The Museum of Anything was an installation at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh on 31 May 2014. A revised version of the earlier Museum of Everything at the University of Edinburgh, it followed the same principles. An imaginary museum created from 8×5″ file cards, it invited visitors to name, draw, or otherwise describe an object they’d like to include. And then it invited them to repeat the process until they’d had enough. I kicked things off with 50 or so cards from the earlier installation – the principle will be familiar to anyone who makes sourdough bread – and then let people get on with it. about 100 or so showed up and we had several hundred contributions in all, some daringly occupying floorspace, or fixed to a pillar. There was music most of the day: an eclectic soundtrack of Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis, Bert Jansch, the Grateful Dead, Metallica and some other stuff I’ve now forgotten. Short video of the day here:

One of our visitors, Boram Lee wondered why it was now the ‘Museum of Anything’ and not the ‘Museum of Everything’ as it had been originally. The short answer is that it turned out were (indeed, are) a number of ‘Museums of Everything’ in the world, including an inexplicably popular BBC radio show. So we needed a different name. As it happened, Fruitmarket liked the revised name better, so it stuck. In any case, if anyone would like a further installation of the Museum, contact me here: https://richardjwilliams.net/contact-me/ I’d be happy to discuss any future iterations.

Richard