Readings October 26th.

This weeks readings included Cathy Stanton's The Lowell Experiment and an article on the American Preservation Ethos.

I feel like this week's readings, for the most part, can be summarized in one person:

John Muir.

For those of you who did not watch the Ken Burns series about the National Parks (of which about four hours are dedicated to him), John Muir is, at least in the NPS, considered the first Park Ranger. He was an avid preservationist and was integral in the creation of the first National Parks. He also founded the Sierra Club.

In Stanton's book, she outlines what she feels a public historian is. Leftists, activist, civically engaged, (normally) white, middle class. Muir was all of these. While he put his efforts towards the natural resources and not the culutural resources like Stanton writes about, Muir still fits the bill pretty closely. Muir did not grow up in an affluent household, but did well for himself in life as first an engineer, then a naturalist. He owned a fair amount of land and was well educated.
Muir was instrumental in the founding of Yosemite and other national parks, wanting to preserve them for their beauty, but also for how they could serve and be enjoyed by the general population. He was most certainly an activist, through his writing, influence on politicians, his actions for the parks.

I have heard Muir citized for his 'radical environmentalism', which in most cases was a deep concern for the preservation of land and resources. However, it does tie into our second reading about preservation. Many feel that Muir would have just preserved everything if he had the chance (and considering his great pull with the presidents at the time, it could have happened). It does beg the question however, if people had not pushed so hard for preservation, would we these parks and places? Is the extreme need to preserve a complete negative?

The main difference between Muir and Stanton's version of public historian is that Muir actively engaged his subject. He lived in all of the places that became parks and was constantly surrounded by and engaged with the surroundings he was trying to save or work for. Stanton notes that public historians are often too removed from what they are studying, such as the Lowell rangers not actually living in Lowell. However, it's a comparison better left unmade. Muir walked 1000 miles for the experience of it and camped out in Yosemite with Teddy Roosevelt. His wife sent him back to live in the wilderness because being away from the mountains/trees/etc was bad for his health. Muir made his work into somewhat of a religious experience and while, as Stanton said, people do bleed 'grey and green', I do not know if that quite equals Muir's experience.

Readings for October 18th

For this week we took on Horton and Horton's Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory and Launius's "American Memory, Culture Wars and the Challenge of Presenting Science and Technology in a National Museum".


One theme that both of these texts stresses is that there is not necessarily room, time or desire for new or forgotten interpretations of particular histories, whether that be technology, slavery or the causes of the civil war. The current presentations (historical societies, museums, schooling, what have you) just do not provide space for varying, and potentially undesired, interpretations. However, both also stress that, through continued discourse and education, public historians have the best hope for the incorporation of these new narratives. Public historians and places of public history are where these interpretations will be found and discussed.

Other than that I have a few questions just to think about and which we will possibly end up discussing in class anyway.

If memory is the springboard for history, can history realistically live up to the desire to be factual and accurate (words that came up more than once in these readings)?

As stressed in many of the essays, is education in these areas the answer to promoting more open discourse and further presentation of different or forgotten interpretations? Will education alone do this, or do we need public historians to push these discussions into the general discourse?

Part of any NPS interp training, and I'd assume any other public history training is know your audience. However, the Horton text also stresses know your interpreter. How often in visiting museums, or other places of public history, do people take into account the race, class, background, etc of the interpreter? Or is historical interpretation supposed to be a place where those things are supposed to not matter/be ignored?


I will write further on this, particularly in relation to possibly my favorite book from undergrad. However, the thoughts haven't fully solidified. Give it a few days.

Museum Review: The Mercer Museum

Since this week seems to be a lot of pathetic mishaps on my part for this class (missed the link (is there one?) for the new reading, I think my computer is revolting against the dashboard and not showing updates, my printer ran out of ink,), I'll try to make up for at least the last part by including some more photos from my Mercer Museum trip on here.

So, the short version of the review:
The Mercer Museum is the concrete castle home of Henry Chapman Mercer's collection of pre-industrial (pre 1850) American hand tools and hand crafts. Mercer, a native of Buck County PA, started collecting tools of pre industrial America in 1897, and built the castle for his collection of about 30,000 pieces in 1916. He wanted to force people to look at items not too far removed from the presented and how they told the history of Bucks County and the nation. The set up of the museum forces people to look at common objects in new ways.
The museum today houses about 50,000 items, many with their original labels in their original places within the castle. These items are separated into over 60 different catagories, based on what they were used for. This includes things such as threshing, butter making, music, medicine, local iron making and crime and punishment (which includes a set of gallows). The goals remain in line with Mercer's, and attempt to describe history through these tools, demonstrate how these tools portay Bucks County history, as well as examine Mercer's ideas of how museums should be run in the early 20th Century.
Through detailed placards in the exhibit areas describing whatever task (Fruit Preservation), what it is, how it is done (explaining the apple corers, right), how fruit preservation fits into the history of the Northeast and Bucks County, and how Mercer felt about this, the museum manages to bridge the time gap between the current audience and the tools. This significant distance in time between the tools and the audience is not something mercer had to grapple with so much, but the museum has successfully addressed the problem.
The Mercer Museum is increadibly informative, and succeeds in knowing its audience and making the collections accessible and approachable. Because Mercer, and today's curators, choose to encorporate many intertwining narratives into the museum's exhibits, it provides interpretation and knowledge not necessarily found else where in one place in such a comprehensive manner.

Anyway, it's incredibly hard to appreciate the Mercer Museum without visuals.

Yes, there are items upside down from the ceiling, Mercer's way of forcing people to look at things different, as well as saving space. And yes, those are real paw prints in the cement (from Mercer's dog, Rollo, who plays an integral part in the museum interpretation today)

Readings for October 5th

First, I'd like to say hooray for October! As a big fan of fall, I'm happy to see cool, crisp air taking place of the stifling humidity of PA summers. And I got to pull my Turkish scarves out of summer storage, which is always a big plus. Other exciting things: pumpkin flavored everything (still need to find a good pumpkin beer), halloween and getting to drink hot chocolate without looking like an idiot.

Anyway, onto the main point of this whole shindig, this week's readings!

The whole of this weeks readings (Making Museum's Matter, the AAM's 2008 annual report, and an essay regarding the incorporation of the Cold War into Civil rights museums) all dealt with three main things: Accountability, Ownership, and Value. Weil does a good job laying out the precarious balancing act in which these three things take part in regards to making a functional, worthwhile and purposeful museum in our current world. So I guess the best route for this is to address the three things separately, with a few concluding thoughts thrown in.

Accountability: Weil stresses accountability in a big way. He feels that part of the reason museums aren't thriving as well as they could be is that there is no evaluation system--they have no method of being accountable to each other or too any sort of grading or evaluation, leaving museums to include what they feel like and run in whatever way may appear best for them at the time. The AAM report touches on the movement towards some sort of central guideline for creating such accountability. Renee Romano addresses this problem of accountability if her text. She desires the global narrative of the Cold War to be incorporated into Civil Rights museums--feeling that this narrative is often ignored, forgotten, and an older narrative is presented at the loss of some major insights. She desires museums to be accountable for the information provided and to strive to provide the best available and most encompassing interpretation. A challenge which is made more difficult by the next bit to balance, which is...

Ownership: something that has significant impact on how museums function, run, are funded, get collections, and pretty much exist. Weil notes a particular shift in the functioning of Museums over the last 50 to 100 years. 19th century, the collections were why the museum existed. The museum or whatever donor or university owned the collections, they were available to be preserved in and of themselves for further scholarship and that was that. Ownership was fairly easy to identify and thus the museum and its content was accountable to that entity. Over the last century, who owns museums has become a bigger question. Is it the public? The board of trustees? The government? The grant giver? The corporation funding it? The original owners of the pieces in the collections? The list goes on. A museum is often 'owned' by many of the above, each of which has its own unique agenda, plan and attitude towards the running of the operation. Each of those entities may desire a different interpretation. Museums have to balance having engaged visitors while still pleasing the desires of their benefactors. The AAM's annual report shows this attempt to balance the effects of many tiered ownership, but also demonstrates through its long list of donors, how the balancing act may be tiped to one side or another (ie: those with the money to keep the operation going).

Value: And finally, the value of museums. This goes all the way from the the value of the experience one derives from a visit, to the value of the pieces inside the walls of the galleries and storage, to the walls of the building in which those collections are stored. Weil's quasi thought exercise about how different types of people would react to a "c-day" scenario exhibits the differing attitudes towards the value of museums and their holdings in a very clear way. The AAM's report stresses a desire to instill a feeling in museum visitors in the value of visiting a museum, to increase stewardship and participation. Of the three parts here, the value of a museum is most likely the hardest to concretely define, for it is not something that can be defined quantitatively.

Weil notes that museums sit in their weird world between a for profit business and a not for profit organization. They need to be accountable just like any for profit business, but they need to provide some sort of discernible value/benefit to its patrons, like a non-profit (his favorite in the united way). It is difficult to talk about one bit of this balancing act without engaging the others, since when one shifts, as do the others. However, to avoid blathering on too long, I'd just like to touch back to our Rosenzeig/Thelen reading, and a small bibliographic note from Weil, maybe explaining some of R/T's findings:

Pg 52, footnotes to "From Being about Something, to being for Someone"
35. I am grateful to Camilla Boodle, a London based museum consultant, for her suggestion that visitors may find a museum rewarding without necessarily accepting its authority. Conversation with the author, August 1998.