This paper/presentation is focused on the collection of artifacts, objects and demonstration models housed in The Larry Spring Museum of Common Sense Physics, which is located in the town of Fort Bragg on the coast of California’s Mendocino County.
Lorenz ‘Larry’ Spring (1915-2009) was a freethinker who challenged mainstream ways of knowing through his tenacious, idiosyncratic learning and teaching style. Spring identified as an ‘experimenter’ who surveyed the world through empirical observation. Experiments in applied physics were his specialty, and he aspired to make visible the complex phenomena described by standardized science. Spring idealized knowledge through making, and dismissed the theoretical musings of Einstein as the ‘stuff of dreamers’.
Larry Spring’s School of Common Sense Physics in Fort Bragg, California, was where he shared these personalized studies through craft making, the construction of hand-hewn demonstration models, and publications. He worked tirelessly until his death at age 94 to find acceptance for his primary discoveries Magnespheres and the Spring Atom. Through his life, Spring maintained a stubborn resistance to mainstream physics and in many ways this resistance enlivened his output. His anti-professional stance was evident in the handmade aspects of his works and displays, which literally lacked polish and coherent explanation.
My research and work on the collection began in the period after Spring’s death and examines the collection in curatorial terms. Questions concerning Spring’s work, peer review and conclusions in science are not taken up here. Instead this paper/presentation posits his output as contemporary outsider art and is organized to discuss how the Larry Spring collection be seen as a vernacular museum that came to be through the particularities of time and place. These approaches not only consider Spring’s objects, but also consider his methods and production and the associated context in which the collection emerged.
About the presenterAnne Maureen McKeating
Anne Maureen McKeating is the Director and Programmer of Small Museum Projects, which aims to defend the honor of the unsung geniuses of amateur scientific inquiry through the creative exploration, conservation and exposition of their amazing works. We imagine an aspirational space of collaborative exchange where dreams of art, science and community engagement co-exist.
The Larry Spring Museum of Common Sense Physics in Mendocino California is Small Museum Projects inaugural assignment. Our curatorial task is to conceptually frame Larry Spring’s idiosyncratic collection while inviting audiences to collaborate with his spirit of amateur inquiry.
Anne Maureen is currently a Master’s Candidate at York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies.