An Antidote to "Seeing"? (Part 2)

In my last post, I set to work deconstructing the depression-inducing claims of Tony Bennett’s article “Civic Seeing.” I argued that Tammy Stone-Gordon’s typology of the community exhibit challenges the Fouccoultean notions of control and manipulation that Bennett claims are inherent in the contemporary museum.

By the time I finished writing the last post, I’d almost recovered from my Bennett-borne depression. But not so fast!

As I finished reading Private History in Public, I began to realize that there was a different reason to feel depressed: many of the places in which the public encounters the past are spaces of economic exchange. (My colleague Bayard Miller notes that, in such institutions, "history is business.”) Stone-Gordon makes claims about the “corporate exhibit” in the final three chapters of her book. Her focus on Cracker Barrel is particularly gloom-inducing. Channeling Jerry Herron, she concludes that “corporately produced history-as-marketing often to a sanitized version of the past, a version that is divorced from the problems of the present" (p. 77). No wonder so many people yearn for the Norman Rockwell-ian America of “yore.”

Add to this glut of mythologized, capitalist-driven museums the claims of Whitcomb in Beyond the Mausoleum: Museums and the Media. Tying her work to Bennett, she advances the idea that government-sponsored museum spaces make not only cultural claims, but also economic ones. In other words, government museums -- in placing priority focus on material objects -- invite visitors to embrace capitalism. Thus, even in spaces supposedly liberated from the consumerist impulse, “history as commodity” reigns.

For the average museum-goer, I would assume, these academia-born typologies have little meaning. People obviously know the difference between a Cracker Barrel and the Philadelphia History Museum, but do they parse the ways in which they absorb history (i.e., arguments about the past) in these varied institutions? Are they cognizant of the diverse epistemologies at work in these spaces, the intellectual strategies of curation deployed to “convince” and “educate”?

I ask such questions only because we don’t have a The Presence of the Past that answers questions of public agency in the museum. We do, however, know -- courtesy of Rosenzweig and Thelen -- that the public trusts museums more than they trust any other source of knowledge about the past.

Boy, is that depressing.

An Antidote to "Seeing"? (Part 1)

Tony Bennett’s “Civic Seeing: Museums and the Organization of Vision” is probably the bleakest, scariest, most depression-inducing article I’ve read as a graduate student. This probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise, since it rises out of that “great” Fouccoultean tradition that depicts the museum as a big, scary, manipulative mega-monster intent on rendering a Stepford citizenry under the guise of “civic virtue.”

Here’s a basic example of what I'm talking about, one of many that could be culled from Bennett's article: In a section discussing the exhibition of difference in the museum space, Bennett contends that museums have “been places for making differences – whether natural, social, or cultural – visible.” He deflates the implicit (liberal) optimism of that assertion with a sudden reversal: “They have done so, however, mainly to and for a controlling point of view which, while theoretically universal, has, in fact . . . been restricted to” (p. 278) a privileged few--usually heterosexual, middle-class, white men.

Ugh.

Why, then, should we public historians even engage in the act of museum exhibition? If contemporary museum culture is controlled by this Fouccoultean carceral manipulation, shouldn’t we just give up on museums? Or is there an antidote to “seeing”?

Tammy Stone-Gordon offers one possible solution in her book Private History in Public: the community exhibit. Described by Stone-Gordon as exhibits that "provide individualized perspectives not only on the history of the local community but also on community views of the larger world" (p. 23), community exhibits are "indigenous" projects that provide the curating community with a form of agency. Claims Stone-Gordon: the community "is active in its construction of its history."

Stone-Gordon buttresses her descriptive claims with an example from the Homewood Historical Society. She quotes Elain Egdorf, one of the historical society's founding members, who claims that she didn't like history in school, because it was all about memorization. But as she became involved in "local history," she "realized that history is you and me; history is all of us, is what's happening today. . . . Everyone is important in some way to the fabric of their town. [We need to] wake up people to the diversity we have here, in ethnicity, economics, housing, architecture" (p. 40). In crafting this simple methodology of inclusion and interpretation for her local museum, Egdorf counters the claims made by Bennett and, perhaps, provides an antidote for "Seeing."

Take that, Tony Bennett!

"Removing The Artificial Wall": Historians and the Academic/Public "Divide"

In this week's Chronicle of Higher Ed, two history PhDs -- Alexandra M. Lord and Michelle L. McClellan -- encourage students of American history to "remov[e] the artificial wall between academic and public history." Here's a taste of their article:

In our shaky economic climate, academic departments will need to hire historians with multiple skills who can teach a range of courses. History departments will increasingly require faculty members who can explain to parents facing hefty tuition bills how and why majoring in history is a good choice. Departments will want historians who can sell a service-learning project to a dean who is determining budget allocations in a tight fiscal year.

In other words, even in an academic setting, historians need to be able to communicate the importance of history to nonspecialists, to collaborate, and to understand wider institutional goals. Participation in public history builds all of those skills.

Even as the academic job market in history has contracted, Americans remain passionate about the subject. They visit historic sites and museums, watch documentaries, read historic fiction, and investigate their own family or local histories. They visit Ellis Island, hunting for shipping records. They travel to federal historic landmarks such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, seeking insight into how and why a fire there changed history and made their working lives different from that of their great-grandmothers'. They visit a slave cabin at Evergreen Plantation and feel their breath catch as they imagine a life within its narrow confines.

Overcoming the gap between academic and public history would mean that the considerable accomplishments of enthusiastic amateurs—"popular historymakers," in the words of Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen—could be contextualized in a more sophisticated and nuanced fashion. While the reward structure of academe currently mitigates against the involvement of academic historians in many public-history activities, much is at stake here. Surely we would all benefit if academics brought their considerable expertise to bear on public discussions about history.

Read the whole article here.

They suggest that "graduate students . . . should be provided opportunities to work on public-history projects, just as they must gain experience teaching and writing monographs." This is great advice, and something that Temple's history program has provided me (and would also provide to grad students not specifically seeking public history specialization).

So what do you think, folks? How can we begin to remove "the artificial wall"?

Got Religion?

Rosenzweig and Thelen spend the first chapter of their magnificent study The Presence of the Past delineating the ways various demographic groups -- whites/African Americans/Native Americans, men/women, rich/poor, rural/suburban/urban -- use "history" and/or "the past" in everyday life. Their demographic breakdown is missing one critical component: religion. ". . . [W]e did not ask explicitly about religion," the authors admit (p. 120), although they do make some salient claims about the relationship between particularly evangelical Christian faith and popular historymaking (p. 25, 120-123).

Leaving religion out of the question(s) about popular historymaking makes light of three realities. First, it makes light of the role that religion plays in American public and private life -- from political rhetoric to popular TV. Second, it makes light of the fact that religion is the most popular area of study for American historians. And, third, it makes light of the role that both history and religion play in today’s culture wars.

The Public Historian as Fundraiser: A Different Kind of Public History “Controversy”

For a year after college, I served as a development officer for a medium-sized religious nonprofit. In that time, I learned two truths: (1) Happy donors make a happy nonprofit, and (2) Tell the donors whatever they need to hear to stay happy. While arguably key to a well-funded organization, this professional penchant for “spin” nevertheless leave little room for transparency.

This fundamental lack of transparency does not seem to disturb fundraising professional Nell Pratt, the protagonist in Sheila Connolly’s Fundraising the Dead. When she learns that her institution, the Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society, is hemorrhaging valuable historical artifacts, likely due to theft, Nell does everything in her power to keep a tight lid on the matter—at least as far as her donor base (and the public at large) is concerned.

Such lack of transparency may not bother Nell—but it should bother a public historian, especially if we view the public historian as a professional who shares authority with a broad constituency and who has a responsibility to act ethically and honestly toward that constituency.

With this in mind, I wonder, “Can public historians also be effective fundraisers?” Or, stated another way, “In what ways might effective fundraising inhibit effective public historical scholarship?”

I see this as a key question, especially for those PHs running small-to-medium-sized nonprofits. For these folks, fundraising is and must be a key component of their job description. Without a budget big enough to fund a director of development, these professionals don a fundraising cap and seek to cultivate an ever-expanding donor base. But is it possible that, in cultivating a confident and committed donor base, these public historians-cum-fundraisers are forced to abrogate an essential responsibility to the public good?

Welcome!

Welcome to Going Public, a blog about public history. I'm Devin Manzullo-Thomas -- aspiring American religious historian, public historian, and digital humanist. I'm currently a second-year M.A. student at Temple University, where I spent much of my time thinking about communities that link their religious beliefs to counter-cultural values, and how I (as a historical professional) can help such communities make sense of their pasts.

Over the course of the next three-or-so months, I'll be using Going Public as a venue for sharing thoughts and engaging with my public history colleagues in Managing History. I'll hope you'll join us -- share your thoughts, offer feedback, ask questions.