Everyday Living

One of our Managing History readings this week was the November 12, 2007 New York Times article, "Auctioning the Old West to Help a City in the East" by Eric O'Keefe.  The article highlighted auctions held to sell more than 800 objects purchased by Harrisburg, PA Mayor Stephen R. Reed for the purpose of establishing a National Museum of the Old West.  Instead, the items were sold to raise funds to help balance the city's deficit budget.  A quote from a Western memorabilia expert about the mayor's collection jumped out at me.  "The mayor's vision of the Old West was incredible.  He bought pots and pans, cans of evaporated milk, and coffee tins, things for everyday living.  He wanted the whole picture, not just the highlights."


The collection of readings for this week are diverse.  In addition to the NYTimes article we read two articles from The Public Historian, the journal of the National Council on Public History.  "The End of History Museums: What's Plan B?" by Cary Carson and "Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and The Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco's Mission District" by Nancy Raquel Mirabal.  


Carson asks if "history museums, and historic house museums in particular" are in a "nosedive to oblivion."  His article looks at attendance at cultural organizations as a whole over the last thirty years, what may and may not have attributed to declining interest in museums, and the industry's response to perceived and real decreases in attendance.  He highlights both what has worked in the past, what has not, and what is working now.  


I appreciate Carson shaking his finger at public historians, urging us to move away from the temptation to raise museum revenue by hosting weddings and cocktail events, relegating history to "sideshow" status. (p. 15).  He also chastises us to remember that attendance cannot be the sole measure of a healthy museum.  In these statements, he raises the topic we've discussed regularly in class this fall.  The public historian's obligation to teach history.  "We must never forget that fundamentally we are history teachers.  If our institutions of lifelong learning are not teaching history, or if we are teaching to ever-smaller numbers of learners, then those are the problems we need to tackle and solve." (p.15)  


Also of immense value is Carson urging us to consider how the generations currently visiting museums learn and get excited about learning.  He specifically challenges current arguments that one must instill trust (can we translate this as comfort?).  "Trust is not the issue.  What is, is the ability of museums to make effective connections with the way people today have become accustomed to engaging in the learning process...how today's learners actually prefer to organize information and put it together to make meaning." (p. 17)  


What do today's visitors to museums want?  "To be transported back in time...to meet ordinary people to whom they can relate."  They don't want to hear about the past or see a display about it.  They want to live it by relating directly to historical figures.  They want everyday living and the whole picture, and they want to "live it - feel it - experience it." (p. 18)


The individuals and families in Mirabal's focus group aren't museum visitors who want to experience history firsthand; they are a class of people whose history was dislocated and erased by the gentrification of the Mission District of San Francisco during the dot-com boom of the late 1980s, early 2000s.  Mirabal's article relays the findings of a student-driven oral history project started in 1999 designed to investigate "the reasons for the economic and political changes in the Mission District." (p. 9) While I knew of gentrification as a concept, I'll admit to having been in the only category of folk who assumed or were taught that gentrification is "an organic, natural, and even random process, shaped by an uncontrollable market economy." (p. 16)  Mirabal builds a solid case, using individual voices and empirical research, to show that the Mission District gentrification was a "calculated process designed to benefit developers, real estate companies, speculators, and investors." Not to mention politicians or city planners who wish to change the commercial and ethnic complexion of a neighborhood from "bad" to "good." (p. 16) 


What does an essay on gentrification of a working class neighborhood - even a really good essay - have to do with public history?  Because part of the success of gentrification is erasing the neighborhood that existed previously and imposing a new persona in its place.  Mirabal uses concrete examples such as the whitewashing (read destruction) of (city sanctioned and national landmark credited) murals in order to make space for logos of new dot-com companies now in residence in buildings that used to house Latino families to represent what one interviewee described as "taking out our culture."  (p. 23) Equally alarming is her tale of historical markers scattered through the neighborhood now.  "The prevailing thought is that memorials based on a constructed past prevent erasure and allow for a collective remembering of a neighborhood, people, and community that no longer exists.  I don't buy it.  Because in the end, whose memories are the ones that we are allowed to remember, whose memories are the ones officially on display?  Who decides how we remember and why?" (p. 30)


While Mirabal isn't shaking her finger in frustration - and hope - at public historians specifically, I hear her nonetheless.  We must remember that the presentation of history requires deciding whose memories to preserve and choosing to whom you focus the telling. To tie back to last week's discussion, when we are studying history with the goal of interpreting it, we must also remember the context within which such markers were made.  Mirabal's oral history helps preserve that context by recording voices of the people who were displaced.  To use another example, we can look back at my childhood friends, the New York State Historical markers.  To understand those markers in context, we need to look at who chose which, or whose, history to share, what the state of the nation and the world was when the text was written, and who the State of New York thought would be reading those blue and yellow metal signs.  


Absolutely everyday life of everyday people can be shared, in new and technologically brilliant ways, with Generation X,Y,and Z.  In order to ethically do so however, we as historians need to capture the history of everyday people and also remember to ask hard, pointed questions of the preserved history to determine whose lives might not have made the cut into the historical record.  

Lived Reality

The syllabus for my Managing History class lists this week's discussion topic as "Preservation Politics." Professor Seth Bruggeman joked that he chose the terminology because he liked the alliteration.  Alliterative allegations aside, preservation is politics.  Individuals may chose to actively preserve a location or concept or object because they love it.  Preservation as a movement and a component of our society exists because of laws, policies, and court rulings.  The means and the ends are connected.  Diane Lea, in the intro to A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century tells us, "Historic preservation has flowered and endured in the United States because the very concept incorporates some of this nation's most profoundly defining ideals.  The concept of preservation is built on a finely wrought and sustained balance between respect for private rights on one hand and a concern for the larger community on the other." 

Historically, fights for private rights have often been battles for private comforts.  Cathy Stanton, in her ethnographic study of public historians The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City, explores, and questions, the balance reached in Lowell when park rangers take visitors "beyond public historical space and into the lived reality of the city."  Stanton's work explores many of the concerns of the larger Lowell community and the push-pull within both historians and visitors to reconcile realities of modern Lowell with their internal, middle class comfort levels.  

Stanton goes beyond and behind the scenes of historic preservation and education efforts in Lowell, Massachusetts to examine the perspectives, needs, and expectations through which individuals craft their realities within a postindustrial society.  By placing the ethnic backgrounds, class status, political opinions, and reasons for interest in Lowell of the public historians who work at Lowell, the visitors who take the Park Service tours, and herself within the context of a postmodern society, she exposes us to concepts not necessarily taught on the tour. (A few of these are Lowell's continued existence as an immigrant city that struggles with high poverty and unemployment levels, the dynamics of a community with clear local/outsider identities, and her contribution to discussions of levels of comfort within historic-tourism contexts.) White, middle class visitors and historians, posits Stanton, are seeking to connect with working class and ethnic roots while reassuring themselves of the safety of their own position in society and culture. Furthermore, public historians are concerned with the negative societal effects of capitalism, frustrated about how to balance discussing historic fact and modern realities without encroaching on comfort levels, and somewhat unaware of their own place as benefactors of a postmodern society via their employment in the creation of culture.  Is Stanton's concern that middle class needs for internal comfort mask the needs of the remaining members of an urban community relevant outside of Lowell? 

I recently received my first copy of Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  (It happens to be the September/October 2009 issue.)  Flipping through the pages, one finds an article on the first four-year academic program teaching the hands-on skills of preservation, highlights of preservation successes, and pages of tourism ads for historic destinations.  There's no discussion of economic concerns or urban worries.  Instead, there's information on a career path similar to those discussed by Stanton, with pictures of white, mostly male participants.  

Preservation is a fascinating magazine and has been a hit with everyone in my house, read cover to cover by all three adults and even perused by the ten year old.  Said adults do, however, exactly fit the demographic Stanton discovered at Lowell.  We are white, educated beyond the high school level, interested in history, and employed in postmodern service professions. Like many of Stanton's subjects, we are able to point to members of our families making the move from wage to professional labor within the last two generations.  Two of us are also representative of the "twilight of ethnicity," being several generations away from a clear connection to one specific ethnic heritage.  Reading Preservation makes me excited that we're saving building and skills and long to see these places myself.  It does not upset my comfort level or raise my curiosity about how my desire for preservation may affect the lives of others.  This isn't overly surprising.  Discomfort doesn't sell magazines, or memberships to cultural organizations.  Having stopped to think about it and look for it, I am a bit surprised that there isn't any (obvious) reference to political legislation or court concerns.  Is all quiet on the preservation front or does political intrigue not sell subscriptions, either?  

Stanton's book is a critical read for anyone interested in pursuing public history as a career or interested in social history of the 20th century.  Lea's article in a crisp, concise summary of the preservation movement in America, an excellent background for anyone who appreciates the phenomenon but may not know its history. 

Thinking Versus Feeling Good

*blink* The sheer amount of thought-provoking and curiosity-peaking information presented in this week's "Managing History" readings has me tempted to issue a self-challenge to write a blog-a-day for a month.  I've been alternately making notes about historical detail I didn't know and Googling referenced initiatives, people, exhibits, museums, and books. I've set up two new Bookmarks folder - [Public] Historians and Teaching History.  Most gratifyingly, I feel vindicated.  While I have learned something from every set of readings for both classes this fall, no other set has engaged me as this set has.  This is reassuring as the material is on the nitty gritty of public history - the controversies and ethics playing out recently in the field.  That I am inhaling the material, asking questions, and excited, tells me two things.  One, I'm on the right path.  Two, those creating discourse about the challenges for public historians are on the the right path.

The first correct path is likely simple and obvious.  Responding emotionally and critically when hearing first hand from voices in the field about what public history is right now tells me I've picked the right career.  The second speaks to a recurring theme in the reading - the need for the presentation of history to generate contemplation and discourse not (only) trigger positive thinking.  In short, encountering history should make you think and question, not simply feel good.

The readings are: Roger D. Launis' article,"American Memory, Culture Wars, and the Challenge of Presenting Science and Technology in a National Museum" and Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory," edited by James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton.

The main goal, which is achieved, of Slavery and Public History is to demonstrate the necessity of including education and discussion of slavery in the general American discourse.  These articles dug me several layers deeper into the issues and challenges historians face when sharing history with today's public.  I simultaneously gained context about hot topics in the last 20 years ago concerning the presentation of history, especially touchy subjects, and was more solidly grounded in the background of American slavery.  Discussion from a modern view point about how intertwined American slavery is within the development of race definitions and relations in American and also the defining of class structure is timely as my social history of Early America class has been investigating the same topic but from the lens of an early time period.

One set of thoughts triggered by both readings circle back to the article by Amy Tyson discussed two weeks ago about comfort levels within interpretations (by both those learning and those teaching.)  The concept of emotional response to the topic of slavery cannot be ignored.  Memory, myth, and history of slavery are as shaped by emotion as are our personal responses when encountering the topic today.  Launius references allowing history to be "fragmented and personal."  I was struck by this language.  Fragmentation is seldom allowed a positive connotation these days.  In Launius' usage, fragmentation doesn't weaken history, it adds strength by allowing for multiple voices.   American history is complex and complicated.  Emotionally, it can be easier to gloss over the uncomfortable parts and tell just part of the story.  At times in our history we've done just that.  Even in this decade Americans still do so.

The readings also give voice to the folks in the trenches fighting to juggle public interest with educated awareness.  Dedicated, passionate people are working very hard to bring the historical perspectives on slavery, race, class, and gender gained within the academy in the last few decades into the common understanding.  Despite resistance, opportunities to talk and think about slavery and the definition of America are slowly increasing.  We are learning to talk about painful, conflicting facts.  We are learning to distinguish between fact, memory, and history.  I leave these readings (for now) convinced that memory, history, and the interplay and friction between the two are the stuff from which public historian challenges are made today and will continue to be made in the foreseeable future.

Leisure and Hospitality Industry Job Opening – Historian

“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.

In her article, Crafting emotional comfort: interpreting the painful past at living history museums in the new economy, Amy M Tyson goes a step further to suggest that two specific living history museums have gone beyond simple accountability of civic engagement to selling a product in a service sector. The focus then becomes keeping the customer happy, up to and including adapting historical interpretation in ways that cue off of and protect visitors', and interpreters', levels of comfort.

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!”