"Cultural Hypothecary" by Alison Pebworth at MASS MoCa

Having a spot of golden root tea

It's not often that you have the chance to enjoy a cup of tea in a museum gallery. Beverages aren't typically allowed for fear of klutzes like me damaging the art. What was going on? 

Jayne and I had wandered into Alison Pebworth's "Cultural Apothecary." As I'm sure you know, apothecaries were the precursors to today's pharmacies. Even the name sounds old fashioned, doesn't it? So in the days of yore, you would hit up the local apothecary when you were sick. But what, pray tell, is a cultural apothecary? 

The guiding principle behind Pebworth's installation is "Before we find a cure we must know what ails us. Agreed, but where was she going with this? Pebworth believes that what ails many of us today is Americanitis. It turns out this isn't a malady Pebworth made up for purposes of her exhibit. Instead, it's a condition diagnosed more than a century ago that's caused by too much stress, too little sleep, rushed meals and technology changing too fast to keep up with. Does this sound familiar? 

Registering my state of mind 

The exhibit features a number of participatory stations designed to help visitors determine if they are suffering from Americanitis. If you look carefully, you'll see that the plates in front of us at the bar hold a little red ball. When we had finished our tea, we popped over to the heart-shaped station shown here. We then registered how we were feeling at that moment by dropping our balls into the applicable valves.The options were anger, fear, gratitude, grief, hope, joy, loneliness and shame. 

The results are tallied weekly and posted. Dating back to the exhibit's opening in February, the top two emotions people registered feeling were hope and gratitude. Fear and joy competed for third place. Interesting. 

Another station gives visitors the opportunity to jot down their thoughts on the causes of Americanitis today. My contribution was the potential for isolation that comes with our technologically driven world. (I get the irony as I write this blog on my laptop to be distributed via the internet.) To the best of my recollection, the exhibit doesn't post results from this inquiry. It's more of a "physician heal thyself" opportunity. 

Hopes and dreams make up this sculpture

Then there was this sculpture hanging in the center of the room. It too is heart-shaped, and it expands daily as visitors add their droplet-shaped papers on which they've put their hopes and dreams out to the universe. I found this post on Instagram in which you can see some of the contributions. I'm struck by how heartbreaking many of these responses are. I'm not naive enough to think that these "tears" were chosen randomly for the Instagram post, but I do believe this exhibit both allows and encourages honesty in participants. After all, nobody is ever going to know what you contributed. 

You might wonder whether Pebworth is gathering this data for any larger purpose. The answer is no. In this terrific interview, she explained. "The science and the data collection were never meant to be the predominant thing. I mean, what do I know about science or data collection or anything? I'm just kind of playing with our very American obsession with data and slowing it down into a visceral experience and using play as its own critique of our dependence on consumer-driven analysis."

Causes include distance from nature,
rapid eating and excessive punctuality

For more on Americanitis, click here to read an article in Smithsonian Magazine. It's worth looking at just for Rexall's ads for the elixir the company created to help people suffering from the malady. Rexall began selling the product -- which contained alcohol, cannabis and chloroform -- in 1903. There were separate ads created to appeal to "Over-Wrought Business Men," "Nervous, Over-Wrought and Run Down Women," and boys and girls who are "thin or nervous." Talk about targeted marketing. 

And if you are a NYT subscriber, you can also read this article penned by a writer after he stumbled upon a different ad for the elixir. He called it "the most amazing piece of promotion he'd ever seen, not that it was obvious what was being promoted." The ad guaranteed that anyone who took the drug would feel younger. Who wouldn't be tempted? 

 "Cultural Apothecary" continues at MASS MoCa through September 7th. Don't miss it if you're in the area. For more on the exhibit, click here. I would love to see the experience come to Sarasota Art Museum. Just throwing it out there...