ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the creative, curatorial, activist and grassroots community support activity of the Museum of Homelessness (MoH) through the theoretical framework of care aesthetics. Founded in 2015 by people with experience of homelessness, MoH is building a national collection to preserve and care for the histories and material culture of homelessness. This chapter investigates two of MoH’s performance exhibitions: Objectified (2018) and The Secret Museum (2021), to explore how they elevate the status of quotidian objects in its collection through ‘object storytelling’, which entails recording an oral testimony capturing the significance of the object for its donor. Focusing on how care is composed, embodied and enacted through the collection, curation and dissemination of objects and their stories, this chapter argues that MoH centres and amplifies some of the most marginalised members of society at a time when they inhabit a hostile environment in which they are subject to acute social stigma and invisibility. The aim is to consider how MoH’s activity can be understood as care aesthetics in action, which is committed to showing that homeless lives, histories, experiences, objects and stories matter.
