The Wynds of History
An exploration of the paths of history through the lenses of public interpretation and academic review.
I love the sudden right turns one can take while during research. There are no wrong destinations. Just not enough room in the filing cabinet for all the finds.
Today I was looking for information on the 19th C Moravian communities in Pennsylvania, specifically in terms of social history. What I found was a new public history book. (See what happens when I get lost on the UPenn Press website?)
A subsequent search resulted in a new-to-me public history publication, Origins, and Cohn's blog.
The exhibit aims to preserve not only the physical results of Henson's creativity, but the process of creativity itself. Quotes from Henson and his works are painted on the walls. Henson speaks directly to the audience about his ideals and goals in a video history compiled from various interviews through the years. Beloved and well-known popular culture icons Kermit, Bert, Ernie, and Mahna Mahna are there in muppet form and share space with the sketches that captured Henson's original conceptualizations."
If you have ever been curious about Jim Henson as an artist, you will find answers in this exhibit. The staff at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA has done a great job connecting the SITES exhibit with its own mission and creatively networked with other Bucks county arts organizations. In addition to an extensive offering of in-house art classes, other cultural offerings available this fall range from a Jazz concert celebrating the music of Sesame Street to a collaborative film series highlighting Henson films to a variety of programs offered at the Bucks County Free Library, located just across the courtyard.
What does a traveling exhibit classified as an art display and offered in an art museum teach us about history? In the case of The Fantastical World of Jim Henson, one's sense of social and cultural history is expanded, in many cases built upon personal memory. Fascinating in their own right as art, the objects document not just Henson's story, but for anyone of Generation X they also tell our own, triggering memory and generating an emotional response. Those of the Sesame Street generation are likely to leave the screening room humming, “The King of Eight.” The memory is triggered again, and one's knowledge expanded, when one views the storyboard and biographical background for that specific skit later on in the exhibit.
Jim Henson's Muppets are without question a part of my cultural context. I am one of the early members of the Sesame Street generation. Evening television as a young child consisted of half an hour of The Muppet Show and half an hour of M*A*S*H. (I've suspected for years that there's a lot of explanation there for who I am, but that's likely another post.) I learned counting and language skills from the Sesame Street. I also learned its okay to be a bit odd or not perfectly funny, or to believe in a dream. I also had my first glance at myriad performers - Harry Belafonte, Candice Bergen, Danny Kaye, and Vincent Price among so very many. From Sesame Street to the Muppet Show to the Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, I traveled the public path of Henson's creative journey. At the Michener, I saw some of the not-so-public journey.
Fantastical World is fascinating to me as a historian because it places my friends in context. Henson and his ideologies are introduced in person via a documentary-style video. A large poster-style timeline chronicles biographical data and career highlights. A nice touch is a corresponding poster-style homage to Henson's supporting cast – his family, friends, and colleagues whom together are woven into what we have come to know as the Henson experience.
Yes, I saw actual Muppets and learned more about their history. I also learned more about my larger history and asked questions about where we are now. Cookie Monster started as Wheel Steeler in IBM commercial in the late sixties - IBM had commercials in the late sixties? One of Henson's proposals for a television show had a hand-drawn cover. I was struck that today, if it wasn't computer generated, it might go straight to the slush pile. This wonderfully witty, personal, piece of functional art. What might we be losing in the technological age?
Jim Henson was a shy man who imagined fantastical creatures and shared them with the rest of us. I am grateful to The Jim Henson Legacy and the Smithsonian for offering the opportunity to glimpse behind the curtain, or under the floor in some cases, at the genius behind the characters we, and Henson, loved and made a part of our own histories.
A bit of surfing for information on Amy M Tyson - the author of one of the texts for our Managing History discussion tomorrow on museums - led me to The Attic, the virtual home of the Department of Museum Studies' research students at the University of Leicester in the UK. Definitely something to explore as time allows!
“What?” My exclamation startled the dog. “The United States' Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies museum and historic site staff as working in the leisure and hospitality industry?” Tobias, who is not up-to-date on current museum culture, decided I was truly talking to myself (again) and not him, and went back to sleep. I continued to harangue a (mostly) empty room.
“Interpreters work within the service industry?” My tone hovered between incredulous and scoffing. “But, that would mean pleasing the customer comes first. Before historical accuracy. Before preservation concerns. Before financial stability.” As I heard the phrases echo in the room, I thought of the Grinch, confused as to how Christmas came without the trappings. (“It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags.”) Luckily for me, I didn't have to puzzle for three hours with grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow. Taken in context within this week's Managing History readings on the general topic of museums, while the industry label is still a bit jarring, how we as a culture arrived at such a classifications makes sense. Raises questions and concerns, but fits within an understandable progression.
In two-score speeches and essays written between 1990 and 2000 and collected in his book, Making Museums Matter, Stephen E. Weil emphatically documents that since World War II, the foci of museums have shifted from collection and preservation to education and public service. One driving force in this transformation was the shift in the third sector from being “charitable” to being “not-for-profit” - in simple, to being held accountable and measurable for some sort of a bottom line. The public pays for museums, public or private, in one form or another. Museums are therefore not only answerable to the community, they have an obligation to be of service to the community and the individuals within it.
How does the 2008 Annual Report for the American Association of Museums (AAM) relate to Weil's theories? I argue the choice of the themes presented proves his point and indicates how the trends he identified have progressed in the decade following his comments. Weil indicated that part of the mission of the museum sector in the 90s must be to identify the kinds of public service it not only could, but should provide. The AAM's identification of museums as providers of lifelong learning, sources of civic pride, and invaluable community assets are in line with concepts Weil already envisioned. While his language was not as precise as the AAM's in seeing museums as an economic engine, he wasn't far from that definition. Serving as a therapeutic oasis and a social services provider go a bit further than Weil envisioned, I believe, when he discussed the emotional responses of the public.
For all of the excellent grounding, forward thinking, and deliberate inciting of thought generated by Weil's book, the unasked question echoing in the room is, “What about the history?” While somewhat understandable from a man whose vast experience was based in art museums, one wishes Weil had asked this question in his reviews of where museums are and where they should go. Tyson observed a deliberate choice to give customer comfort pride of place before opportunity to generate discussion about controversies in our historical time line. What questions do we ask next? Is the presentation of historical content a social mandate? What difference does history make in the difference made by museums? While we search for answers to these questions and continue to formulate others, those of us who work on the boundary between history and public satisfaction will very likely find ourselves reminding others in the larger sector to “not forget the history!”
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