My museum

I spent the summer doing an extreme home makeover of my "museum" (a.k.a. my apartment) and now it is a jewel, although you wouldn't know it from the photos I was able to take. My mom Donna Gritman is my collections manager and I need her to return as official photographer. When she and my sister visited in June, we weeded out my books and clothes, organized my papers, installed and rearranged furniture, and inventoried the collections. After they left, I had the place repainted, the pictures rehung, and my treasures reshelved.

The most notable of the treasures in my personal cabinet of curiosities include a baboon skull ▪ emu and ostrich eggs ▪ woolly mammoth hair and tooth ▪ petrified wood ▪ a child’s casket ▪ cabinet card of Tocci Brothers, conjoined twins ▪ gravestone with accompanying death certificate ▪ postmortem photos ▪ Victorian mourning jewelry ▪ funeral home memorabilia ▪ Mexican Day of the Dead handicrafts. I consider myself the curator, but can no longer handle the objects with the care needed, so I enlisted the help of assistant curators Megan Distin McCabe, Karen Roberts McNamara, and Deb. Weiner.

I was told one time that being in my place was like being in a wing of the Metropolitan Museum. And at the party to mark my transfer from Georgetown University Press to the Graduate School, my colleague Gail Grella said the usual kind words about me, but added a comment I'll never forget: "Chris has the best show-and-tell of anyone I know!"