Objectifying Objects: Omitting Ideology in Gustav Stickley Craftsman Period Rooms

This paper examines the ideological implications of showing craft objects in period rooms and how this display technique functions within museums. In particular, the paper considers how pieces from the ideologically-motivated nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts Movement are shown: do museums emphasize or elide the political underpinnings of the movement? The paper takes into account two installations of recreated Craftsman rooms designed to feature the work of the American Arts and Crafts practitioner, Gustav Stickley. The first room was shown in International Arts and Crafts at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, 2005; the second room was shown in Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement in New Jersey, Texas, and California. This paper considers current museum practices while also addressing nineteenth-century perceptions about the functions of display. This comparison is further complicated by the difference in ideological beliefs between British and American practitioners of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Each movement’s varying comfort with commercialism and capitalism affected the production of the objects and their intended use, but opinions about social reform also influenced the approach to the display of works. This paper will consider whether the rooms encourage an illusion of domesticity that allows the visitors to consider the objects as commodities, and whether any such illusion neglects the original emphasis on the ethical circumstances of production and consumption. In other words, do current museum displays depoliticize the Arts and Crafts Movement in favor of commercialized display that fetishizes the art objects?