a gum ball machine. Jason put in some change and out came this ring. Down on bended knee he asked me to marry him … though it wasn’t the official proposal, I wore it on my hand —- which turned green from the fake metal —- until the real proposal happened a few weeks after.
I’m sure this would end up in the trash if you didn’t know the story.”
