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Looking Forward
I may be privileged in the next year to be part of researching the history of a specific family and creating interpretation for the house in which they lived. The readings for this week's Managing History class are critical building blocks as I begin to think about a house museum of the 21st Century. Partially, because they are defining works in the field. Largely because they speak about - some to, some against - themes I know to be critical to running an ideological organization. Love and politics.
Backstory
The professional hat I am training to wear is that of historian. Another hat in my professional closet is fundraiser. Early in my career I was gifted with the opportunity to work for the undergraduate college of a medium-sized research university. This college had a curriculum based on a very simple, yet fundamental premise. "Students learn best when they love what they study." This modus operandi resonated with my belief in "heartstring" fundraising. People philanthropically support that which they love or about which they feel passionately. Viable nonprofit organizations are built around a well-defined, well-articulated core purpose. Successful fundraising occurs when one matches individual passions with community visions. Idealistic? Yes. Feasible? Yes. Messy? Absolutely. About 97% of the time. Why is matching people with purposes messy? Because making a match relevant requires passion. To make it real requires politics. Involving politics moves you from the passions of a few to the processes of the many. Holding on to what you love, or protecting what someone else loves, can be very challenging when dealing with hierarchies of authority, rules, and regulations.
Interpretation
Definition: An educational activity which aims to reveal meanings and relationships through the use of original objects, by firsthand experience, and by illustrative media, rather than to simply communicate factual information." (p. 33)
Excerpt: "If you love the thing you interpret, and love the people who come to enjoy it, you need commit nothing to memory. For, if you love the thing, you not only have taken the pains to understand it to the limit of your capacity, but you also feel its special beauty in the general richness of life's beauty." (p. 126)
Freeman Tilden was a writer who dedicated half of his life to exploring how staff at national and state parks interacted with the public. In Interpreting Our Heritage, his book specifically on interpretation, he presents six principles of interpretation which he then sums up to be one - love. I think Mr. Tilden would understand my approach of heartstring fundraising, and we could have a wonderful walk in the woods discussing the topic.
Williamsburg's Social History Grade
The New Social History in an Old Museum, is Richard Handler and Eric Gable's critique from the 1990s of Colonial Williamsburg's implementation of the new social history movement started in the 1970s. In short, they felt the museum had failed and were very blunt is saying so in their final chapter, "The Bottom Line." Handler and Gable would likely scoff at my mindset, call it naive, and cite an example from their book of a duped donor whose money was shifted to fund another project, one that achieved no goals and fulfilled no one's desires. Handler and Gable would speak to me of the politics of funding and the hierarchies of management and warn me that trying to relate unbiased history in a museum setting is as much a mythical beast as fair and honest fundraising.
Domesticating History
Where Freeman Tilden may be my newest prophet, Patricia West may well be my new hero. Her book, Domesticating HIstory: The Political Origins of America's House Museums is phenomenal, for many, mostly related, reasons. She grounds the history of America's house museum firmly in the historiographic record, explaining how four different house museums were specifically products of the political and social cultures of their time. Of very specific interest to me (and my project) she uses the lens of public history to trace historical changes in "the nature of women's relationship to the public sphere." (p. 39) I am completely fascinated by especially her first two chapters and the histories of how women stood and spoke in the public sphere, manipulating politics and public opinion to save specific homes and the carefully crafted, mythic versions of stories of American heroes and heroines.
Bound By Time and Place
On interpretation, at the end of her book Wise states, "Above all, the history of American historic house museums demonstrates their missions, far from being neutral and far from meriting the status of inviolability, were manufactured out of human needs bound by time and place." (p. 162) Human needs. Passion. Love. Bound by time and place. Politics. Messy? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely. Why? Because finding the story, discovering the history behind the story, and sharing the story is my passion. And, as Tilden, Wise, Handler and Graber all say in very different ways and arenas, passion and politics are two sides of the same coin.
