The Museum of Nothing is currently in the omicron stage of development, with a Beta test opening on June 19, 2023, in the Red Barn Gallery at UCSB.What will be on view is a sample, mainly what I call "The Kitchen Collection." See Collections of Nothing for an account of what that is. Suffice it to say that it will cover approximately two hundred square feet of wall space with over 5000 discrete things.
See below and to the left for some possible images for the glossy gift-shop catalogue of The Museum of Nothing. And here is some text for the Introduction to that book:
The Museum of Nothing was founded in 2022 for the study, cherishment, and frivolous display of nothing in beautiful glass cases, also on shelves and pedestals. The museum aims to be jam-packed with more or less galore than you can fathom for your exclusive viewing pleasure. Nothing—our unfathomable nothing—aches to be hung with such flagrant insignificance, such inconsequential buzztalk, and such whimpering self-hatred, that the all-seeing eye of time immemorial shall weep with joy. In practice, both eyes will most likely do so. . . .
Founded in 1776, the museum responded to the founders’s insomniac fretting over all the possessions that Americans would eventually hold and then discharge as worthless—the tawny turkey feathers, musket ball cartons, and busted quilting needles. The fundamental mind simply halts at the halter of it all around the neck of nothingness. Were we to think these no-things could claim no repository, no card catalogue, no seat in the public lavatory of entitlement? Might there not be some edifice of brick and mortar to gather the accumulated vacancy of sense in the district of study? Thereto would arise a bastion, just beyond the reach of rationality or reason to exist. This very book would vanish from your hands, if The (stately) Museum of Nothing were not. Call me verbose, but then you’re just adding words to the flux, and soon we will have to establish a weir, which is where we are today, hydraulically speaking, clutching this catalogue as if our lives depended on it. . . .
Down each hall go corridors, lined on every expanse with walls. Lovely arches over the void seem especially redundant. Soaring ceilings run with pus. Grab a rag! After a simple handshake transaction at the outlandish turnstile, you will be granted affordances to behold whatever you might care to guess, if you care at all or have even given it a second thought. The vastness never seems to end, which leaves it up to you to end, or not to end, as you choose. . . . A box in the lobby stands waiting for your comments, which deserve to be stored for posterity and then some. As usual, there will never be a time like now to introduce the obvious.