Object Retrieval: You are the Routemaster

16 October 2009

For seven days, a red bus is offering Londoners a different journey from their normal commute - one that calls on their brains and skills to trace the origins of a museum exhibit on display in a Routemaster parked at University College London.

Funded by an Arts Award from the Wellcome Trust, 'Object Retrieval: You are the Routemaster' invites everyone to a week-long interactive exhibition investigating the history of one specific object from UCL's museum collections, which is on display in the adapted Routemaster bus parked in UCL's Main Quad from 15 to 21 October.

The object, unveiled yesterday, is a toy car and accompanying case study notes from the UCL Pathology Collection. The toy was confiscated from the home of a four-year-old boy - the car's red paint contained 6 per cent lead, and it is thought to have caused lead poisoning in the child.

Members of the public are now invited to join a team of researchers exploring this object from any and all routes - be it art, archaeology, biology or chemistry - involving amateurs and academics alike. Over the week, the knowledge of professional and lay visitors will help create a vast biographical network of information around the object.

Inspired by the interdisciplinary nature of 21st-century research, as well as the challenges faced by today's museums to justify the value of their collections, 'Object Retrieval' - created by internationally renowned artist Joshua Sofaer - will bring together many lines of enquiry by experts and amateurs alike into a mass participatory event.

Joshua Sofaer said: "Londoners and other visitors will play a critical role in this event - we need your help to build an enormous biographical network of information around the object. We're asking for your anecdotes, facts, memories, videos and other titbits of accumulated knowledge, while UCL's scientists, artists, sociologists, engineers and other experts will carry out a wide range of investigations on the object."

'Object Retrieval: You are the Routemaster' is an interactive exhibition open to the public, free of charge, in UCL's Main Quad, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT. The exhibition runs until Wednesday 21 October.

Image: A toy car suspected of giving a four-year-old lead poisoning. Credit: UCL