Tag Archives: Clutch It

…In Your Purse, Week 4

Corinne C.

…In Your Purse, Week 3

Clara B.

…In Your Purse, Week 2

Natalie T.
Ballard

MOHAI welcomes Clutch It! The Purse and the Person on Saturday, November 20th. This exhibit celebrates 100 years of purses and the every-day objects people carried in them, showing us that history exists in the smallest things we carry. What’s in Your Purse? explores what every-day people in the Puget Sound area are carrying in their purses today. To participate, send a photo of your purse and its contents to social.media@seattlehistory.org Enjoy!

…In Your Purse, Week 1

Kathy

Wallingford

MOHAI welcomes Clutch It! The Purse and the Person on Saturday, November 20th. This exhibit celebrates 100 years of purses and the every-day objects people carried in them, showing us that history exists the smallest things we carry. What’s in Your Purse? explores what every-day people in the Puget Sound area are carrying in their purses today. To participate, send a photo of your purse and its contents to social.media@seattlehistory.org Enjoy!

…In Your Purse

On November 20th, MOHAI’s newest exhibit, Clutch It! The Purse and the Person opens. This exhibit delves into the little stories of what we carry with us, the histories of those forgotten bric-a-brac we tote with us in our purses and bags. It explores the sense of identity that many of us place on our personal sacks that come with us on all our adventures. And while the exhibit is a traveling exhibit, we have culled our own collection to bring you a number of Seattle-specific bags that tell those little threads of history that make up the complex woven fabric that is our story.

Since the exhibit is both on the art of the purse, as well as what the contents say about us, MOHAI is asking you, our gracious fans and history buffs to photographically answer, “What’s in Your Purse? (or bag, or backpack, or clutch, or messenger bag, or tote, or plastic sack)” How can you participate? Follow these simple steps.

• Grab a digital camera (or a film-based camera if you don’t mind later scanning the photo.)
• Find your purse or other bag you carry with you daily.
• Dump out the contents of said bag.
• Place the now-empty bag next to the pile of contents.
• Take a photo.
• Send the photo to me. Include your first name and last initial and neighborhood or city. Seattle and Puget Sound area photos will be given first consideration.
• I will post a new “What’s in Your Purse?” photo every Wednesday on Twitter and Facebook (via this blog) for the duration of the exhibition.
• At the end of the exhibition, I will post all the received photos on a gallery so that you can check out every entry all at once.

Disclaimer: While it would be nice if you used the bag you normally do, who am I to say you don’t always use your Louis Vuitton stuffed with a pocket edition of Anna Karenina in Russian, as well as vintage comb, mirror, and compact? So if you choose to photograph those, I will post it. So, “curated” purse photos will very much so be posted.

MOHAI does reserve the right to choose which photos get posted and will not post photos with anything we deem to be inappropriate, which will be decided on a case by case basis. We will do what we can to blur out personal information before posting. If blurring needs to occur, the original photo will be deleted as soon as the blurring has been finished. Of course, if a photo comes to us pre-blurred, we will be quite happy to post it as is. Your privacy and security, especially in financial matters, means a lot to us.

Please use common sense when deciding the content of a photo. Don’t show personal information from credit cards or membership cards.

Thanks in advance for dumping out your bag for a quick photo. Maybe now is good time to clean it out? No? Ok. Just dump it back in and go about your day. Once again that email address is social.media@seattlehistory.org.