Winchester Mystery House Exhibit by Dominick Ott and Kevin Thich

The purpose of this exhibit will be to showcase how the Winchester Mystery House can be interpreted as an example of abundant wealth by examining how Sarah Winchester utilized and materialized her wealth.

Specifically, this exhibit will utilize the methodologies that Carole Blair and Neil Michel & Karen Foss and Kathy Domenici discussed when considering the rhetorics of events. Specifically drawing from these authors the ideas of synecdoche and democratic representation. By interpreting the house as a place of abundant wealth, it allows the synecdoche of the Winchester Mystery House as representing Sarah Winchester and the entire estate as well as vice versa in that Sarah Winchester represents the house and entire estate because of how she supposedly designed the house. The synecdoche also highlights the issue of democratization because of how public memory omits all of the servants and the children of these servants who worked and lived on the estate from public memory because it is Sarah Winchester's material wealth that continues to be an icon in public memory to attract new visitors.

There were some limits to creating this exhibit, the primary one being the fact that none of her original furniture being retained in the house because they would be crucial exhibits of how she spent her wealth. Instead, this exhibit will feature the material wealth that is still intact because of their physical attachment to the property itself such as the most expensive stained glass window within the house. Furthermore, it will feature some exhibits that were not found in the house such as her financial records, but were included because it helps portray the status of her material wealth she had that would originally not be observable from just the house tour alone. One of the main benefits of including her financial records is that it allows us to interpret the different material ways her wealth has been recorded in public memory. It also more importantly highlights the limitation if we were to just focus on the material wealth that was observable within the house because of how the ways wealth is recorded through receipts and not necessarily the expensive objects that were purchased because of the original furniture no longer being present.

This exhibit will contain photos taken by us as well as secondary sources provided by the Leib Family collection, Carl Hansen Collection, Genenevie Woelfl, Thomas Keel, and Larry Syverson. The Leib Family collection was provided by Samuel Leib who was crucial in providing her financial records because he was the legal consultant for Sarah Winchester. He advised her regarding property sales and purchases, provided investment advice, and completed a number of purchases and transfers for her. The Carl Hansen Collection features two photo albums donated from Carl's son Richard which documents the Hansen's lives on the estate. 

You can access these exhibits by clicking on the blue circular dots on the map or the exhibit names on the right of the map. When viewing any of these exhibits, you can view the item on a larger screen by clicking on the image.

Sources:

Blair, Carole and Neil Michel. "The Aids Memorial Quilt and the Contemporary Culture of Public Commemoration". Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol 10, No. 4, Michigan State University, 2007. 

Carl Hansen Collection, "Hansen Collection Materials". Historysanjose.org.

Domenici, Kathy and Karen Foss. "Haunting Argentina: Synecdoche in the Protests of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo". Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol 87, No. 3, 2001.

Keel, Thomas. "Most Haunted". Pinterest.

Samuel Leib Papers. "Leib Family Collection". Historysanjose.org

Syverson, Larry. "1980 Winchester Mystery House Brochure". Flickr.

Woelfl, Genevie. Sarah Pardee Winchester - A Driven Woman - Her Compelling Story. Redwood Publishers, Brooklyn New York, 1986.

Each exhibit item will have a citation to the specific source that the image was found and a link if it was an online source.