1992: The Faux Museum comes to Portland, Oregon
The Faux Museum’s present day curator, Tom Richards, was lazily rummaging through a storage unit full of miscellany when he came upon an incredible discovery. Earlier that week in the dog days of the Summer of 1991 he received an envelope from his father Paul Hubert Faux-Richards. It was the first correspondence he had ever received from his father and he opened it quickly. Inside the envelope was a photograph of a strange hairy ant and a key. They were wrapped in a sheet of yellow legal paper. On the paper his father had written; “It’s about time you found out.” Tom immediately called his father.
“Yellow”
" Hi Dad, got your letter."
"Ya?"
"Found out about what?"
"Harry is not a Dachshund Tom?"
"And the key?"
"You’re a curator Tom. We all are."
"All?"
"Me, you, grandpa, G’papa… all the way back for many generations."
"How many geneerations?"
"500 give or take. I’ll come and pick you up and we’ll drive out to the storage locker."
His father picked him up and they drove out to the storage unit where they met his father’s friends Barry Weiss and Jerrod and Brandi, the keepers of the storage units. They walked him to his father’s locker, waited as he opened the unit and then left as he went through it. What he found that day changed his life forever. He found his family’s history. Their ten thousand year history as the curators of the family museum: The Faux Museum. Tom immediately began plans to reopen the museum. He found a location at 111 SW Ash in The New Market Theatre Building in Portland, Oregon. In May of 1992 The Faux Museum opened again; for the first time under the curatorial tutelage of its new curator Tom Richards. Six months later after a half dozen shows of his own making, curator Tom closed the museum and checked himself into a special hospital. Just over seven and a half months ago he was released and he immediately began to develop his twenty years of planning to reopen the Faux Museum as The Faux Museum: Gallery and Store [FM:GaS].
Welcome.
