A thing I've been pondering today: the extent to which we associate cleanliness with emptiness (and also the extent to which we apply that idea not just to how we organize our spaces but how we approach topics like mental health, relationships of various kinds, and even the types of personalities we seek out and try to cultivate). I'm not sure that we necessarily perceive clutter as "dirty" in *precisely* the same way, but we definitely have a similar view of it that makes it relevant in this discussion as well.
And then the clutter got me thinking about libraries. Somehow old-school libraries (and, it occurs to me, old-style museums) come off as cluttered even in their natural states, which could partly explain the zeal across the country to renovate and modernize them by *REMOVING MANY OF THE BOOKS* and prioritizing the addition of more open community spaces. (Having recently *finally* visited the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, I'm also inclined to think of more modern museum exhibits here -- I definitely dislike said exhibits, and somehow they come off as less *organized* to me than the more classic designs even though they may boast greater economy of space and cutting-edge technological effects and whatnot.) (more...)