We sent out the following message: Do you have an object whose story you would like to share? An heirloom, an artwork, a toothbrush, a stone? An object which has inspired you, dominated you, educated you, exalted or degraded you? For our second exhibition of the Migration year, we invite you to lend us your object and include with it everything you know about it. We are especially interested in the part of the story that is the object’s alone: it’s history as material, as an economic entity, as waste, or as the impetus for other migratory tales.

This query brought us over 50 objects which are the jumping off point for a three-month exploration of the Migration of Objects.

The objects on display range from a 50 million year old “dinosaur fart” (or gas bubble) to a collection of wild bird’s stomach contents collected in the early 20th C for “scientific” purposes. There are also talismans, mundane objects with secret meanings, things of beauty and much more.

We will view them as independent beings with stories of their own, stories that began before the object’s encounter with its current owner and that will likely continue long after they part. The stories may migrate into the economic, the industrial, the political, the historical, the geologic, the environmental and so on as visitors add to the stories on display with information they may have about the object in question.

This object submitted by our collaborators, Friends of the Pleistocene, has a story in which we humans barely figure at all.

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With area residents long-gone to other neighborhoods and cities, other creatures are seen nosing amongst the ruins, perhaps attracted by the low- to non-existent overhead. The video is on display in the gallery in close proximity to the Impressionistic Map of the Katrina/Rita Diaspora, by geographer-artist Marie Cieri, providing a visual explication of where the humans migrated to.

Our first screening, on November 1st, will feature Migratory Media: An Evening of Appropriation and Experimental Animation with short films by Lillian Schwartz, Toshio Matsumoto, Steve Cossman, LJ Frezza, Douglas Goodwin & Rebecca Baron.

Proteus has three CD players with the recording in them so three visitors can go on the walk together. A lovely activity for an autumn day.

As an off-site collaboration with the Migration year at Proteus, the Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives has also created a small Migration library of its own books which is on view in the Brooklyn Museum Library Reading Room. The Migration library contains some of the Museum’s books on birds and migration, including The Language of the birds: tales, texts, & poems of interspecies communication; The life and lore of the bird in nature, art, myth, and literature; Birds in Mogul art and many more. The Library’s Reading Room is open to the public Wednesdays through Fridays 11-4:30. To see a bibliography of the books selected for the Museum’s Migration library, click here. Come visit and see these books and get acquainted with the treasure of BMLA.

Ami, a Tokyo artist and musician, is making a music-feather installation at Proteus by pasting millions of feathers made of torn paper to the walls, following a pattern dictated by the acoustical changes she perceives as she sings. Each feather works as a sound reflector or music instrument, changing the acoustics of the space. She sings, pastes, listens and, as she says, “little by little, the space starts to play its own music.”

During the process, Ami “feels herself completely vanished and becomes to the particles like electrons and neutrons for melting into the feathers and the music of the space. She feels both absence and existence, she feels she can travel everywhere.”

Ami needs paper donations to complete the projects. Please bring clear, white paper if you can. Off white and textured paper also welcome.

We invite you to join Study Hall for quiet contemplation, study and work. Study Hall turns our galleries into writing rooms so that members can work in a communal setting filled with art, artifacts and books.

For $50 per month, Study Hall is open to members on weekdays from 10am-6pm.

Aileen Bassis, Meredith Bergmann, The Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives, Lola Bunting, Marie Cieri, Viv Corringham, Dillon de Give,  Sarah Lederman, Portia Munson, Lance Rutledge, Randall Stoltzfus, Lorena Turner, and, in partnership with Reanimation Library, Ami Yamasaki.