Cumming Center exhibit explores the many meanings home

What is Home?

Is it a physical space or is it a feeling? Why do our homes look the way they do? What happens if we don’t have a home, lose our home or we’re away from home for some time?

The Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology at The University of Akron (UA) explores these concepts in an exhibit called “Beyond the Picket Fence: The Places and Spaces We Call Home.”

“Our vision at the Cummings Center is to create exhibits and programs that help us explore our shared humanity,” said Dr. Cathy Faye, the Margaret Clark Morgan Executive Director of the Cummings Center for the History of Psychology. “This exhibition tells a series of diverse stories about something we all share: a sense of home. We all have different experiences of home, but it is something that we share.”

The exhibit was curated by Case Western Reserve University intern Kellyn Toombs and overseen by Cummings Center Assistant Director Dr. Jennifer Bazar. It features five sections that are explored through artifacts from the Center and other collections.

The “Making Home” section considers the physical space of a home, how homes are laid out and why homes look the way they do.

Another section, “House ≠ Home,” challenges traditional stereotypes of homelessness. Video interviews of Akron residents who are unhoused play on a loop, with interviewees responding to the question of what, to them, makes a home.

“All of the interviewees defined home as a feeling,” Bazar said. “It’s about safety, family, friends, community. One woman said she knows she’s home when her dog barks. These are things that we can all relate to.”

“When Home is Taken” and “Removed from Home,” focus on the loss of home, from events such as natural disasters or political upheaval and how institutional settings, such as correctional or assisted living facilities, become new homes to their residents.

“Missing Home” considers the feelings of those, such as college students who may be on their own for the first time, who long to return home.

To round out the exhibit, the Cummings Center collaborated with local housing-related community organizations, including Direction Home, Neighborhood Network and Habitat for Humanity, Summit County Children’s Services and community activists who support the unhoused. The Center also worked with the University, its libraries and the Hower House Museum. Funding from Peg’s Foundation in Hudson supported the exhibit.

“The people and organizations highlighted here demonstrate what home is for everyday Akronites and what our community organizations do to provide a sense of home,” Faye said. “As visitors explore this exhibit, they have an opportunity to reflect not just on what home means to them, but also what it means to those around them in their community and around the world.”

Story by Jessica Whitehill