Many of us collect things - from stamps to movie ticket stubs, glassware to baseball cards - and our collections vary in intensity and size. For the past couple of weeks, material culture contributor Gianofer Fields has been exploring the lives of collectors and their connection with the objects they love. But she found herself wondering, what happens to a collection when the collector is gone?
The question was inspired by the collection that Wisconsinite Sam SanFallippo kept in the basement of his funeral home – a collection that Fields calls the best kept non-secret of Madison.
The basement of the Cress Funeral Home was home to hundreds of taxidermy specimens. You could find everything from stuffed sail fish to red eye squirrels driving a pink Cadillac on a freeway of love in the afterlife.
SanFallippo passed away last year. His funeral home was sold and the collection needed to find a new home. In this installment of it's a material world, Fields sets out to discover what happened to his collection.
Gianofer Fields studies material culture at UW-Madison and is the curator of "It's a Material World" - a project funded by the Chipstone Foundation, a decorative arts foundation whose mission is preserving and interpreting their collection, as well as stimulating research and education in the decorative arts.
Original air date: 03/15/14
