My thoughts on week 6 readings:

Before this week’s reading I had devoted very little thought to historic preservation compared to the other subfields of public history. My undergraduate university, while lacking a public history program, offered a historic preservation program through the school of architecture. This encouraged me to think of the subject as a purely technical, architectural endeavor. Nolan, by emphasizing the way in which styles of historic preservation/restoration relate to the academic theories of modernism and post-modernism, and Lindgren, by bringing out the gendered dimension of personalism versus professionalism, have made me realize the academic depth which historic preservation can have.

I have been on a number of historic building, though probably not as many as you who grew up on the East Coast, but the articles raised questions about them that I had never considered. Unless the tour guide emphasized some idiosyncratic element of the building, which was seldom, I assumed that the building’s managers followed Lindgren’s definition of restoration. This, it seemed to me, was what separated historic preservation from archeology. I now realize how easy it would be for the building to tell multiple stories from different, later owners. Viewed in this light, historic buildings are easier to appreciate as dynamic centers of ongoing history, rather than static evocations of one, earlier time period. Many of these complex and interesting elements may be impossible to see unless one, like Nolan does, explores the history of the historic site and traces the various preservationist philosophies which have been employed by different managers.

My thoughts on week 5 readings:

The Enola Gay controversy highlighted an aspect of public history that we have not previously been discussed in length: the role of government and government institutions in the sphere of public history. I was amazed that, after his organization had waged a furious campaign to destroy the objectionable segments of the Smithsonian exhibit, an American Legion spokesperson could praise an exhibit put on by the American University with the same material on the grounds that “AU is a private institution. The Smithsonian is a public institution, where the impression is that anything it says is official history” (222). The phrase “official history” evokes a totalitarian mandate for historical interpretation in the style of the Soviet or Nazi regimes, a concept totally inappropriate to a liberal democracy such as the US. The idea that US government funding for cultural institutions necessarily implies that the government exercises content control in these institutions is ridiculous, especially considering the long history of conservative politicians’ complaints about the “immoral” uses of public funding for the arts. The Enola Gay exhibit itself, in fact, drew similar condemnation, though certainly no concrete censorship, from the Republican controlled Congress. 

            The question remains, then, why anyone would believe that a Smithsonian exhibit would leave the “impression” that it is “official history.” Perhaps the Smithsonian might benefit from emphasizing that, while closely associated with the federal government, their museums are still directed and curated by professional staff, rather than government boards.  If the mystique of a “public institution” were diminished by emphasizing the roles of individuals, perhaps the passion of some future censorious campaigns could be diminished. In the end, though, interest groups will probably always attempt to push their agendas on museums as small as the John Dillinger or as large as the Smithsonian. The best defense seems to be the mix of negotiation and defense, together with the support of the professional community, outlined in chapter 7’s discussion of the National Museum of American History’s tangling with the business community.    

My thoughts on week 4 readings.

            Slavery and Public History rung true to me in its description of a widespread lack of public knowledge about slavery and/or acceptance of discredited historical myths on the topic. Ira Berlin’s observation that few Americans acknowledge the central role that slavery played in the nation’s history from its very beginning, and James Horton’s article on the way in which Northerners and Southerners alike have sanitized the memory of slavery by denial or mischaracterization immediately reminded me of an episode of Hardball with Chris Matthews that aired on June 19^th, 2009. Matthews’ guest, Tennessee Representative Steve Cohen discussed the recent Congressional apology for slavery, to which Matthews belligerently responded that the North should not have to apologize for slavery since it fought the Civil War to end slavery. After first denying that Pennsylvania, New York, and Vermont even had slaves, Matthews then lamely conceded that “they had some of it,” but still demanded to know “why should anybody apologize for your [Southern] sins?”[1] While less obnoxious than the perennial, loud protesting of Neo-Confederate organizations discussed by Marie Tyler-McGraw and Dwight Pitcaithley among others, the exchange still exemplified many of the myths discussed in the book, such as the instant association of slavery with the Civil War, and the belief that slavery was not important to Northern history.

            Given the prevalence of myths relating to slavery, as well as the strong emotions which so many Americans feel towards the issue, slavery seems to be an excellent test case of the constructive role which public historians can play, or fail to play, in society. Joanne Melish and Louis Horton both describe situations in which the incorporation of a discussion of slavery into a historical presentation resulted in conflicting misconceptions and mythologies which did not seem to be resolved in the end. John Vlach, on the other hand, presents a powerful counter-example in which a spirited debate over the exhibition of slavery resolved in an overwhelmingly positive outcome for all involved. What factors caused such different outcomes? What can public historians do, if they can do anything, to guide such emotional conflicts to an educative and perhaps edifying conclusion? While ignoring painful history is never the answer to mitigating its effects on society, merely providing forums for myths and counter-myths to combat each other seems ineffective to me aswell. 

1: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/31488466

My thoughts on week 3 readings.

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.