Today’s blog is from guest blogger, Martin Kim, who manages the Native Goods store at ASM. Martin is well known for entrancing visitors, museum staff, and students with engaging stories related to the objects for sale in the shop. When you purchase an object, you also go home with its story.  More about the museum store.

I have come to respect that we all have important stories to share.  Our stories, as gathered for the museum store, come from both the expected sources and, sometimes, unexpected sources.  As expected, I am always asking the artists I deal with to share their part of the story.  Most often, this is some of the most intimate material we can gather.

One potter told the story of how the pot she had just finished was an emotional transition for her.  Its remarkably fresh approach to its design came to her after years of stress and devotion as primary caregiver to her ailing mother.  For five years she had all but given up pottery in order to attend to her mother’s needs.  Then, some time after her mother’s death, she wanted to break free from the weight of the past and return to pottery.  Her next pot, one she had begun years before but had set aside, proved to be the much-needed step.  Unlike all previous work, this one did away with the heavy concentric lines that usually framed in her delicate designs.  This pot boldly discarded these signature elements that had kept her designs from shaping themselves against the pot’s contours.  I saw the difference immediately when she brought this piece in and first remarked on how soft and beautiful the edges of her designs were.  We both almost wept as she shared the personal story of this break-through with me.

As expected, important stories also come from our scholars.  Once, I grew concerned that our staff might not be completely faithful in sharing the exact details of some of these scholarly stories.  Learning as we were from second hand sources, I feared that  like the game of gossip, we might end up telling completely different stories than the ones we were charged to tell.  When I approached one of our department heads about this concern, her advise was as wise as it was brief.  “Don’t worry” she said.  “Just always remind yourself and your listeners that each of us knows a part of the story.  It is the very nature of the oral tradition that we all learn part of the story.  And it is the nature of that same tradition that the story is constantly growing and changing.”

This advice was particularly evident in a story about some used kick-balls we had acquired through a cultural anthropologist.  Many of our traders hold degrees in anthropology and/or are married into the cultures they represent.  I always liked these qualifications in a trader because I could be assured they were supporting communities they cared about and had bonds with.  When I bought these kick-balls from the trader they showed evidence of great wear and tear and it was explained to me that the Tarahumara (Ramamuri) Indians of Northern Sonora kicked them back and forth in a game, catching them with their feet as they raced through the narrow trails of the Sierra Madre Mountains.  It was a men’s sport, done in teams competing against one another, where no hands were allowed to touch the balls.  Well, I knew of the worldwide reputation of Tarahumara men as fine runners.  I could just imagine a fast-paced soccer-like game coming from these very athletic people but I couldn’t understand how they could race through the narrow winding mountain trails that barely cut their way through the dense mountain brush of the area.  Then, while sharing this amazing story with a group of visitors, one of them picked up the story from having recently visited the Tarahumara on their home ground.  As he filled in the details of the tradition, it turns out that it is a casual sport – much like kick-the-can – that’s done to kill time on the long journeys between small isolated villages.  So, unexpectedly, some of our best stories also come from our visitors!