Time capsules, 1938-2013

A time capsule is a sealed repository of cultural artifacts or information intended for retrieval on a scheduled date. The practice of making time capsules was popularized in the mid-twentieth century, often to commemorate the completion of a building, event, or era. Beyond preserving cultural life in a historic moment, a time capsule can serve as a means of communication with future people, or a research aid for future archaeologists and historians. Many enclosures for time capsules are crafted from metal alloy or Plexiglas, and are frequently stored underground, embedded in buildings, or sent into outer space.

One of the most well-known time capsule sets in popular culture were collected by the American artist Andy Warhol (1928–1987). Warhol’s “time capsules,” 610 mystery parcels that he compiled from the early 1960s until his death in 1987, take the form of standard-size cardboard boxes. During the last 13 years of Warhol’s life, he sealed the boxes and sent them into storage, where they remained until 2014. Warhol’s time capsules, which include flyers from galleries, junk mail, fan letters, chunks of concrete, LPs, and pornography, serve not as a record of a particular historical moment, but as a record of Warhol’s everyday life. Described both as an archival and artistic project, the time capsules reflect Warhol’s fascination with the passage of time, surrealism, and material culture.

Hugo Keesing’s time capsules are visually similar to Warhol’s: a set of cardboard boxes whose contents range from books and newspapers to children’s toys and empty envelopes. Keesing is a scholar of popular music and culture, formerly a professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, and a collector of popular culture memorabilia. The time capsules, which cover the time period from the early 1940s onward, are organized into decades or portions of decades. Some of the materials are clearly intended to mark a specific place or event, such as newspaper clippings or souvenir items; other materials serve to document everyday life, as in Warhol’s time capsules, including chewing gum, office supplies, and junk mail. Keesing’s early time capsules appear focused in their content, encompassing just portions of decades and often containing materials that relate to significant events such as wars; later time capsules are broader in their temporal scope, a single box spanning up to thirty years, and contain large quantities of ephemeral material not directly related to major historical events.