Locals Dial In to Virtual Museum

Harvard College graduate Rajesh Kottamasu ’02 boasts of a different kind of achievement. While his classmates trek the world with the Peace Corps, earn six figures on Wall Street, or pass the bar exam, Kottamasu has set up the “Daily Museum of Amazement” in his town of Somerville, Mass.

The museum, a month-long art project, is not enclosed in four walls—in fact, its display changes daily because it is created by the people who ‘visit’ it. The virtual museum, accessible via phone or on-line, is meant for and created by the people who live in the neighborhood of Somerville.

Each day, locals dial the museum’s hotline—available only to residents—and leave voice messages about daily experiences that amazed them or inspired them. At the end of the day, Kottamasu, now a graduate student of Urban Planning at MIT, puts the messages together in a program, along with his commentary.

From 8 p.m. until midnight everyday, from April 21 to May 21, people can either dial the hotline or go to the museum’s website to listen to that day’s program.

The museum “sets its scope a little smaller: the span of a single day in the consciousness of a single neighborhood,” the website explains.

According to Kottamasu, the museum provides an opportunity for his neighborhood to become better acquainted with each other.

“I get a lot out of discovering amazement in the mundane moments of my life and like hearing about them from other people. It helps me to connect to them,” Kottamasu said. “It’s one thing to have strangers share those thoughts with you, but something else to realize that these are the thoughts that fill your immediate living space.”

Kottamasu said most of the messages have been inspiring and interesting details that meant a lot to the callers.

“There was a great message from a man who was watching a little league game, talking about how cute the kids were and how beautiful it was to see all these kids of different ethnicities playing this American game together like it was no big deal,” Kottamasu said.

Not all messages, however, were as encouraging.

“I got an angry message from someone who called me names and told me he’d torn down my posters,” he said. “I can’t imagine what offended him.”

Kottamasu said that he has gotten a lot of positive feedback, with around 30 to 35 different people participating in his museum so far and 40 to 60 listening each night. His museum usually receives three to four messages a day, Kottamasu said.

Kottamasu graduated from the College with an A.B. in psychology, but took both VES and art history classes as well.

During his time at Harvard, Kottamasu lived in the Dudley Co-op and was an Associate Design Chair for The Crimson’s Arts section.

—Staff writer Aditi Banga can be reached at abanga@fas.harvard.edu.