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Garbage- Museums- New York Times 
hhtp://.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/arts/31conn.html?_r=1&adxnnl=...


Unfortunately the use of jargon ("regimes of value" inspires some wonder about whether that role has also affected rhetoric. But judging from the curriculum, the class, taught by Haidy Geismar, a professor in N.Y.U's museum studies program, and Robin Nagle, an anthropologist, was meant to explore concretely how an exhibition about this often overlooked subject might be approached.

The impetus came from Ms.Nagle, who has long been fascinated by the Sanitation Department, went through job training there, wrote a diary about her experience for Slate in 2004 and is completing a book about the agency. That intimate connection probably helped in putting together this modest show's most intriguing textual panel, a glossary of the Sanitation Department: Air mail is defined as "garbage thrown at the truck from windows above." Blood money is "overtime for working snow the novelty has worn off." Tissue is "a desk job, an easy job."

The displays themselves are both celebratory and restrained. In one window a panel about recycling, with the heading "Trash and Transformation," is mounted about a pile of dry, nonorganic trash, ranging from old LPs to a pink flamingo- examples of what is defines here as mongo: "objects plucked/rescued from the trash." Another pays tribute to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, which was about to close just before 9/11 and was then quickly put to use in the processing of the ruins and debris.

There are also historical photos of sanitation men posing in pristine uniforms in the early 20th century. They were given he angelic name of White Wings, though the era's street, full of refuse, human waste, and horse manure, made it unlikely they would end the working day in as crisp a fashion. There are also mentions of the job's dangers: a sanitation worker in 1996 died almost instantly when an illegally dumped drum of hydrofluoric acid was crushed by the truck's mechanism, spraying him with the corrosive chemical.

One of Ms.Nagle's main concerns is the invisibility of "san men" as they are called, the ways in which people look past them, almost straining to ignore their work. But that is not too surprising given that garbage is something that is meant to be exorcised, "taken out," or incineration. One traditional measure of luxury is how little it is possible to come into personal contact with garbage or its removal.

A museum about how New York, and by implication all modern cities, deals with garbage, might actually redeem its subject matter, not earning it much affection perhaps but revealing its hidden influences and powers.

But there is also much to understand about the odd place garbage now holds in the middle-class life. At least in part the impulse to redeem garbage and its handlers is found not only in these windows. Spurred by environmental concerns, attitudes have been shifting.

Instead of wanting to excommunicate our trash, we often treat it as if it were not refuse at all. We classify or waste, create different containers for it and carefully label it, the way we would collections of cherished objects. We are even instructed to since some garbage. 

It is as if we were fetishistically preparing dead matter for resurrection for afterlife. That is, of course, the idea, and there are many reasons reclamation might be a practical goal. But a devout attitude attaches to

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