Scrap Yard: Innovators of Recycling

"Scrap Yard: Innovators of Recycling" is a 2,000 square-foot exhibition at the Jewish Museum of Maryland featuring over 300 objects and media pieces. The exhibit explores how Jewish Americans and other immigrant communities built an entire industry around the collection, storage, and resale of discarded materials - making up seventy to ninety percent of the scrap industry for at least half of the 20th century.

Aether built the exhibit's interactive touchscreen experience paired with a real industrial scale. Visitors step onto the scale, select a scrap material on the touchscreen - gold, aluminum, copper, steel - and the system calculates and displays what their body weight would be worth in that material. It's a tactile, surprising moment that connects the abstract economics of the scrap trade to something immediately personal.

The exhibition was curated by Zachary Paul Levine, designed by Alchemy Studio, and debuted in October 2019 in the museum's Feldman Gallery. It received federal grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and has since traveled to other institutions including the Jewish Museum Milwaukee.