It was a lighthearted afternoon at The Drexel Collection. I was in our back storage room photographing photographs–somewhat of an oxymoron, yes, but truly that's what I was doing. In doing so, I stumbled across some gorgeous Larry Clark prints and some loan objects for our upcoming exhibition, so overall it was a fun and eventful day. It was even more so after the director and curator of The Drexel Collection, Lynn Clouser Waddell, entered the storage room while I was cataloging. After a quiet laugh she exclaimed, “Um, Kasia, you have a new object label to write.” Slightly confused, yet willing to help with the task I replied, “Oh? For what?” To which she said, “You left the Windex bottle in the case yesterday.” 

Before I continue on, let’s backtrack to the events of the previous day. I came in to help out for a while at the collections before a final exam I had later that afternoon. A little behind-the-scenes detail of museum work was occurring and we had to deinstall a case in The Museum of Where We Are which, since December, had occupied our Rincliffe Gallery. One of the lights in the case burnt out so we had to remove all of the objects and shelving so the electrician could replace it. Once he was done with his work, I was tasked with cleaning the glass in the case–hence, Windex–and replacing the objects back to their temporary home. With museum work being the full-contact sport that it is, cleaning the case became a bit of a scene. Anyone passing by the gallery that day probably would have had more than a few questions at the image of a five-foot-tall student, shoeless, in leggings and a hoodie, lying flat underneath the case’s shelving, cleaning fingerprints off the underside of the glass. Satisfied with a job well done, I replaced all of the objects and shut the case, but the excitement was not over yet as my actions somehow tripped the alarm on the case. My misstep was announced throughout Drexel’s Main Building in the form of a security alarm, which sounded dangerously close to its distant relative whose job it is to clear a building when there’s a fire present. Regardless, the case was closed and locked as we hustled away to call someone to tend to the alarm before the entirety of Main Building poured out onto Chestnut Street to avoid a premature fiery death. However, all was well in the end–or so I thought. 

Flash-forward and I’m standing in storage, slightly puzzled by the request Lynn had just made, until a wave of realization swept over me and I turned red with embarrassment. I now understood that in the wake of the blaring alarm, I had distractedly forgotten the bottle of blue cleaning fluid and locked it away in the case along with a variety of other objects, who were now probably confused at the arrival of this new case-mate. The little blue bane of my existence hadn’t been discovered until my coworker, Mary Kulesa, was showing a friend around the exhibition and asked if we had added a new object to the case for the show’s closing. Plot twist, we had not–intentionally at least. We all had a hearty laugh over the Windex bottle and made several subsequent jokes, including the title of this very blog post. To make the situation even more silly, I had led an entire tour group through the exhibition just an hour earlier, and no one, including Lynn herself, noticed a single thing out of place. Which is really kind of beautiful in a way, isn’t it? Before I get into that, I am nothing if not a woman of my word, so without further ado here is my object label for The Museum of Where We Are: 

“Windex Bottle

SC Johnson, circa 2022, plastic, cleaning fluid, height: 10.7 inches

What could a mostly used Windex Bottle possibly say about resilience and following our dreams? 

The answer to this did not occur to me until just recently. You see, a bottle of Windex is not something I am unfamiliar with. Like many, I’ve used it and been aware of its existence for as long as I could remember. Whether I was helping my mother clean the house, wiping tables at my first “big girl” job at a pizzeria, or spraying the walls of my freshman year dorm room so my command strips would stick properly, I always mindlessly reached for that iconic bottle. More significantly, I recall using it to clear off surfaces at my first work-study job freshman year in the biology prep lab. Shockingly, I did not always aspire to be a future art historian, instead I had my sights set on a different kind of doctorate–one in medicine. For reasons I am still unsure of, I thought that was my dream. I’m unclear if I was blinded by the assumption it would be a high-paying profession, attracted to the clear-cut path it laid out for my future, or if I genuinely believed achieving this was the only way to prove my intelligence–to finally be taken seriously. However, the truth will out as they say and my interest was waning in a more noticeable way as the terms dragged on. But art was always a breath of fresh air for me. It comforted me when I lost interest in everything else I studied. Soon it was all I wanted, all I glowed over. 

After much cognitive dissonance and self-reflection, I lept. To pursue what genuinely made me happy was scary at first and I often doubted my decision in those early days, but my mother always told me, “do what you love, and success will follow.” Like most other things, she wasn’t wrong. Today, I use that same bottle of Windex to wipe glass display cases and shelves at my position here at The Drexel Collection–a singular constant in a world that has changed so much for me. Sometimes I even accidentally close a case back up with that very Windex bottle still inside. But then I’m reminded that the Windex bottle I just abandoned is nestled inside a case with objects belonging to an exhibition that I had the pleasure of helping to make possible, and I feel blessed, nostalgic even. A year ago, I never could have imagined that would be my current interaction with an object I have been so familiar with my whole life. I’d like to imagine this bottle is proud of me, proud to be left behind in this case, proud to witness someone finally making their wildest dreams a reality.” 

After partaking in this exercise, I’m amazed that our students were able to keep their object labels to a 200-word limit–brevity has never been my strong suit. However, I think it adequately summarizes what I loved so much about this silly moment. That’s what I meant earlier when I called this happy accident, “beautiful in a way.” It also taught me some important lessons about The Museum of Where We Are. Objects are humankind’s witnesses. They watch us as we grow, learn, love, hurt. They are the most confidential secret-keepers and wealths of information. Every object in this show has done that for the student who submitted them, and this show has gifted everyone who sees it with the chance to be observed by these objects as well. In a way, objects are truly the most omniscient things we could ever imagine. Alas, we will never be able to know all the things that they do, no matter how hard we try. If only they could talk!