Skip to main content

Controversial Museum Interpretation and the Interconnection of Museum and Academic Spheres

 

The confrontation of uncomfortable but necessary historical topics which arise in present-day historic sites are offered in Brown, Gutierrez, Okmin, and McCullough’s article Desegregating Conversations about Race and Identity in Culturally Specific Museums. Here, the authors explain that in museums such as the Asian Art Museum and the Museum of the African Diaspora (both located in San Francisco, CA), museum educators struggle to determine which ways they can present museum exhibitions and historical discussions in a means to promote open and honest discussions without leaving out certain narratives or offending the museum’s visitors. One complaint that people held with the Asian Art Museum was its lack of interpretation upon how the objects of Asian origin were obtained, which would require museum educators to speak of colonization upon Asian nations which lead to these artifacts being held in California[1]. From what I understand, topics of colonization often make visitors of a certain demographic uncomfortable because they often feel like they themselves are at fault for the theft of certain artifacts. However, I do believe that by allowing open discussions about interpretations of the artifacts as well as how the objects came to be displayed in the Asian Art Museum, museum educators are actively working to promote more open and productive conversations about previously discomforting topics thus allowing historic sites to be a safe place for diverse historical discussions.

2]

In a similar frame of cultural and racial historical topics in historic sites, I really enjoyed Margaret Sanford and Janaye Evan’s presentation in the conference Death to Museums UnConference  in which they discuss the outright existence of White Supremacy evident in the exhibition’s practices, mass incarceration, and lack of diversity in the exhibition and museum programmers of the Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. Sanford and Evans carefully explain the history of the penitentiary and the lack of attention given to the minorities who have been imprisoned here. One remark that I appreciated from this conference was Evan’s conclusion that most visitor’s of the museum are White and middle class and that the penitentiary’s educators are often not properly trained to engage with visitors who could become hostile with them due to subject matter[3]. I felt that this was an important reality to note, because though topics which involve race and systematic inequality are more than necessary, they are not often expressed to the extent that they should be in historic sites and the museum interpreters who speak of racial content are known to be verbally assaulted by visitors. As a public historian, I would want to be adequately trained on a variety of topics that encompass the history of a site, no matter how harsh or uncomfortable. I would also like to know how to speak with visitors who may have a differing opinion that I may have. When I learned that this training was not efficiently given to the educators of the Eastern State Penitentiary, I was honestly surprised. In this case, I really did appreciate Evan’s and Sanford’s honest and thorough discussion of the penitentiary and their push to eradicate White Supremacy in this site.

4]

Throughout Timothy Patterson’s work documented in Historians, Archivists, and Museum Educators as Teacher Educators: Mentoring Preservice History Teachers at Cultural Institutes, the practices of study participants and youth involvement in historic sites show that historic sites can either help foster broader insight into historical topics or hinder visitor’s from certain interpretations. One thing that stuck out to me in Patterson’s article was the observation of the teacher named Peter who admitted that before having his experience touring a museum with his mentor (a museum professional named Scott), he had thought of museums as just places which housed historical artifacts; after seeing the work of curators and the way a site’s exhibition design can really help them relay a certain narrative, Peter gained valuable knowledge as to how historic sites are model sites for learning[5]. I am happy that Peter was illuminated to the ability of museums to be strong sites of education and learning, as I have known people who like Peter, downplayed the capability of museum education to teach certain historical narratives. I am an advocate for helping museum visitors understand the quality and significance of what museum and historic sites have to offer them as far as historical education, and thus appreciate studies like the one Peter partook in.

 


[1] Brown, Gutierrez, Okmin, and Susan McCullough. Desegregating Conversations about Race and Identity in Culturally Specific Museums. Journal of Museum Education: 42:2, 2017, 122.

[3] Evans, Janaye and Margaret Sanford. Between Apathy and Action: The Educator and the Museum Mission, A Case Study at Eastern State Penitentiary. Death to Museums UnConference: August 2, 2020. https://youtu.be/QlkLGgyk0Ss?t=11328

[5] Patterson, Timothy. Historians, Archivists, and Museum Educators as Teacher Educators: Mentoring Preservice History Teachers at Cultural Institutes. Journal of Teacher Education, 2020, 5.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fortitude, Community, and Vision: the Black Museum Movement from the 1960s to the Present

  [1] In her book From Storefront to Monument: Tracing the Public History of the Black Museum Movement , Andrea A. Burns documents the endeavors of African Americans to establish Black-owned museums in stride and motivated by certain sentiments of the Black Power movement of the 1960s. Focusing primarily on four of the first African American museums in America named The DuSable Museum of African American History, The International Afro-American Museum (IAM), The Anacostia Neighborhood Museum (ANM), and the African American Museum of Philadelphia (AAMP), Burns illustrates how these museums were created and run by African Americans. Some of the historical figures in Burns’ narrative include Margaret (Black artist) and Charles Burroughs, Dr. Charles Wright, and museum director John Kinard who out of grassroot movements and extreme effort formed and oversaw operations they saw fit for reconstructing the representations and presentations of African American history. Burns allows her r...
3 comments
Read more

From Distant Comfort to Submersion: The Morphing of Historical Consciousness and Historical Authenticity in America

     [1] [2] M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska’s book History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s is a refreshing and perceptive examination of the changing manners in which history was taught, depicted, reenacted, and reflected upon in America from the 1950s to the 1970s. Rymsza-Pawlowska shows these shifts by presenting to her readers America’s earlier traditions to deliver history in a more distance and purely informational manner and America’s change in method which would incite emotions and provide more interactive ways to partake in historical settings [3] . What I found particularly striking and informative in her book was her inclusion of American television series which showed early reluctance to interact deeply with the past and the move of American television productions to present a more involved and sincere narrative of American history in later decades. For instance, she provides the ways in which early American shows such as The Twilight Zon...
2 comments
Read more

Post #8: Important Discussions of Copyright and Digitization in Archival Spaces

  This week’s discussion in Temple’s Archives and Manuscripts course concerning the protocols of copyright in the archival realm is one that many a researcher might find vital. As a traditional historian, I tend to utilize physical books and monographs. However, I often utilize more contemporary research materials for my papers such as online articles, audio, and countless of other digital sources to input into my papers and assignments. I, like many other researchers, would like to avoid being guilty of copyrighting another’s work and or utilizing a work when it should be restricted or was wrongfully, whether intentionally or unintentionally, made to be used publicly. In Dharma Akmon’s Only With Your Permission: How Rights Respond (Or Don’t Respond) to Requests to Display Archival Materials Online , it is disclosed that many archives try to take multiple measures to ensure that works with complicated rights issues are not digitized to mitigate potential cases of copyright. [1] Th...
Post a Comment
Read more