Handle with Care is an imaginative exhibition that engages the encyclopedic breadth of the Cantor Arts Center’s collection to highlight a fundamental yet overlooked aspect of design: the handle. Curated by Patrick R. Crowley, associate curator of European art, and on view through Sept. 14, this single-gallery exhibition explores how handles invite us into the world of objects – their look and feel, their orientation, their weight.

Comprising nearly 40 artfully made everyday objects, this unusual exhibition cuts across traditional geography, chronology, and object-type divisions. Like a picture frame, the handle is both part of and separate from the work of art. However mundane it might seem at first glance, the handle connects us to the inanimate world of objects. Handles enhance our abilities and accommodate our disabilities. With them, we leverage the weight of our bodies against the weight of the world.

“Handle with Care offers a fascinating cross-section of the Cantor’s eclectic collection, presenting objects from antiquity to the early 20th century, including Greek drinking cups, a Mughal shield, a Chinese hand mirror, and a miniature cane – topped with a horse leg handle – given to a 2-year-old Leland Stanford Jr.,” said Veronica Roberts, the John and Jill Freidenrich Director of the Cantor. “It is the kind of exhibition that perfectly suits the university art museum’s role as a catalyst for academic inquiry, bringing together diverse disciplines to spark meaningful conversations across the fields of art, design, archaeology, engineering, disability studies, and beyond.”

Different sections of the exhibition explore how the handle orients us to our surroundings, putting us in touch with the sensations of position, movement, and force; how the handle and a spout in different types of vessels form a circuit-like system that channels the flow; and how broken or otherwise unusable handles compel a new reckoning with an object.

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The exhibition includes a touch table where visitors can explore firsthand the handle’s role in shaping our physical and psychological engagement with the material world by holding a vessel, a stereoscope, and a drinking cup, each with unusual handles that affect the nature of the object.

“Handles are good to think with,” adds Crowley. “On one hand, the handle raises deep philosophical questions about the aesthetic autonomy of the work of art. On the other, it’s a supremely functional design element that cuts to the core of what it means to be human. As museum professionals, we have to unlearn our basic instinct to grasp an object by its handles since these projecting elements are the weakest points that can easily break. My hope is that this exhibition has something for everyone – that it hits the sweet spot between theory and practice.”