Museum Of Trash – 6.20.19
A few weeks ago I got to go to one of the NY Department of Sanitation’s garages on the Upper East Side to take some photos for Gothamist. Photographing trash trucks or something would be honestly really interesting to me but what awaited me was something much cooler. A man named Nelson Molina started picking up trash in 1981 and bringing it back to the garage, cleaning it and refurbishing it. He continued this up until he retired in 2015 filling most of the second level of the garage with previously abandoned treasures.
The “Treasures in the Trash” collection was recently turned into an art exhibit at the Hunter East Harlem Gallery and the NYDS is looking for a permanent home for the collection. The reason he could fill most of the second level is because the building is no longer structurally sound enough to park trucks and the NYDS is going to be moving out in the next 5 years.
I would talk more about the collection, but you should just read the Gothamist article and look at the pictures because it’s pretty hard to describe how cool the place was. I will say it was amazing to talk to Nelson because obsessive collecting is in my blood and I love this kind of thing. I dream about opening some sort of weird museum one day and I have traveled the country to check out things like the Abita Mystery House or the “Devil’s Rope” Museum and Nelson’s trash fits right into that part of my brain. This gig was the perfect intersection of two of my favorite assignments I did for the Village Voice with Pinky Guest years ago: We went on a Valentine’s Day tour of a sewage treatment plant, and we also got to go to Antiques Roadshow. (Full disclosure: Pinky and I both have Abita Mystery House tattoos.)
Anyway, go read the Gothamist article and click through their slideshow because it’s in higher resolution than mine and I want them to keep hiring me, but my gallery has some extra photos in it because I took way too many photos so you can check that out below too.
Click here to see all my photos from the DSNY’s Treasures in The Trash Museum.
