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As family matters go, death is surely a big one. How families respond to the deaths of loved ones is likely a primary determinant of a culture’s treatment of mortality. Death is not a common social topic in the U.S. and I have sometimes thought that stemmed from a form of denial. On the other hand, perhaps it is a function of propriety in which as a family matter, death is left to the family. Still, it is my experience that death is not a common topic within families until someone within dies.
The W.H. Stark House in Orange, Texas is a museum that took an interesting approach to the typical silence on death with an exhibition specifically about the aspects of death in a family over a decade. At issue is the Stark family who lived in the mansion that has since become a museum. The exhibit – A Death in the Family – explores the private lives of the Starks in the context of loss and mourning.
Stephanie Fulbright reviewed the exhibit noting;
“By grounding the conversation in someone else’s story” the exhibit “opened the door to the conversation about death and mourning and offered people an avenue to think and talk about mourning and loss in their own context.”
Effectively representing personal experience with death in a publicly accessible way is an accomplishment that will hopefully be continued in other venues.
Image Acknowledgement
Jon Dorbolo 