Connections/Small Things

I'm Carrie Rebora Barratt. I'm Associate Director for Collections and Administration. One of the great pleasures of my work is the access it has provided, and responsibility for the collections at large.

I've always liked small things. Diminutive, tiny things have always been

much more appealing to me than large-scale things which everyone is meant to see. I always find that small things really

require careful study, quiet and

an intimacy with one's self in order to truly appreciate it.

As a child, I collected teeny, tiny, little animals

and the way that collection started was my mother would often take me out of school so that we could go to the museum, and the carrot that got me there

was that after looking at the Seurats and the Chinese bronzes and all of the wonderful things she wanted to see, we would go into the children's shop and I would get to pick something

to take home. And what I always picked was some teeny tiny animal derived from a Japanese netsuke, or

a small horse that was derived from a larger horse in the gallery. And even though I probably should have appreciated the bigger pieces or the actual works of art, what I always wanted was the thing that I could put in my pocket.

Historically, nine times out of ten, a small object was a token from one person to another. One of my favorite pieces in the collection is the Thomas Seir Cummings Mother's Pearls, the necklace that he made for his wife of all of their children. The necklace to me must have been endlessly more beautiful

and a more intimate representation of what they shared. To have placed each and every one of these children in a locket, the largest of which is barely an inch high, oh my God, such an extraordinary array of jewels that these children become.

The Japanese box with its beautiful landscape narrative that revolves around the outside of the box. It's so bright

and so compelling, the color of, the color of blood, the color of a beating heart, that would attract you, but to an object that is, that is so, so tiny and to think there would be something even tinier inside.

I love to look at small things and to think about the craftsmanship of hands and extraordinary eyesight

the degree of not only expertise but also clarity of vision and

dexterity that is required to make something small is just remarkable to me.

A very small watercolor on ivory that is surrounded by garnets of Jeremiah Lee, for his wife and eventually his daughters, is infinitely more interesting to me than the great, huge, larger-than-life portrait of him that was painted for his home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, so that the same man again who was master of his domain was also someone who, who was loved.

I like miniaturized versions of larger things, always thinking that sometimes things are better small. They're more refined, they're tighter. The Bolivian tunic is just beautiful to me because it looks like a Barbie could wear it. And I'm not really sure what its purpose would have been, but it captivates me for that sense of play that's in it, a sense that maybe someone, that artists make things as maquettes, as models for things they might be able to, you know, to make bigger sometime.

Once one begins walking through the museum like I do engaged in every little small thing I can find it also encourages us to look not only at small things

but to look closer at big things, because at the end of the day, big things

are comprised of small details, and that the closer inspection that you bring to something the more rewarding that it will be.

So whether it's a Greek vase or a large American painting, or a piece of ornate furniture, as you, as we go through the museum, you find that even big things are really rewarding

if you look at the details.