The Museum of Everyday Life: Objects and Affects of Glorious Obscurity

Since 2011, the Museum of Everyday Life in Glover, Vermont, has existed as a ‘utopian homemade museum’ housed in a century-old barn. Guided by its curator, the museum draws from collectors, artists and friends to present exhibitions dedicated to ordinary mass-produced objects, often transformed in vernacular fashion. This article contextualizes and analyses the museum’s affective staging of everyday materiality. Drawing on affect theory and object-oriented thought, it examines three aspects of the museum’s practice: the everyday objects it presents and transforms, its playful strategies of display, and the wider networks that link it to pressing political and aesthetic concerns.