Marisa Olson: Collect Call

In 1969, the Rhode Island School of Design’s art museum invited Andy Warhol to guest-curate an exhibition drawn from their collection. The resulting presentation was a hybrid museum collection show and artist installation. Inspired by Warhol’s exhibition, Collect Call is the first in a new series of Samek Art Museum projects that invite artists to mix the collection, artistic practices, and public memory in new ways.
— Richard Rinehart, Director, Samek Art Museum

Artist’s Statement
I’ve called my ongoing series of gilded technological devices “Time Capsules” because I believe that each of these objects is a vessel — a capsule of the moment in time they were made that encompasses all of the desires (or fears) that went into their invention, production, and consumption. I’m interested in the reasons why we feel constantly compelled to upgrade to new devices, intensely coveting one phone or camera, only to later discard it for the next model. In this sense, I’ve been collecting people’s once-beloved trash and restoring it to treasure for years. For Collect Call I wanted to think about how these ideas could sit in dialogue with the practice of museum collecting, and to specifically mine the Samek’s archives for time capsules of its own — in this case, a series of compelling images that retroactively become snapshots of technologically-specific moments. The conversation was extended to the Lewisburg community via a call for retired telephones, so that viewers might find a personal way to dial-in to the issues raised.
— Marisa Olson