The Museum of Small and Overlooked Things

The Museum of Small and Overlooked Things (Das Museum der Kleinen und Unwichtigen Dinge) is a physical archive of objects, collected and curated by the young people of Mainz. Children in schools across the city have been asked to choose objects for the collection that they care about or value, but that adults think are unimportant.

The museum is a portrait of the children of Mainz at this moment in time. Through this collection of overlooked objects adults will have the chance to understand the joys, concerns and preoccupations of the city’s youngest inhabitants. At the same time, the museum is also a means of reflecting on a more political notion of “importance” and the way certain objects, places and ideas are used to consolidate power within the apparatus of the civic state. Who gets to determine what is important and should be valued and treasured and saved? Where and why are those decisions made?

The museum is a playful way of upending the traditional way in which meaning is made through museums and other civic institutions. It is a carnivalesque re-imagining of the city museum as a celebration of the marginal, the insignificant and the overlooked.

Created by Andy Field & Beckie Darlington
Commissioned by Staatstheaters Mainz