Studio Treasures and Haunted Storerooms: Belasco’s Collections and Psychometric Readings of Theatre History

David Belasco's collection of antique objects housed in his studio apartment above the Belasco Theatre and in warehouses nearby offers a rich archive of things that suggest strong metonymic readings. Drawing on Belasco's pronounced sympathies toward spiritualism, this essay offers a psychometric prism to approaching Belasco's intuitive relations with his collections. As a science for reading souls, psychometry proposed that objects held on their surfaces histories of past individuals who had touched or been in contact with the objects. Belasco often invited journalists to tour his museum-like studio and enjoyed picking up things in his hands and telling of their pasts.His storerooms and warehouses were believed to be haunted by ghosts drawn to materials of theatre history stored within them. As Belasco's collections were auctioned off following his death and that of his surviving daughter, they too passed on sorrowfully and would speak no more.