Although Defining Memory covers a wide variety of subjects, one theme which stood out to me across many of the articles was the vulnerability of local museums to financial and political pressures. Vulnerability came up in one form or another in most chapters. Wichita’s Cowtown park was forced to exchange an accurate depiction of Wichita’s early days for a cookie-cutter Old West Small Town appearance both because site managers did not have sufficient money to depict a more complex urban scene, and because city leaders preferred the inaccurate depiction for its resemblance to Hollywood Westerns. The powerful opposition of law enforcement and other community interests to the John Dillinger Museum forced the institution to stick to a narrow interpretation of Dillinger. The Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museums had limited opportunities for improvement thanks to their reliance on elderly volunteer staff members. Levin summarizes a long history of the sometimes undue pressure which donors can have on the creative autonomy of museums strapped for cash. By the end of the book, I felt that vulnerability could almost be added to the definition of local museums.
While most authors acknowledged that political and financial vulnerability were often the root causes of the interpretive choices they were now criticizing, none seemed interested in suggesting creative solutions to the problems. Dona Langford’s success story of the Dickson Mound Museum overcoming the challenge created by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, for example, focused on the Museum’s efforts to creatively move from conflict to cooperation with the Native American community as the Museum reinvented itself in the mid 1990s. As laudable as these efforts were, Langford mentions only passing the fact that the Museum’s reinvention was made possible only by the appropriation of $4 million from the state of Illinois, government largess that the vast majority of museums could only dream of. While I understand that Defining Memory is primarily a work of scholarly critique, the deep vulnerability that so many authors uncovered in local museums made me wonder if a more detailed study of how local museums survive financial and political crises exists in the literature.
This is definitely a recurring theme as we delve into the world of museums. It seems as though everything comes down to finances. You mentioned Wichita's Cowtown as sacrificing accuracy for a perhaps more popular (though untrue) version of the past. It takes something away from the integrity of the space to idealize the past, which becomes disturbing when we think of it in the context of Rosenzweig and Thelen's research. If people trust museums above oral accounts, teachers, and books, it's a dangerous path to walk to start compromising factual accounts of history in favor of something that will draw more crowds. But that which is popular will provide more resources to the museum so they can improve in the future. This becomes very difficult indeed.
ReplyDeleteMoney or lack of money is without a doubt one of the most influential factors facing museums. From every angle: conservation, procurement, storage, and accessibility, money becomes the driving force. So as Meg said the power of what gets collected, preserved, and shown to the public is very much evident in the funding sources. While I agree it can be dangerous to promote exhibitions that compromise true history, I also see the value of 'entertainment exhibition'. Far better to focus on the entertainment aspects and be able to allocate the earning revenue as the museum sees fit, than to take funding from sources which require telling history from their point of view. It's a very fine line to walk and is becoming ever more difficult as the economy continues to lag.
ReplyDeleteI agree that smaller museums are vonurable because of the pressure of their local communities as well as the financial strain, therefore small museums especially need the support of their communities to stay running. The story of the John Dillinger museum stood out to me as a victim of local pressure. The museum had to change its initial purpose of the museum to appease not only local law enforcement but also the local community. I found it interesting that the museum not only showed the law enforcement in such a high context, but actually put the officers in the museum as the highest focal point. This made me wonder if local museums can only be shown in the context that the local communities desire. How then can important issues such as race and other be addressed in areas that either ignore the issue or oppose that viewpoint?
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