My grandmother had a collection of novelty salt-and-pepper shakers. She kept them stacked on risers in display cabinets, her own tiny army of potential spice delivery. There were probably 150 sets – tiny pendant sculptures in ceramic or cast metal of boots or cacti or animals – all collected in the middle decades of the 20th century on her travels or given to her by friends or family. The majority of the sets were innocuous examples of mid-century kitsch, but a few were racial caricatures of Black, Japanese, Chinese, or Native American figures. 

Even before my grandmother died in the late 1990s, my mother insisted that these offensive sets be removed from the display. Social mores change, and what was considered commonplace, even (regrettably) normal, in 1960 was no longer so thirty years later. The offending pairs were wrapped up and hidden in a cabinet out of sight. 

Once my grandmother died, the army was disbanded, deemed clutter too unwieldy to dust and out of step with contemporary interior decorating trends. Some sets were donated; some were sold on Ebay to the still-alive enthusiastic flamingo kitsch collectors or whatever (to become someone else’s problem another day). 

The racist sets, though? We didn’t know what to do with them. Donating them would require acknowledging we had them. Selling them would mean receiving money from someone who potentially thought these ideas were still acceptable. We wanted the ideas out of circulation. We didn’t want to be a part of perpetuating racism and, admittedly, we didn’t want to face that these offensive caricatures were somehow “of us.” We didn’t want to own them but we didn’t want to own up to having them, either. We wanted to forget that they existed and so we kept them sequestered in the cabinet. They’re still there. All wrapped up with nowhere to go. 

I’ve been thinking about my grandmother’s salt-and-pepper shakers in the context of what is put on view in museums or public exhibition spaces and what is relegated to storage. It’s common knowledge that collecting institutions keep the majority of their collections in storage. Estimates range from 80% of holdings in storage to a whopping 99% of holdings in storage. They have more stuff than they have display space. (Thankfully my grandmother didn’t have that many salt-and-pepper shakers.)

In recent years, museums and exhibition spaces have paid renewed and focused attention to the narrative and impression offered by objects on display in public spaces. Gone are the days that the public is willing to accept the moral authority of any institution to display objects and create narratives as they see fit; if anything, the moral authority of institutions is more suspect than ever before. In this climate, curators and staff are reluctant to display works with any potential to offend, be that potential a question of acquisition, subject matter, or the identity of the artist. There isn’t enough display space, anyway.

This reluctance to display, however, most often does not result in the deaccessioning of the items in question. In part, this is due to the complexities of deaccession regulation. But there is also the question of what to do with the items. An object can be both historically valuable and unworthy of display at the same time. The objects may be donated by prominent patrons or community figures with whom the institution wishes to maintain a positive relationship. 

Sponsor

There are cases in which restitution is the clear course of action. In 2022, the Portland Art Museum returned nine artworks to Tlingit communities in Alaska. The objects were purchased by the Portland Art Museum in 1948 but collected between 1921 and 1944 by an Alaskan school administrator. In 2002, the Naanya.aayi clan made a formal request to reclaim their objects. They had clear claims of unethical acquisition and an attachment to the items; they wanted them back. The process took two decades. 

Even in cases where both parties agree the items should be returned and resolution is relatively speedy – for example, the one-year process that resulted in the Museum of Natural History’s 2025 return of the Yucqout Whaler’s Shrine to its First Nation community in Canada – restitution remains complex. It requires two parties: the “holder” and the “supplicant”; the two have to be willing partners. Not all questionable objects will have someone willing or able to put in the time and energy to deal with the bureaucratic and logistical headaches of supplicating. 

There are cut-and-dried cases for restitution, but there are just as many, probably more, cases in which the solution is far less clear. If an object remains in storage and off view, how does someone know it is there? If no one is asking about an object, a “holder” is less likely to dig into issues of  unknown or unusual provenance to look for wrongdoing. The idea of “storage” conjures dust for a reason. Not all “holders” have the skills or capacity to track where an object may be from, or who may want it back. What happens when a “holder” knows they shouldn’t be in possession of an object, but no one is asking for it? What happens when there is no clearly identifiable or justifiable supplicant? 

Storage is often the solution to these murkier cases: Out of sight and out of having to question what the object means, or what it means that the object is held in the first place. What should be done when holdings are out of step with who we want to be but they’re “historic” or gifted by someone significant?

Institutions don’t display objects that compromise their current mission statements. The objects on display weave narratives in line with public opinion, ones that are palatable to contemporary sensibilities and politically expedient. The gallery is “public relations”; storage is for everything else, particularly anything that could raise questions about the collecting institution’s moral authority or values.

While this approach keeps unsavory objects out of view, it doesn’t erase their existence. Hiding objects in storage doesn’t make the uglier realities of history – racism, sexism, colonialism, unethical collecting practices, misguided ideas of all varieties – go away. We’re weaving the stories we want to tell and hear. We’re sanitizing history and therefore our own place in it while, sometimes even literally, ignoring the skeletons in the closets.

I start with my grandmother’s salt-and-pepper shaker collection because I want to acknowledge my own embeddedness in two interrelated problems: acknowledging that my grandmother owned and displayed offensive objects; and then hiding those objects because we didn’t know what else to do with them. Museums relegate objects to storage but I’ve done it too, albeit on a significantly smaller scale. I worry about what the fact that my grandmother had racist salt and pepper shakers says about me.  

Sponsor

I understand the “good riddance” approach. We want to be finished with the ugliness and usher in a new era with a clean slate: pretend the objects never existed and move on. The impulse to put these things away isn’t in and of itself, a bad one. It has allowed us to tell different stories, ones that have been overlooked. But putting the objects away hasn’t changed the fact that they exist, and given everything that is happening in the world, I can’t help thinking that this isn’t working as well as we’d like it to. 

Part of the problem is that the “hide it away” approach doesn’t force us to engage with the complicated questions that objects raise. In the case of the salt-and-pepper shakers: Why did my grandmother have them in the first place? Where did the racist stereotypes come from? How did she understand them at the time? Why would she have thought those worthy of display? What do we do with them now? It boils down to a larger question of how to acknowledge the complexity of history and, at the same time, actively create the world we want to live in?

I’m working on a project that aims to open a dialogue about what may be “in storage” or “not on view” both in terms of personal artifacts and institutional collections. I imagine there are plenty of objects in our collective possession that we’re unsure of what to do with for a variety of reasons. I’m not proposing that we necessarily put these things on display. I want to explore the possibility that engaging with some of these potentially more uncomfortable objects and stories could give us the ability to tell the stories we want to hear with more nuance and understanding. 

The shape of the project will depend on the sorts of things that people are willing to share and confront from their own storage spaces. As part of the project, I have an exhibition planned with the Bush Barn Art Center in July of 2026. I come to this project with academic credentials and writing experience in hand, but equally with a sense of openness, even vulnerability. I don’t know what this is going to look like, but I’m interested in the conversation and hope you will be, too. If you or someone you know has something “not on view” and are interested in participating in this project, please send an email to notonviewOR@gmail.com.