Two years ago I started keeping a list of types of books I’d like to read. One of the types of books on that list: “a memoir by a big-city trash collector.”
I think a memoir written by a sanitation worker based in a major metropolis could be fascinating. What kinds of things do they come across? Not just in the trash, but in the course of picking it up. What, or who, do they see? Hear? Encounter? Find? Learn? How does their job shape their perspective on the world and the people and the things that inhabit it? I’ve yet to find such a memoir, but I did find something similar…ish.
Now-retired New York City Sanitation worker Nelson Molina started his museum of treasure/trash by accident: One day he picked out items from the trash on his route that seemed salvageable and saved them. He kept at it, and his Treasures in the Trash museum was slowly born. More than thirty-some years later, the collection now has over 45,000 pieces.
Selected pieces from the collection were exhibited last summer in a show titled What is Here is Open: Selections from the Treasures in the Trash Collection by/at Hunter East Harlem Gallery. From the gallery’s website:
What is Here is Open: Selections from the Treasures in the Trash Collection is an exhibition that places works by seven New York City-based contemporary artists alongside a selection of Molina’s found objects. Molina, along with curator Alicia Grullón, will choose objects from the Treasures in the Trash Collection to accompany the contemporary artists’ works, creating unique, site-specific installations at the Hunter East Harlem Gallery. These ephemeral installations blur the lines between art, memory, and archive, and take on both an anthropological and artistic resolve that rests in community’s vision of itself. The resulting project emphasizes the artistic and curatorial processes of those who make, those who collect, and those who arrange, engaging the similarities among these actions.
Most of the discarded items in Molina’s museum were collected in and around his local neighborhood of East Harlem, and What is Here is Open seeks to engage in a dialogue on the past, present, and future identity of this community…
What is Here is Open is inspired by Fred Wilson’s curatorial projects, including Rooms with a View: The Struggle Between Culture, Content, and Context in Art (Bronx Council of the Arts, 1987-1988) and his seminal Mining the Museum (Maryland Historical Society, 1992). In his exhibition projects, Wilson “focused on the meaning of the gallery or museum as both a formal space and an ideological construct.” His projects challenged cultural institutions and their structure as elitist and racist, consciously leaving out narratives from poorer black communities in history and art. What is Here is Open both explores and challenges historical power in mainstream art and cultural institutions by asking: Who gets to select what art is, and who can create the spaces that house it?
The collection is currently housed in Manhattan 11, the same working garage in which it began. Because it’s housed in a working garage, it isn’t open to the public (even pre-Covid the collection wasn’t open to the public).
New York’s Sanitation Foundation is currently raising funds to establish the city’s first-ever sanitation museum, and is working to find Treasures in the Trash a permanent home:
Through his tireless efforts to rescue, repair, and organize these discarded objects, Molina reminds us that there are alternatives to waste, and gives us an opportunity to pause and consider our own consumption habits. The vast array of items is a stunning visual reminder of what we value — or don’t value — and the scale of what we throw away. A keen observer can also see smaller narratives woven throughout, telling us stories of Harlem, of Nelson’s life, and of New York City itself.
The Foundation stewards this collection by offering public tours, partnering with other organizations for special exhibits, and ultimately strives to find a permanent home for this incredible collection.
If the world ever re-opens and tours of this space go back on the schedule, I’d be interested in visiting the next time I’m in New York. But really, I’d love to *read* a full-length work by a sanitation worker—like a collection of essays, perhaps grouped into sections by route or time period or categories of discarded items. And I’d buy the fuck out of a thoughtfully designed printed photoessay or catalogue (or series of either) of Molina’s collection. Bonus points if textual essays were paired with photos of pieces from the collection. Double bonus points if some pieces told the stories of people who rediscovered unintentionally discarded items, or long-lost family heirlooms and such.
Until then, some related reading from my bookshelf:
The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster, a profile of Sandra Pankhurst, a trans woman and former sex worker who founded a trauma cleaning business upon noticing a need in the industry after becoming one of Australia’s first female funeral directors. This book is as wild of a ride (in a good way) as it sounds.
Coming Clean: A Memoir, a memoir by a woman who grew up with a father who was a hoarder. Didn’t grab me the way the The Trauma Cleaner did, but it’s a good quick read.
American Interiors, a photoessay of the interior of American veterans’ vehicles, taken from the driver seat. There’s a textual essay at the end of the book, and photos from the book are available on the photographer’s website and the publisher’s website.
El Sueño Americano/The American Dream, a photoessay by Tom Kiefer, a former janitor at Customs and Border Patrol, “of the personal belongings carried by migrants and those seeking asylum that were seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at a processing facility near the U.S./Mexico border in southwest Arizona. These belongings, necessary for hygiene, comfort and survival, were deemed ‘non-essential’ or ‘potentially lethal,'” and were discarded by those who seized them.