Culture-Led Redevelopment and the Role of Public History

Cathy Stanton, The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City (University of Massachusetts Press, 2006)

Diane Lea, "America's Preservation Ethos: A Tribute to Enduring Ideals" in Robert Stipe, ed., A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2003)


We've read some works this semester that served as a kind of call to arms. Last week's reading encouraged an earnest engagement with the "tough stuff of history," namely slavery. Steven Weil's collection of essays promoted the benefits of consumer-based museums and suggested the dwindling relevance of masterful collections. This week, Cathy Stanton has raised the stakes. For Stanton, public historians are essentially political actors, and nothing short of direct, often confrontational engagement with both past and present will get the job done.

Boott Cotton Mills Museum, Lowell, MA



Stanton's book is an intelligent and controversial piece of work, one that invites a lot of soul searching - particularly for aspiring historians with a decidedly leftist bent (like myself). I can relate directly with the personal narratives Stanton provides here of solidly middle-class white professionals who have essentially stripped away their ethnic and working class heritage. Or whom clumsily rationalize their professional advancement and material comforts despite a deep skepticism and distaste for unregulated capitalism. Many of the participants interviewed here were in fact the first generation to transcend their childhood socioeconomic status, whereas I'm two and in some cases three generations removed from that world. I don't feel that my Irish, Italian, or Catholic heritage has in any tangible way defined who I am and I have largely stripped away those identity markers (sorry Pop-Pop). If anything I'm more willing to embrace a broad identification as twentieth century American secular humanist, or even Northeast middle class suburbanite. Stanton is a bit shortsighted here though. She falls into the same trap of denying ethnicity simply because it's WASP-ish. "American" can connote an ethnicity, albeit a complex one. Likewise, to suggest that someone somehow embodies an Irish heritage because their grandparents emigrated from Ireland in the late nineteenth century is overstating the case, to say nothing of the fact that it implies a unified, essential Irish heritage. But we're getting off track here.

Central to Stanton's work isn't necessarily the denial of ethnicity by museum professionals, but rather the unwieldy marriage of historic preservation and economic revitalization. How can public historians in Lowell, MA both be true to the historical record while not interrupting the profit-driven motives of shared institutional spaces? How can an institution lament the sins of capitalism in one era (mill work in the mid-nineteenth century) and yet deny the clear linkages with labor and immigration patterns in their own time? In their efforts to champion Lowell as an urban renewal project, urban planners and historians both neglected the hard realities of postindustrial life in twenty-first century New England. My question, as I read through this book... What the hell were they supposed to do? The opportunities for presentist interpretation in Lowell, MA are undeniable. But how, as museum planners, do you visualize and communicate that pattern? What does an exhibit about de-industrialization look like? Arguably, the Acre tour is just such an attempt, but is it not irresponsible, and frankly disrespectful, to present a living community as a visual representation of urban blight? The Acre tour needs to better incorporate the members of that community if it expects to have any success as a valuable and ethical museum-going experience. As I try to imagine the work involved in such a project, I wonder if I'm truly up for the task.

Shoot the Messenger

James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory (The New Press, 2007)

Roger D. Launius, "American Memory, Culture Wars, and the Challenge of Presenting Science and Technology in a National Museum" The Public Historian, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Winter 2007)

Two readings this week, but many voices and many difficult questions. Horton and Horton's collection of essays looks at historians, curators, and museum officials attempts to better weave the history of slavery into the larger narrative of American history. The book is both a powerful corrective to the ghettoization of American slavery to the 1850s (sectionalism, Old South, cotton) and a realization of the intense, uphill battles that public historians hoping to engage with the "peculiar institution" are bound to face, no matter what their base of operations.

Further, these essays are a testament to how deep a wound the US Civil War proved to be in nineteenth century America and continues to be in contemporary American memory. Marie Tyler-McGraw's "Southern Comfort Levels: Race, Heritage Tourism, and the Civil War in Richmond" tackles those wounds head on (and for my money may be the most valuable essay included here). Tyler recounts attempts to re-imagine and revitalize Richmond, VA in the wake of de-industrialization. She explores a necessary but unwieldy alliance between municipal leaders and historians and their efforts to develop a heritage tourism industry, one that commemorates the sins and sacrifices of the Civil War while establishing a viable economic venture. Needless to say, complications arise. The burning of a large publicly displayed canvas featuring Robert E. Lee and the dispute over placement of two separate statues commemorating tennis star Arthur Ashe and Abraham Lincoln's visit to recently captured Richmond are but a few examples of the contest over public memory and Civil War in the former Confederate south. Tyler-McGraw skillfully demonstrates what's at stake in the culture wars that populate the pages of Slavery and Public History: racial justice, community wellness, economic growth and development, public identity, and responsible historical consciousness. The next time someone questions the utility of history or historical sites, point them to Tyler-McGraw's essay (it also happens to be a nice primer for next week's discussion of Cathy Stanton's examination of Lowell, MA).

Turning his lens to science and technology, but no less concerned with the public fight over national exhibition spaces, Roger D. Launius charts the rise, fall, and triumphant return of consensus history, the latter turn particularly on display at American museums. Himself a museum professional at the National Air and Space Museum, Launius is largely critical of museum's (i.e. the Smithsonian's) general unwillingness to explore controversial exhibit material, "the tough stuff of history." He then playfully provides a top ten countdown of "non-starter" exhibits that would likely be dismissed on grounds of limited relevance or political feasibility (i.e. US aircraft "nose art" or air power's role in the Vietnam war, respectively). The question posed by curator Tom Crouch when discussing the infamous 1994 Enola Gay exhibit goes to the heart of each of these essays, and in fact, many of the questions we've been pondering over the last few weeks: "Do you want to do an exhibition intended to make veterans feel good, or do you want an exhibition that will lead our visitors to talk about the consequences of the atomic bombing of Japan. Frankly, I don't think we can do both."

Crouch provides a nice template here for future exhibit planners. Essentially, do you want to make your visitors "feel good" or do you want them to consider the "consequences" of a given moment in history, whether it be the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the long shadow of North American slavery, de-industrialization in urban America. I would contend with Crouch however that we as historians can do both. There certainly is room for a subdued, celebratory tone when discussing slavery, as evidenced by the work of Ira Berlin and his contemporaries, but that doesn't deny the tough stuff, which is all, it seems, these writers ultimately are asking of public institutions. We need not be harbingers of historical doom and gloom, but we also must embrace conflict and complexity. The marriage of both, affirmation and reconsideration, can provide for a compelling and deeply valuable museum experience.

"Dialogues with Darwin": APS and the Twenty First Century Museum

Perhaps no figure looms larger in the arena of nineteenth century science than Charles Darwin. Natural selection and its legacy has often obscured the valuable work of Darwin’s contemporaries, but Darwin’s influence on evolutionary theory and its implications for modern existence cannot be understated. Housed at the American Philosophical Society Museum (APS) in downtown Philadelphia, “Dialogues with Darwin” recognizes that contribution, a celebration of the scientific giant’s 200th birthday and 150th anniversary of the publication of his landmark work, On the Origin of Species (1859).

Combining traditional book and manuscript exhibition with four commissioned works by contemporary artist Eve Andree Laramee, “Dialogues with Darwin” is a temple of dichotomies: Victorian and modern, empirical and playful, conservative and innovative, professional and amateur. Explicit in the exhibit’s invitation “to explore the history of evolutionary theory and engage in your own dialogues with –and about – Charles Darwin” is an attempt to bridge the divide between museum and museumgoer. An extensive exhibit website takes the idea even further, providing a forum for general visitor responses, expanded information on Darwin and the exhibit’s holdings, and a series of “Diablogs” that prompt visitors to ponder such questions as, “Would Darwin Twitter?” The extent to which these strategies are successful remain open to debate; regardless, the American Philosophical Society Museum is tackling seriously the challenges of twenty first century museum exhibition, casting aside the Society’s somewhat stodgy eighteenth century origins, and embracing an institutional moment that rewards risk and penalizes traditionalism.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). De distributione geographica plantarum…. Paris: Lutetiae Parisiorum, 1817. "Dialogues with Darwin," American Philosophical Society.


That curator Sue Ann Prince and her staff can accommodate these divergent threads while not losing sight of Darwin, his message, and its scientific impact is impressive, particularly in such a challenging exhibition space. Content, design, and mission are all carefully considered. The exhibit will stand until October of next year and APS has a number of Darwin-inspired events planned throughout the year. One can only hope these events will embrace the same spirit of innovation and experimentation on display throughout “Dialogues with Darwin.” If events scheduled at the time of this writing are any indication, they surely will. In collaboration with the 2009 Live Arts and Philly Fringe festival APS will be hosting “Darwinii: The Comeuppance of Man,” a one man performance piece that invents a personal history of Darwin’s illegitimate son. Skeptics may scoff at such abstract, performance driven content (Laramee included), but “Dialogues with Darwin,” if nothing else, hopes to open avenues of discourse, not close them, to consider science and its implications for everyday existence, not just the laboratory. In the spirit of Charles Wilson Peale, the eighteenth century artist who originally inhabited APS as a natural history museum curator (the first of its kind) Dr. Prince and her staff are peeling back the curtain and are the stronger for it.

Charles Wilson Peale, The Artist in his Museum (1822)

Moving Beyond the Reliquary: Stephen Weil, Amy Tyson, and the American Association of Museums

What is the function of a museum? Whose interests do they aim to serve? How does one marry historical expertise with broad appeal? How does a museum reconcile histories of conflict and oppression with stories of progress and patriotism?

These aren’t exactly new questions this semester, but our readings this week shift the focus away from individual historymakers and fix their lens squarely on institutions. By charting museums’ development in the twentieth century, particularly within the last thirty years, acknowledging their varied strengths and strategies, and forecasting their future, our readings this week serve as a call to arms. Throughout his collection of essays, Making Museums Matter (Smithsonian, 2002), Stephen Weil directly challenges future museum administrators to cast aside their prior identity as collectors and presenters of unique material artifacts and to embrace their role as public servant, to demolish the “cemetery of bric-a-brac” (81) and develop public institutions in the truest sense of the term. Implicit in this goal is recognizing museum’s now fixed position within the non-profit service economy and the need to intelligently navigate the potential frustrations and advantages of that world.


Our National Pasttimes's Reliquary: Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, NY



Amy Tyson likewise stresses the museum as member of the twenty first century service economy and the challenges of merging those responsibilities with socially and historically responsible content, namely slavery in the United States. Conner Prairie’s “Follow the North Star” program is an inventive, albeit extreme, example of the kind of participatory and experiential history that museumgoers desire. Programming of this kind takes risks, and as Tyson demonstrates, Historic Fort Snelling’s general unwillingness to take on similar risks weakened that site’s public value. Weil would certainly applaud the efforts of those working at the former.

Which brings us to the 2008 national report of the American Association of Museums, “A New Journey Begins.” The ideas presented in Weil and Tyson are littered throughout the AAM report. Ford W. Bell in his presidential address speaks of museum’s potential to combat public cynicism and the increased need for improved communication amongst museums themselves and their growing audience. AAM Chair Carl R. Nold identifies the public institution as “a bastion of lifelong learning, an economic engine, a social services provider, a therapeutic oasis, a source of civic pride, and an invaluable community asset,” among others. From the perspective of these museum professionals, (Weil, Tyson, AAM leadership) the museum is no longer about the collection, it is a vehicle toward personal enrichment, and as Weil makes clear, this should be the principal goal of any successful institution. The days of gilded treasure hunts are over; for museums to thrive in a contemporary setting, they must learn to move beyond the reliquary.