Training Professionals
History Institutions
Why Old Places
for
Speaking History to POWER
Keeping History
MATTER
ABOVE WATER
“
WE ARE
FAILING TO PRESERVE HISTORY.
OUR HISTORY IS AT RISK OF
“
BECOMING INVISIBLE.
Dr. Kristen Gwinn-Becker Historian
·
Digital Strategist
· Founder of HistoryIT
View the complete TEDx talk on ‘The Future of History’ at www.historyit.com/TEDx Photo Credit: Sarah Beard-Buckley, TEDxDirigo 2014
Contents
PAGE
19
SUMMER 2016 VOLUME 71, #3
PAGE
PAGE
24
PAGE
14 Departments
29 ON THE COVER
Features
Constructed from 1871 through 1901, the Philadelphia City Hall was the tallest habitable building in the world until 1908. In 2007, the American Institute of Architects voted it number 21 on its list of Americans’ 150 favorite structures in the United States.
7 If It Was Easy, Anyone Could Do It: Training Professionals for History Institutions By Rick Beard
3 On Doing Local History
14 Grappling with Unfolding Events
By Carol Kammen
By Jason Crabill, Melanie A. Adams, and Kyle McKoy
5 History Bytes
19 Why Old Places Matter
By Tim Grove
By Thompson Mayes
33 Award Winner Spotlight
24 Keeping History above Water
By Laura Caldwell Anderson
By Sarah W. Sutton
35 Book Reviews
29 Speaking History to Power
Staying Connected: Developing and Maintaining Emergency Contact Lists
By Anne Petersen and Ereshnee Naidu-Silverman
By Jessica Choppin Roney
By Jessica Unger
Courtesy Joseph Giordano
INSIDE: TECHNICAL LEAFLET
History News is a publication of the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH). History News exists to foster publication, scholarly research, and an open forum for discussion of best practices, applicable theories, and professional experiences pertinent to the field of state and local history. THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR STATE AND LOCAL HISTORY
EDITOR Bob Beatty | ADVERTISING Hannah Hethmon DESIGN Go Design, LLC: Gerri Winchell Findley, Suzanne Pfeil
History News (ISSN0363-7492) is published quarterly by American Association for State and Local History, 1717 Church Street, Nashville TN 37203. Periodicals Postage Paid at Nashville, TN. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to History News, 1717 Church Street, Nashville TN 37203-2991. Article manuscripts dealing with all aspects of public history are welcome, including current trends, timely issues, and best practices for professional development and the overall improvement of the history field, particularly articles that give a fresh perspective to traditional theories, in-depth case studies that reveal applicable and relevant concepts, and subject matter that has the ability to resonate throughout all levels of the field. For information on article submissions and review, see http://about.aaslh.org/history-news. Single copies are $10. Postmaster, please send form 3579 to History News, AASLH, 1717 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37203-2921. Periodical postage paid in Nashville, Tennessee. Entire contents copyrighted ©2016 by the American Association for State and Local History. Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the American Association for State and Local History.
1717 Church Street Nashville, Tennessee 37203-2921 615-320-3203, Fax 615-327-9013 membership@aaslh.org | advertising@aaslh.org | www.aaslh.org
From the Editor
t’s the very definition of preaching to the choir to exclaim in these pages how important history is to communities. You know that principle, and you live it on a daily basis. It is one of the ways your work is truly essential. The Value of History Statement of the History Relevance Campaign (HRC) reflects this. “History lays the groundwork for strong, resilient communities…. Our connections and commitment to one another are strengthened when we share stories and experiences.” Within this issue, Thompson Mayes and Jessica Choppin Roney each share insight into this value. Mayes articulates the holistic value of historic places. Much more than old buildings or places where events occurred, he argues, they matter because people connect to them; they provide a sense of continuity, memory, and identity. Roney documents history in action. Her Temple University students studied Philadelphia’s history through the lens of a current issue, education, with an eye toward influencing policymakers. History is also essential to the present and for the future. “History helps people craft better solutions,” the HRC statement continues. “At the heart of democracy is the practice of individuals coming together to express views and take action.” Two pieces here specifically reflect this precept. Jason Crabill, Melanie A. Adams, and Kyle McKoy highlight the role history organizations can play in contemporary events. Their subheadings alone—Plan in
Advance, Organizational Buy-In, Define Your Scope, and Leveraging Everyday Work—offer a primer on dealing with issues our communities are tackling. Sarah W. Sutton documents a Newport, Rhode Island, conference on climate change, another prevailing concern of our time. Here, Sutton shares steps some in the field are taking as they grapple with the effects of rising sea level on historic sites. I also want to tell you about a new benefit for AASLH members. You may know that History News is archived online on JSTOR’s digital library of journals, books, and primary sources. We have purchased access to this History News archive for all individual members. In addition, we have negotiated a 50 percent discount on JSTOR’s JPASS program for individual and institutional members. This makes available all of the site’s content to those who sign up. Please see the ad on page 4 for more details. Last, this issue contains the final “History Bytes” column. We are grateful for Tim Grove’s thirteen years of service to the field and in moving the digital discussion forward. As always, thank you to each of you for the essential roles you play in the history enterprise.
Julie Rose, Chair West Baton Rouge Museum Katherine Kane, Vice Chair Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Lynne Ireland, Immediate Past Chair Nebraska State Historical Society Linnea Grim, Secretary Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Norman O. Burns, II, Treasurer Conner Prairie
Conservation Forms since 1996.
COUNCIL Bill Adair, Pew Center for Arts and Heritage Dina Bailey, Mountain Top Vision, LLC Marian Carpenter, Delaware Division of Historical & Cultural Affairs Janet Gallimore, Idaho State Historical Society Leigh A. Grinstead, LYRASIS Jane Lindsey, Juneau-Douglas City Museum Burt Logan, Ohio History Connection Nicola Longford, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza Erin Carlson Mast, President Lincoln’s Cottage Lorraine McConaghy, Museum of History & Industry Sarah Blannett Pharaon, International Coalition of Sites of Conscience Donna Sack, Naper Settlement Will Ticknor, Udall Center for Museum Resources Ken Turino, Historic New England Tobi Voigt, Detroit Historical Society Phyllis Waharockah-Tasi, Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center
Dorfman Conservation Forms created exclusively with Ethafoam® brand inert polyethylene foam.
www.museumfigures.com 2
SUMMER 2016
Bob Beatty
OFFICERS
DORFMAN MUSEUM FIGURES, INC. Realistic Figures since 1957.
Nelson Chenault
I
STAFF
800-634-4873
Aja Bain, Program Coordinator Bob Beatty, Chief of Engagement Cherie Cook, Senior Program Manager John R. Dichtl, President and CEO Bethany L. Hawkins, Chief of Operations Hannah Hethmon, Membership Marketing Coordinator Terry Jackson, Membership and Database Coordinator Sylvia McGhee, Finance and Business Manager Amber Mitchell, Education and Services Coordinator
On Doing Local History >
By Carol Kammen
Two Grandfathers
T
guages—and were influenced by them. he road to our current practice matter happened otherwise, I shall not (As they were also inspired by the annals of history is a long one. It starts discuss further,” he notes in his first chapof the Romans and the writings of Cato.) with two grandfathers. Each tried ter titled Clio.1 Another of our paternal influences to make sense of his world following I find Herodotus fun to read. He on how we tell the history of our comhis own interests, influenced by his own included stories both curious and some munities comes from sixteenth-century backgrounds and the times in which he hard to believe—such as his account of English tradition that focused on the lived. Both saw history as more than a giant gold digging ants! land, royalty and those of chronological listing of what had hapOur other grandfather is high social status, heraldry, pened. And each broke away (to differing Thucydides, an Athenian church hierarchy, coins, and degrees) from the Homeric pattern of who lived from 460 to 400 military rank. Influenced by a poetic saga, an oral tradition written BCE. He was involved with this pattern, local history in down five hundred years after the poems civic life as a politician, the United States followed were created. political thinker, and milithis course for many years. Both of these grandfathers were histotary leader. He was probably Most of us who engage rians even though history itself is a comexiled from Athens for twenin local and state history do plicated word. The Greek word historia ty-some years. Thucydides Thucydides not adhere to overall themes. comes from the concept of knowing by imposed his own logic on (460 to 400 BCE) We are much more docuinquiry. It also contains the word “story,” the course of events as he ment-driven, and recently, an account of something that happened traced the political behavior have been influenced by themes that or, from the thirteenth and outcome of relations reflect our current interests and concerns. century on, a “narrative of between states. His focus, for We introduce information, clear up what important events or celethe most part, was the history is known, and broaden our history by brated persons of the past.” of Athens. being alert to what others are doing. The A story is a recital of events. Thucydides was concerned New Social History of the 1960s and Herodotus is one of with important large quesafterwards sent questions throughout the these grandfathers. He tions—such as what makes historical world, as well as in our states lived from 484 to 425 BCE an area a nation. Considering and towns and cities. We began to look at in Halicarnassus, now, the topic as it related to Herodotus women’s history, at the history of African Bodrum, Turkey. He broke Athens, he presented inter(484 to 425 BCE) Americans, at ethnicity, and at a host of with the Homeric tradition esting negative evidence. topics that brought new people and situain which the Fates deterAthens had a shifting diverse tions to light even while using traditional mined the course of events and acted at population, he noted, lacked commerce, documents. times like enraged humans. Herodotus good lines of communication, a fair disThe advent of national interest in collected information and stories and tribution of land, and had a tendency to our fragile ecological situation set many opinions and arranged them into a narcreate class distinctions. For Thucydides, searching for ways of studying the envirative. He was avuncular and sought to sea power created a sense of unity for the ronment. As philanthropy became as please with anecdotes explaining the Athenian state. Sea power in those days much a topic of study reasons for tragedies that befall humanmeant piracy, and, he as an endeavor, some kind showing them as stemming from the wrote, the region still The Greek word researched the many anger of the gods. He was an anthropolohad “regard [for a] succomes from ways we have cared for gist as well as a historian: his subject was cessful marauder.” The the concept of knowing those in need. the origins of the Greco-Persian wars. ships produced wealth These are all importHerodotus told us where he found and with that came a . by ant topics. Some are his information. Regarding Io’s capture sense of public safety so presented as interesting by the Pheonicians, he wrote, “Thus that people could “put stories, some as important information did Io pass into Egypt, according to the up their arms” and walk about the city in the community needs to know, some as Persian story, which differs widely from “conformity with modern ideas.” adding to the record, and many even the Phoenician, and thus commenced, There is much more of importance using old records in new ways. according to their authors, the series of to be learned from Herodotus and I wonder if, in addition to these good outrages.” And he was willing to cast Thucydides. We should remember the reasons for doing state and local history, doubt on some material, especially if it educated men (mostly) who wrote our we might also want to think of some came from Persian sources. “Whether nineteenth-century histories read these overriding narratives that could inform this later account be true, or whether the books—often in their original lan-
historia
inquiry
HISTORY NEWS
3
On Doing Local History > our new interests. H. P. R. Finberg, the English historian, created a scheme into which he thought local history fit, that of the beginning of communities, their rise, and their decline. His was a more sophisticated explanation than mine, but Finburg saw a pattern for our history that mirrors that of our lives (however, may our personal declines not be slow and awful!). I want to suggest a framework for local and state history that feels comfortable for me. It has to do with something else altogether. Rather than the decline and fall or even the rise and expansion of place, I wonder if local historians might think about how opportunity has expanded—and where it still needs to improve. What I mean by this is to view local history as a way of seeing the expansion of the democratic ideal. In writing the history of a school, we might go beyond dates and financing and even architecture to consider who was able to attend and how those affected increased over time. Or might we study the vote and when, why, and how the electorate swelled? This same grand question helps
us look at business (a common local history topic), which provided new work opportunities for some, withheld it from others, and how the product improved the local economy. Another topic might be the expansion of services such as electricity or telephones. This idea of expansion of opportunity works in many ways. Think of how the individual was able to ponder going beyond the family farm or business and how opportunities to do so increased over time. And of course, think about the consequences of that action, many of which were not positive. Opportunity meant greater mobility, but it also often meant fracturing families by loosening family ties. We can think about the expansion of the nation, of the individual, and of the community in terms of increased scope of action—and the need for more and more revenue from a variety of sources. This is not Turner’s frontier thesis or Marxist, Whig, or Progressive theory. But it does provide a way of looking at people and place and of asking questions that give a biography or a history of a company, a church, or a segment of society. This shows both a forward movement
Access more than 70 years of History News on JSTOR Exclusive to AASLH members: • Complimentary access to History News for individual members • All members save 50% on a 1-year JPASS. Read whatever you want and download 120 articles from the 2,000 journals on JSTOR
Sign in to get started: go.aaslh.org/jstor
4
SUMMER 2016
(the expansion) and a backward kick (the negative impact). History in this context is a double-edged sword. Does local history have to have a framework? Probably not. But having something greater in mind helps us make decisions about what to study and how to conduct research. It gives us a way to defend the topics we take on and to help local subjects illuminate something about our local and our national past. It combines the interests of prior theorists about history, allowing for a variety of ways of presentation. It would please both H. P. R. Finberg and the Leicester School, the Whigs, and Progressives. Perhaps it would also please Herodotus and even Thucydides. Would it please Karl Marx? Well, probably not. t “On Doing Local History” is intended to encourage dialogue on the essential issues of local history. Carol Kammen can be reached at ckk6@cornell.edu. 1 All quotes in this essay are from The History of Herodotus by Herodotus or The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. A number of versions of each book are available online.
History Bytes >
By Tim Grove
The End
T
o everything there is a season, and tions. Time has proven that the rise of the my season of writing “History Internet has given us a powerful new tool Bytes” has come to an end. I to extend our reach and to help audiences never dreamed that a rant about the lack all over the globe gain new understanding of history organization representation at a of our collections. If users can’t physically Museums and the Web conference would visit us, they can learn online; still, the lead to thirteen years writing this colpower of the real remains undiminished. umn—or that in some circles I’d become As the Internet has matured, it has known as the technology guy. forced us to confront sweeping changes. In this space I have tried to encourage One of the largest is trust. Our instituhistory organizations to look at their tional voice of authority has eroded, and online efforts with a critical eye. The today we must acknowledge that our column included interviews with experts visitors and users expect to be part of who offered insightful commentary about the conversation. UGC (user-generated the Web, people such as Lee Rainie of content) has forced its way into our comthe Pew Internet and American Life fortable world of experts. As Rainie has Project; Dan said, “We live Cohen, then-head in a golden age YOU HAVE A CHOICE. of the Center of the flowerYou can either be a for History and ing of amateur New Media at experts.” HISTORY PRACTITIONER George Mason Over the last who remains comfortable University, now thirteen years, LOOKING BACKWARDS executive direcour biggest chaltor of the Digital lenge as history and reacting Public Library organizations OR ONE WHO LOOKS FORWARD, of America; Nick has been coming and anticipate possible new Stanhope, CEO to terms with of Historypin; and this rapidly technology and new partners for Nancy Proctor, changing techCOLLABORATION. head of mobile nology, trying to strategy at the stay ahead, and Smithsonian. A just understandvariety of voices from our field contribing terminology: radical trust, blog, tweet, uted from time to time; two memorable crowdsource, crowdfund, augmented realcolumns addressed strategic planning and ity, social media, Web 2.0, and wearable radical trust. technology—all have entered the lexicon I highlighted examples of online excelsince I started writing this column.1 lence; identified best practices, such as We’ve been paralyzed at times by stagstrategic planning (many times); and gering costs we imagine will gobble up always advised readers to consider the operating budgets. A metaphor I embrace unique characteristics of the Web. I even is of a raft on a river. We’re all in rafts started a personal blog, in part to better going down the swift-flowing technology understand blogging and writing for an river and from time to time we encounter online audience. I marveled when one of whitewater. It’s inevitable. Some of us my posts went viral and wrote about the dig deep with our paddles and relish the mystery of the viral phenomenon. challenge. Others hold on for dear life. In the mid-1990s, staff at history orgaA favorite quote of mine from Letting nizations initially questioned whether Go? Sharing Historical Authority in a Uservisitors would want to come to our Generated World is, “No forces of change physical spaces if we extended a virtual are impacting cultural practice, including welcome mat. For a moment we doubted public history, faster, deeper, and wider the intrinsic power of objects and collecthan technological innovation. Virtually
overnight it seems, the cultural power center has shifted from the wizened and experienced practitioner to a younger, more nimble collection of experts and non-experts, all communicating with each other constantly and sharing their individual/collective productions with lightning speed.”2 Okay, by now you get it. You have a choice. You can either be a history practitioner who remains comfortable looking backward and reacting or one who looks forward and anticipates possible new technology and new partners for collaboration. Technology has provided new opportunities like never before, but some experts caution of trouble ahead. Recognizing the power of digitization to offer access and to aid preservation, history institutions have been in a mad rush to digitize our world. Yet, a deeper challenge has been lurking in the background. Historians are inherently preservationists; we look back to explain the present. What if our view back rests on a blank canvas? Google’s Vint Cerf stated the looming challenge at a press conference in February 2015. “If we’re thinking 1,000 years, 3,000 years ahead in the future, we have to ask ourselves, how do we preserve all the bits that we need in order to correctly interpret the digital objects we create? We are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole without realizing it.” This warning of a digital Dark Age by a “father of the Internet” is sobering. We can take some comfort in the fact that Google is recognizing the problem and working on a solution. In When We Are No More, Abby Smith Rumsey writes, “Digital memory is ubiquitous yet unimaginably fragile, limitless in scope yet inherently unstable.”3 As we all know, change is inevitable. An early column of mine examined the characteristics of good online exhibitions. Today, no surprise, these have totally changed. The organizations on the leading edge in our field have started moving away from online exhibitions. Soon our websites will focus primarily on stories and on providing the raw materials for HISTORY NEWS
5
History Bytes > T H E A M E R I C A N A S S O C I AT I O N F O R S TAT E A N D L O C A L H I S T O RY Acknowledges and appreciates these Endowment Donors for their extraordinary support: Dr. William T. Alderson Society
Friends of the Endowment Society
$50,000+
$5,000 – $9,999
Ms. Sylvia Alderson Winston–Salem, NC
Atlanta History Center Atlanta, GA
Anonymous
Mr. Rick Beard New York, NY
Mr. John Frisbee (Deceased) Concord, NH National Endowment for the Humanities Washington, DC Mr. Dennis & Ms. Trudy O’Toole Monticello, NM
AASLH President’s Society
Mr. & Mrs. Salvatore Cilella Atlanta, GA Mr. David Crosson & Ms. Natalie Hala San Francisco, CA Ms. Terry L. Davis Nashville, TN
Maryland Historical Society Baltimore, MD Missouri History Museum St. Louis, MO Ms. Candace Tangorra Matelic Pawleys Island, SC Ms. Kathleen S. & Mr. James L. Mullins Grosse Pointe Shores, MI National Heritage Museum Lexington, MA Nebraska State Historical Society Lincoln, NE Ms. Laura Roberts & Mr. Edward Belove Cambridge, MA
$10,000 – $49,999
Mr. John & Ms. Anita Durel Baltimore, MD
Mr. Edward P. Alexander (Deceased) Washington, DC
Mr. Stephen Elliott St. Paul, MN
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Williamsburg, VA
Mr. Dennis Fiori Boston, MA
The J. Paul Getty Trust Los Angeles, CA
Mr. Leslie H. Fishel (Deceased) Madison, WI
Mr. & Mrs. Charles F. Bryan Jr. Richmond, VA
Mr. Jim & Ms. Janet Vaughan Washington, DC
Ms. Barbara Franco Harrisburg, PA
Ms. Sandra Sageser Clark Holt, MI
Mr. George L. Vogt Portland, OR
Mr. James B. Gardner Washington, DC
HISTORY New York, NY
Ms. Jeanne & Mr. Bill Watson Orinda, CA
Historic Annapolis Foundation Annapolis, MD
Martha-Ellen Tye Foundation Marshalltown, IA
Indiana Historical Society Indianapolis, IN
Rowman & Littlefield Lanham, MD Ms. Ruby Rogers Cincinnati, OH
WORLD-CLASS
PRESERVATION TRAINING WORKSHOPS FOR MUSEUM, ARCHIVES, CONSERVATION, AND HISTORIC PRESERVATION PROFESSIONALS Formerly known as the Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies
preservationcenter.org 6
SUMMER 2016
users to create their own meaning. The Smithsonian recently unveiled its new Learning Lab site (learninglab.si.edu) that lets users curate their own collections from various Smithsonian databases. With an incredible number of resources at their disposal, users can move in any number of directions and mold the content into whatever their needs are. The Smithsonian’s digitization goal is 16 million of its artifacts, objects, and specimens, or 11 percent of the collection—2 percent of the collection is currently on display. Moving beyond normal digitization, the Smithsonian has in recent years embarked on a 3D imaging program that will allow people with 3D printers to print their own plastic Smithsonian collection at home—President Lincoln’s life mask, a Revolutionary War gunboat, or the Wright Flyer. And with major crowdsourced transcription projects underway at leading American repositories, people across the globe are helping us make resources available to the rest of the world. I certainly cannot predict what the Web will look like in ten years. But I do know that our objects and places will never lose their attraction, no matter how many images of them we put online. I also know that the more we share information and collaborate, the stronger our technology projects will be. By working together we can continue to move forward and use the Internet and other technology to make our stories and collections even more relevant for future generations. And we will all continue to struggle to learn the latest version of Windows. Thanks, everyone, for reading. t “History Bytes” is a forum for discussing Web issues facing all types of historical institutions. Tim Grove can be reached at grovet@si.edu. 1 Tim Grove, “What’s Radical About Radical Trust,” 2010 AASLH/OMA online conference session http:// go.aaslh.org/2010RadicalTrust. 2 Bill Adair, Benjamin Filene, and Laura Koloski, eds., Letting Go?: Sharing Historical Authority in a UserGenerated World (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2015), 17. 3 Abby Smith Rumsey, When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Is Shaping Our Future (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 2; National Public Radio, “Internet Pioneer Warns Our Era Could Become The ‘Digital Dark Ages,’” 13 February 2015.
If It Was Easy, Anyone Could Do It:
Training Professionals for History Institutions E d i t o r ’s N o t e : T h i s i s t h e f i n a l i n a s e r i e s o f a r t i c l e s w e h a v e p u b l i s h e d
o n A A S L H ’s 7 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y. H e r e , R i c k B e a r d e x p l o r e s h o w o u r field has changed over time in terms of the academic training and continuing education/professional development of graduates.
O
ver the past two decades the growing number and ambition of history organizations have created the need for professionals who possess expansive new skill sets and expertise. The responsibility for fulfilling this need falls increasingly on undergraduate and graduate programs in museum studies and public history. Whereas earlier generations of professionals most often relied on hard-earned, first-hand experience and the occasional workshop or seminar to hone skills in administration and management, fundraising, and marketing, professional aspirants now look to acquire these skill sets in the classroom. Today, training for the work of preserving and interpreting our nation’s history has transcended the anecdotal to acquire an increasingly academic polish. Each year hundreds of aspiring professionals enter the museum job market, eager to put their newfound skills to work.
The likeliest employers for many of the newly minted graduates are history organizations. In 2014, the Institute for Museum and Library Services doubled the previous estimate of museums in America, counting 35,000, of which 55.5 percent were history-related in some capacity. A mid-2016 census by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) noted that 58 percent of its 4,253 institutional members—more than 2,460—are history museums, historical societies, or historic sites. Art museums, a distant second, constitute 23 percent of the AAM’s membership. In May 2016, the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) reported that it had 3,685 institutional members. Most of the history organizations belonging to both the AAM and the AASLH are relatively small, with nearly half of AASLH’s membership having budgets of under $250,000. Of the AAM’s membership organizations, 80 percent have ten or fewer employees. Many of these institutions call on staff to perform a multitude of duties to keep them afloat. Well-trained professionals possessing a broad range of skills are essential.1 Ascertaining an accurate total for the programs preparing students for work in these institutions is difficult. An AAM database lists 204 museum studies programs, three-quarters of which are located in the United States. The National Council on Public History (NCPH) maintains a standardized listing of 240 self-identified public history undergraduate and graduate programs, 101 of which list museum
By Rick Beard HISTORY NEWS
7
Training Professionals for History Institutions
studies as a core strength. Despite considerable duplication within these two lists, a great many training opportunities are obviously available to budding museum professionals.2 Lengthy conversations with nineteen professionals—both educators and practitioners—offer valuable insight into professional education and its place in the world of history institutions. What follows is not intended as a comprehensive review of existing museums studies and public history programs. Rather, it is a selective survey of the educational opportunities available to those contemplating a career in a history organization, a review of the changing nature of what is taught and the skills most sought after by employers, and some (hopefully well-informed) speculation on the challenges facing professional education.3
Public History or Museum Studies?
A graduate degree in either museum studies or public history offers a gateway for many seeking a career in a history institution. Is one better than the other for a prospective museum professional? The distinctions between the two academic pathways are not always clear-cut; the answer largely depends on the student’s professional aspirations. Kathleen Franz, past director of public history programs at both the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and American University, points to a key difference. “Museum studies trains people to work in museums, and there is no disciplinary grounding,” she posits. “It’s about methodology and professional skills. Public history is embedded in the discipline of history.” Franz’s insight suggests that a public history degree may better serve a student interested in engaging with content and interpretation, while a museum studies degree offers technical skills more appropriate to a prospective collections manager, fundraiser, or administrator. Rebecca Conard, recently retired director of the public history program at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), argues that “competent practitioners” must possess both content knowledge and technical know-how. “Public history students who seek careers in museums, archives, and historic preservation [must be able] to integrate scholarship with professional standards and practices in order to accomplish specified objectives.” Conard’s formulation suggests that the days have passed when a man or woman with an M.A. or Ph.D. in history, but with little if any training in the technical skills related to museum work, could anticipate a successful career as a curator, exhibit developer, museum educator, or even an executive director. During the 1980s and 1990s, many professionals believed content expertise was of primary importance; everything else (except a few technical skills related to registration and collections care) could be learned on the job. Such an approach worked well for the time, producing a period of sustained and dramatic growth (see the author’s “Creating a More Meaningful Past: A Short History of AASLH” in the Autumn 2014 issue of History News).4 But after two decades of aggressive institution-building, the demands of sustaining larger, more expensive, complex institutions and meeting the heightened expectations of col-
leagues, trustees, funders, and the general public led to the call for a broader portfolio of skills. Expertise in leadership, financial and personnel management, fundraising, marketing, and audience development all superseded adeptness at addressing the interpretive issues that had inspired a generation or more of professionals. Slowly but surely museum studies and public history programs began to address the need for these skills, introducing new courses and recruiting faculty with different kinds of expertise.
What Did You Learn in School Today?
Several thousand students are currently enrolled in academic programs training them for work in museums. The programs surveyed for this article, only a fraction of the existing educational opportunities in museum studies and public history, currently enroll about 440 graduate students. Three of the largest—Middle Tennessee State University, George Washington University, and the Cooperstown program at SUNY-Oneonta—each boast 100 or more students at the master’s and doctoral levels. The assistant director of George Washington’s museums studies program keeps tabs on more than 1,000 graduates. What do these men and women, many of whom will spend tens of thousands of dollars to complete their graduate studies, learn? Although museum studies and public history programs both reflect more than thirty years of teaching and research, neither can be said to possess a common core curriculum for someone pursuing a degree. Several factors shape the course of study offered at any of the degree-granting institutions. Keys to defining a program are the expertise and interests of the faculty. Do faculty members have firsthand experience working in a museum or historical agency? Do they have a professional network that can be used to help students find internships and jobs? Do they keep abreast of the profession and how it is evolving? A second factor is the program’s departmental home. Public history programs generally stand alone or are part of a university’s history department. If they are not an independent department, museum studies programs find a number of homes within the academy. Among the most common are archeology, art, art history, anthropology, American studies, and history. The placement of a museum studies or public history program within a university will often determine which subjects receive the most attention in the curriculum. If you want to work in a history museum, don’t enroll in a museum studies program that lives in the art history department. A third factor is the nature and extent of the academic program’s relationships with museums. Are working professionals also teaching as adjuncts or guest lecturers in the program’s classrooms? Will students have first-hand access to museum professionals? How much first-hand experience can students acquire through meaningful internships? Although each program has its unique qualities, certain common themes do emerge. Soft skills such as collaboration, civic engagement, and what one interviewee called “cultural competence” are gaining primacy among many of the pro-
“A graduate degree in either museum studies or public history 8
SUMMER 2016
grams and are often considered the most important (and most difficult) skills to teach. Two of the three core values for the museum studies program at Indiana University– Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), for example, are collaboration and civic engagement. IUPUI professor Modupe Labode identifies collaboration as a particularly difficult skill to develop among students. Benjamin Filene relies on project work that stretches over three consecutive semesters to improve the collaborative skills of his students at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Collaboration, he notes, is the polar opposite of traditional academic scholarship, which is solitary in intent and operation. Gretchen Sorin, director of the Cooperstown program for more than two decades and one of the profession’s most eloquent and forceful advocates for a diversified workforce, emphasizes the critical importance of developing cultural competency in all her students. Courses on African art and a multiweek immersion working at the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum in the midst of New York City’s Dominican neighborhood, for example, bring students face-to-face with unfamiliar topics and communities. Franz singles out the importance of civic engagement. “Museums,” she notes, “are one of the last places to have civic dialogue and focus on current issues, many of which have significant racial components. The pressure to make this a reality,” she concludes, “is growing.” The growing emphasis on soft skills coincides with the greater attention many programs pay to teaching proficiency in administrative areas such as marketing, fundraising, and business practices as well as the use of digital technologies. The Cooperstown program approaches museums as service organizations that need to be sustainable; accordingly, it offers nine courses in museum administration and management. Students attend cocktail parties where they are expected to “mingle with purpose,” an experience that has paid apparent dividends. Between a quarter and a third of the program’s graduates in recent years have found positions in fundraising. Two of the first three hires from a recent graduating class were in development. The attitude toward the level of technological skills necessary was best summarized by Denise Meringolo of University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), who argued, “Students did not need to be programmers; they needed to know what they want technology to do.” Teaching soft and administrative skills in no way precludes the continued focus on those topics associated with more traditional museum studies or public history programs. Students enrolled in George Washington University’s program select from three academic tracks—museum management, exhibition development, and collections management. The last of these is the most popular and is taught both on campus and online. Most students at UNC-Greensboro take collections, digital history, museum education, and the aforementioned three-semester group sequence. Once a current restructuring is complete, the public history program at UMBC will offer three specializations:
Do faculty members ha ve first-hand experien ce working in a museum or historical agency? Do they have a profes sional network that can be used to he lp students find internships and jobs? Do they keep abreast of the profession and how it is evolving ? public history in museums, preservation, and public digital history. Program director Meringolo observes that “employers are looking for public historians who can research, write, and interpret” and in her teaching she pays special attention to the utilization of technology and open source research tools. Middle Tennessee State University’s public history program features a broad range of teaching competencies. Students can take courses in cultural resource management, historic preservation, material culture, oral history, archives, public history, and archeology. Conard voiced concern that public history programs might become too academic. Maintaining a balance between the pragmatic and the intellectual, the practical and the theoretical, is critical to successful public history programs. Over time, she suggests, “The market will insist on pragmatism.” While most instruction in a museum studies or public history program occurs in a classroom, an institution’s skill at brokering internship opportunities is an important measure of its capacity to prepare its students for work in the real world. At UMBC, Meringolo collaborates with external institutional partners (currently Baltimore Heritage) to build programs that serve the needs of both the student and the institution. Students at George Washington enjoy ready access to intern positions at the many museums of the Smithsonian Institution, while Cooperstown places its students in a variety of institutions, including the nearby Glimmerglass Opera. Educators and practitioners express occasional misgivings about unpaid internships, suggesting they represent a level of exploitation, particularly in light of the substantial costs students are already incurring for tuition and living expenses. Barbara Franco, founding director of the Seminary Ridge Museum, disagrees with this point of view, arguing that “what the intern gets out of the experience” is the key question. An internship, she notes, is a transactional relationship in which the student’s educational gains are often made at the expense of additional “time demands on museum staffs that work with interns.” A well-conceived internship, in Labode’s opinion, remains the best means of helping students to “bridge the gap between theory and practice.” The experience marries “classroom theory [with] institutional application.”
offers a gateway for many seeking a career in a history institution.” HISTORY NEWS
9
Training Professionals for History Institutions
You Know How to Do What?
Do museum studies and public history programs teach their students what they need to know to succeed professionally? Everyone interviewed acknowledged the growing importance of the soft skills. Franz expands on their importance, noting that the history museum profession is undergoing “a philosophical change related to authority.” Bringing history to the people is “no longer a missionary activity.” Engaging today’s audiences requires “changes toward flexibility and choice.” Nicola Longford, CEO of the Sixth Floor Museum, stresses the need for interpersonal and problem-solving skills while encouraging new professionals not to be afraid to admit what they don’t know. Self-motivation is key for Christy Coleman, the CEO of the American Civil War Museum. “Content can be learned,” she argues, “but self-starting not so much.” While no one suggested that technical and administrative skills are not critical elements in professional training, a striking number emphasized the importance of content knowledge and interpretive skills. “At the core is the content,” argues Patricia Cooper, Vice President of Institutional Programs at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. In her mind, “The ability to apply specific content knowledge to diverse audiences is critical.” In recalling his twelve years of experience in senior management at the National Museum of American History (NMAH), Jim Gardner reports that museum studies graduates most often found their way into collections-related positions at NMAH rather than those charged with content development or interpretation. “The skillset sought [for the latter positions] was content expertise—knowledge of American history.” Furthermore, he continues, “Engagement with material culture was very important.” Franco views the centrality of content knowledge from a somewhat different perspective. “History is a craft,” she argues. “It is something you do, not just information you have.” Young professionals need to know “how to use the tools [and] need to understand how to do history.” Learning how to think historically, she argues convincingly, is critical. “You can be a craftsman and not an expert, but an expert is also a craftsman.” Richard Rabinowitz, whose American History Workshop has undertaken well over 500 interpretive projects throughout the United States, expanded on Franco’s thinking, noting that young graduates “need to have a sense of [a history museum’s] narrative and educational possibilities [as well as the] ability to organize thinking to produce public programs and meet organizational needs.” Several interviewees also stressed the need for ongoing support for those who are new to the history museum world or new to positions in senior leadership. Todd Groce, CEO and President of the Georgia Historical Society for more than two decades, bemoans the profession’s lack of an effective mentoring system. “Leadership was the hardest thing for me to learn,” he notes. “I had to find the resources I needed myself.” Today’s emerging leaders can look to several programs for mid-career development and leadership
training, most notably the Getty Leadership Institute and Developing History Leaders @SHA (formerly the Seminar for Historical Administration), sponsored by a partnership of AASLH, the Indiana Historical Society, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Nantucket Historical Association, and the National Association for Interpretation. The SHA, as it is still known to many, is over fifty years old and began under the aegis of Colonial Williamsburg as an effort to recruit academically trained historians into the museum profession. When the enrollment declined, it evolved into a multi-week program focused on training mid-career professionals. Today SHA concentrates on developing leadership skills. As John Durel, the program coordinator, notes, leadership is “the ability to discern and respond to needs and opportunities to change what the organization is doing.” It is not the exclusive province of the executive director; change agents can operate to an institution’s benefit at all levels.5 Like his colleagues in museum studies and public history programs in universities, Durel embraces the shift toward a greater dependence on interpersonal skills. “People won’t follow you just because of what you know,” he advises. “While you still need to understand basic professional standards and best practices,” you also need to know “how to build strong relationships, work in teams, and use influence and vision to persuade others to change.” SHA receives high marks from many in the profession. “I can’t say enough good things about that program,” notes Groce when speaking of a staff member’s participation. It was “fabulous for her, and fabulous for us. She was good before; she’s twice as good now.”
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Are there too many museum studies and public history programs? Are we in danger of producing too many trained museum professionals? Is the shortage of available museum jobs about to mirror what has happened in the academic world, where graduates cannot find a teaching position, or are forced to teach a course here and there to eke out a living? Is the market becoming glutted? Many people think so. Franz predicts that the job market for museum workers will remain tight. The expansion the profession experienced in the 1980s and 1990s is not going to replicate itself, she argues, because the nation’s investment in civic culture is shrinking rather than growing. Franz’s analysis is convincing. Nonetheless, the creation of new museum studies programs has proceeded at a record pace. An analysis of the public history programs on the National Council on Public History list that claim a strong museums studies emphasis shows that 60 percent have been founded in the past quarter century. Only two programs, date from before 1970; eighteen from 1970 to 1980, and sixteen between 1980 and 1990.6 An undeniable cynicism drives the creation of some of these programs. “History departments are looking to public history programs to help their livelihood,” argues Labode.
“History is a craft. It is something you do, not just information you have.” 10
SUMMER 2016
Too many of these programs, which often consist of a single professor, provide students with a subpar experience. They offer no more than a course or two and, as Conard argues, pose a particular “danger of turning out people who are only qualified to be docents.” Even those engaged in directing the most successful programs engage in some soul searching. “Are we implicitly promising students entrée into a profession?” asks Filene. “It’s really hard to justify starting another program,” he continues, when North Carolina alone has six museum studies and public history programs. “Programs need to be clearer about what they are offering.” The shortage of positions has both moral and practical considerations. Meringolo struggles with the question of how many students to accept into the UMBC program when jobs are dwindling. Labode encourages students to think about the nature of work in a museum. She worries that they pay too little attention to the financial ramifications of a museum career as well as the nature of the work itself. Filene tries to be very clear with students that the job market is very bad and emphasizes that “the ladder up has stalled.” Turnover is substantially less than in years past, he notes, and senior management positions are often filled with candidates from outside the profession. Filene’s primary response to these challenges is to add courses on administrative topics to better prepare students who are likely to move into the directorships of small, under-resourced organizations. While these entry-level positions are undeniably stressful, Filene does note that a new generation of professionals is providing better leadership than ever for the many smaller organizations that comprise the vast majority of history organizations. As the supply of museum jobs continues to lag behind the demand, those responsible for training professionals will be called on to take responsibility for controlling the number of students they accept. While well-established programs may
“We need programs th at systematically attr act, support, and get jobs for minority students , beginning with their first exposure to histor y organizations in elem entary school.” continue to enjoy a high placement rate, many of the smaller programs will suffer from what will almost certainly be a shrinking demand for new employees. To replicate the willful blindness of university history departments that continue to churn out Ph.D.s despite their diminishing job prospects would be unpardonable.
The Dream of Diversity
Training programs may well be at risk of producing too many entry-level professionals. Unfortunately, they are also not encountering much success in diversifying museum workforces. The museum profession has “been talking about ‘Oh, we need to be more diverse, we need to be more diverse’ for thirty years and doing nothing constructive about it,” Sorin remonstrates. “They don’t understand what it’s going to take to get people into this field;” she continues, “they just want them.” Durel warns, “If we don’t change the demographic composition of our field, we are certain to become irrelevant. Our current demographic profile reflects America in 1916 rather than 2016.” Few disagree with Sorin’s and Durel’s grim assessments, and the alarm that many feel at the failure of history organizations to attract a diverse labor force is palpable. Yet solutions seem few and far between, and the impediments are considerable. In a recent article, museum futurist Nicole
Too Much of a Good Thing (Continued)
T
B y J ohn R. D ichtl
he proliferation of graduate programs in public history has not escaped the notice of other professional associations, most notably the National Council on Public History. From a print version in the 1990s, to a more versatile online version starting in 2007, its Guide to Public History Programs has provided students, faculty, and others a way to compare public history training programs. In 2015, the organization expanded this work in its publication The Public History Navigator: How to Choose and Thrive in a Public History Graduate Program.1
training prepares students for professional employment and how to strengthen connections between curriculum and employer needs. It has since conducted two national surveys. The first queried employers to discover the training they expect new hires to have (and therefore what programs ought to be teaching). The second survey, of public history alumni, asked which parts of their graduate experience were most useful in securing a job. The group’s work is ongoing and is contextualized in the August 2016 issue of The Public Historian.3
In 2013, NCPH President Robert Weyeneth addressed the issue head-on in his Public History News piece, “A Perfect Storm?” Weyeneth identified the following as elements of this tempest: Too many public history programs produce a surplus of graduates who cannot find decent jobs either 1) because they are poorly trained by faculty unfamiliar with the discipline or 2) because of outdated curricula.2
AASLH and NCPH will continue work together on multiple fronts as the field collectively examines how best to prepare the next generation of history professionals.
One year later, NCPH created a joint Task Force on Public History and Employment. This group, comprising NCPH, AASLH, the Organization of American Historians, and the American Historical Association, examined how graduate
1 See ncph.org/program-guide and Michelle Antenesse and Theresa Koenigsknecht, “‘What are You Going to Do with a History Degree?’ Helping Students Navigate a Graduate Degree and Career in Public History,” in History@ Work, National Council on Public History, 23 March 2015, go.aaslh.org/ NCPHHistoryDegree. 2 Bob Weyeneth, “A Perfect Storm,” Public History News 33, no. 4 (September 2013), go.aaslh.org/NCPHPerfectStorm. 3
View the report of the first survey at go.aaslh.org/NCPHTaskForceReport.
HISTORY NEWS
11
Training Professionals for History Institutions
Ivy identifies three barriers to more inclusive work environments. The first is “high student debt as a prerequisite of entry into the field.” Eight in ten students in museum studies programs are white, reports Ivy, and 80 percent of those are female. Many of these students are able to assume the debt incurred by their graduate educations, unlike first-generation or impoverished students. “If the cost of admission to the field remains out of sight for workers who are not overwhelmingly white and female,” she concludes, “then diversity becomes an empty goal.”7 Ivy identifies the “the prevalence of unpaid and underpaid work” as a second obstacle to a more diverse workforce. “The current trend of the obligatory unpaid museum internship,” she argues, “makes the pathway to museum employment less accessible for workers without means.” The standard advice to “just get your foot in the door” via an internship only works if you can afford to work for nothing. “A hiring process in which homogeneous groups replicate themselves” is a third hurdle to overcome. Managers tend to hire people who are similar to them, or “someone who knows someone.” If the somebodies you know are all white, the likelihood that you will hire an African American or any other minority candidate is slim.8 Ivy’s analysis focuses on readily identifiable barriers to a more diverse work place. Less evident factors also impede diversity. Art museums are well ahead of history museums, notes Coleman, because their content is less contested than the subject matter of history museums. An argument over Picasso’s oeuvre will be unlikely to generate the same heat as one about the lasting impact of the Civil War or slavery on American society. Meringolo argues that we “need to reframe the cultural landscape” if we are to successfully diversify our staffs. “No matter how we tell the story,” she explains, for many African Americans and other minorities the history museum is “your space, not mine.” For Conard, nothing short of “a concerted effort to reshape the face of history” will suffice if we are to diversify the museum world’s workforce. What will it take to change the complexion of our workforce? Greater commitment to diversity and a broader cultural competency are keys. Predominantly white museum professionals need to step outside their comfort zones when recruiting for open positions. Organizations need to understand that hiring a minority professional is no more than a first step, not an inoculation against calls for greater diversity. And they need as well to recognize the kinds of support and mentoring minority hires may need to establish themselves within a largely white institution. The Cooperstown program has an enviable record of training minority professionals. “The reason we have been successful here,” notes Sorin, “is that I spend an enormous amount of time with them, counseling them, mentoring them.” Museums employing minority graduates from this and other museum studies and public history programs will need to make a like investment of time. History institutions might also look to emulate the National Park Service, which also has a track record of employing minority professionals.
Some of the work of encouraging diversity can be done at the institutional level. For over ten years, beginning in the early 1990s, the Atlanta History Center sponsored a minority fellows program funded by the Coca-Cola Company, which recruited juniors and seniors from area colleges with the goal of introducing them to the history museum world. During the academic year, weekly seminars taught by History Center staff and visiting professionals provided an in-depth look at every aspect of work in a museum. For ten weeks during the summer, fellows worked fulltime on projects that the center committed to implementing. Fellows also went on a ten-day trip to national institutions such as Colonial Williamsburg and the Smithsonian Institution, where they met with senior leaders and got behind-the-scenes tours. Additional funding enabled the program to expand to the Chicago and Minnesota Historical Societies for a three-year period. Several factors contributed to the program’s success. It was rigorous: candidates were carefully vetted, fellows received academic credit for their participation, and the institution worked closely with home academic institution to assess each fellow’s progress. It carried a relatively generous stipend of $5,000. And it was directed by a fulltime staff member with extensive experience in secondary and higher education. The major drawback was the cost per fellow, well in excess of $10,000 per year. Funders eventually decided the expense was too great. Recently the Minnesota Historical Society has revived the program, in modified form, working with students from the five Associated Colleges of the Twin Cities.9 Programs such as the ones in Atlanta and Minnesota can make a difference, but real success in increasing diversity in history institutions will require a far greater involvement on the part of national organizations such as the AAM, the AASLH, and the NCPH. “We need programs that systematically attract, support, and get jobs for minority students, beginning with their first exposure to history organizations in elementary school,” argues Durel. “This is especially important as we take on a more inclusive interpretation of the past.” For over thirty years, the lack of diversity in our professional community has been the elephant in the room at every annual conference. Everyone talks about to the need to address that elephant, but there it still sits. Only with a concerted effort, a special initiative on the part of our professional organizations, will we be able to change our professional demographic from that of 1916 to that of 2016. Otherwise, we’ll spend another thirty years doing nothing constructive about it.
A Final Thought
The growing professionalization of training for work in history institutions over the past three decades represents one of the most significant changes in our vocational world. The rapid expansion of the history museum community during the 1980s and 1990s produced more complex, costly institutions; the need for a broader range of skill sets for those working in them; and greater demands on the part
“You can be a craftsman and not an expert, but an expert is also a craftsman.” 12
SUMMER 2016
of the public. Universities across the nation have sought to meet this need with public history and museum studies programs that today enroll and educate hundreds of students who are intent on a career in museums. But this process of professionalizing training is incomplete. The recent proliferation of museum studies and public history programs, in combination with a shrinking job market, has the potential to disappoint hundreds of graduates who have invested thousands of dollars in hopes of landing a position in a museum. At present a potential student has to rely largely on anecdotal evidence when trying to evaluate the effectiveness of one program as compared to another. Perhaps it is time to impose some order on an educational community of considerable importance to our profession’s future. We already know how to accredit our museums, historical societies, historic sites, and like institutions. And the academic world has a well-established system for accrediting institutions of higher education. Isn’t it time that we formulate a similar system of evaluating professional training programs? Students interested in entering the museum profession deserve at the very least a means of evaluating the various training options and making an informed decision about which one best suits their needs. t Rick Beard is an independent historian and author; a past member of the AASLH Council; and formerly served in senior management positions at the Hudson River Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, the Atlanta History Center, the New-York Historical Society, and
the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. He can be reached at reric@mindspring.com. 1 For the IMLS count, see go.aaslh.org/2014IMLSMuseumCount. See also “AAM—Who Are We?,” Museum, 95, no. 3, (May/June, 2016): 8. The percentage of museums that have history as their core subject has remained fairly consistent over the past three decades. Museums Count, a 1993 AAM publication based on the 1989 National Museum Survey Data Report, estimated that 57 percent of the museums in this country were history museums. A comparison of this figure with the percentage of history museums among AAM’s current membership suggests that many smaller institutions are not AAM members. 2 See aam-us.org/resources/careers/museum-studies and ncph.org/programguide. The NCPH listings are a useful introduction to public history programs and are designed in large part to help potential students evaluate the offerings of each course of study. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent database for museum studies programs. The AAM listing is a starting point, but it lacks any detailed information about the programs listed, and this makes the number of programs somewhat misleading. The AAM database often includes multiple listings for a specific university or college. George Washington University, for example, is credited with offering five different courses of study: certificates in Exhibit Design and in Collections Care as well as master’s degrees in Exhibition Design, Museum Studies, and Museum Education. 3 In April 2016, the author interviewed nineteen museum educators and professionals. Any opinions attributed to these individuals are taken from these interviews, all of which are in the author’s possession. In the interest of minimizing the number of endnotes, quotes attributed to these individuals are not individually cited. See the full list of interviewees at about.aaslh.org/hn-footnotes/. 4 Rebecca Conard, “The Pragmatic Roots of Public History Education in the United States, The Public Historian, 37, no. 1 (February 2015): 106. 5 William Tramposch, “A Companion to Change: The Seminar for Historical Administration, 1959-1984,” Museum Studies Journal, 1 (Fall 1984): 8-18. 6
See ncph.org/program-guide.
7
Nicole Ivy, “The Labor of Diversity,” Museum (January/February 2016): 37-38.
8
Ibid., 38.
See Dina Bailey, Chris Taylor, and Elizabeth Pickard, “Incorporating Diversity and Inclusion into Young Adult Programs,” Technical Leaflet #274, History News 71, no. 2 (Spring 2016): 1-8. 9
HISTORY NEWS
13
GRAPPLING WITH
Unfolding Events By Jason Crabill, Melanie A. Adams, and Kyle McKoy Police violence against African-Americans in cities including Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Chicago sparks protests in the streets and ultimately contributes to the creation of a public #blacklivesmatter movement. A Kentucky county clerk refuses to issue marriage licenses in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling, citing religious freedom. The governor of Indiana signs into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, then rescinds his signature in the wake of boycotts and massive, nationwide protests and debate over religious freedom and gay rights.
* * * * * * *
These are just some of the major cultural issues that communities near and far have grappled with in the twelve months preceding the writing of this article. Who knows how many more will have become part of the public consciousness and discussion by the time you are reading it in the pages of History News. Cultural heritage institutions of all sizes, in major cities and in small towns, staffed by fulltime paid professionals or by an army of part-time unpaid
Member of the audience at the Commemoration of Srebrenica.
Patrick McCarthy
Congregants in a historic Charleston, South Carolina, black church are shot and killed by a white supremacist terrorist, leading to—among other things—a debate over, and public removal of, the Confederate flag on the statehouse grounds.
A massive, coordinated attack in Paris leads to worldwide debates over refugees, followed by a majority of governors in the United States publically opposing the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states.
14
SUMMER 2016
Indiana Historical Society /Ed Stewart
A Visual Journey: From AIDS to Marriage Equality exhibit opening event at the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center.
volunteers, all face the possibility that an issue like any one of these may drop on their doorstep or affect their community at any time. In fact, at least one of the issues above probably already has. So what can our institutions do about this? What should institutions be doing to prepare for the unexpected? And at an even more basic level, what is any particular institution’s responsibility to its community when one of these situations occurs? These were all questions posed during a roundtable discussion at the 2015 AASLH Annual Meeting, in a session titled, “Pop Up: Unfolding Events.” The conversations were wide-ranging, engaging, insightful, and at times provocative. More questions were raised than were answered, and ultimately the discussion landed on the idea that, while there is no perfect solution for handling situations like these when they appear, we can all do more to be better prepared to respond when they do. And while each organization faces its own unique set of variables—and there are no one-size-fitsall answers to any of these questions—there are some basic, scalable ideas that all institutions can consider and apply to their own unique situations.
STEPS TO CONSIDER Plan in Advance As famous baseball player and philosopher Yogi Berra is credited as saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” This is especially true when planning for the unexpected. Just as a good disaster plan is built on the solid ground work of developing contingencies and relationships that can spring into action when disaster strikes, so too can proactive, strategic thinking help an organization prepare for the “un-preparable.”
Organizational Buy-In One of the hallmarks of creating a response to unplannedfor events is that they often go hand-in-hand with strong emotions like fear, anger, mistrust, confusion, or defiance. In order for an organization to respond to these events most effectively—whether as an active collector of history as it is happening, a safe space for the community to hold difficult conversations, or a vocal advocate for a position in a particular debate—the organization as a whole needs to be on the same page. From the leadership on one end to the frontline staff on the other, everyone needs to understand, and be willing to stand behind, the role they have defined for the institution. Which brings us to our next point.
Define Your Scope What events are we going to respond to? To what extent are we going to respond? These are some of the most basic and important questions any organization must face when determining how to approach building a thoughtful and effective set of responses. Every good set of mission, vision, and values statements helps an institution define its inherent strengths, its realized or aspirational niche, and its perceived value to the community, as well as aids in setting a limited range of responsibilities and expectations in the face of unlimited possibilities. The same holds true for any organization trying to be proactive in its community. Determining in broad strokes what sorts of situations should warrant small-, medium-, or large-scale responses is the first step in defining the organization’s scope of response. The second step is to determine what the available tools should be for each of those levels of response. When is a public statement of principle or an editorial in the local paper called for? When should the response be a set of public programs that help put the events of the day in historical context? And what events should warrant a large-scale, game-changing response the likes of which are usually only reserved for the most dramatic of events? HISTORY NEWS
15
evancy of history, which positions them to be responsive in both shortAll cultural herand long-term ways. itage institutions This became espeare engaged in cially apparent in the their communities days and months to one extent or following the death another. It’s why of Michael Brown in we exist in the the St. Louis suburb first place. That of Ferguson. In fact, said, some of the at the time of this toughest chalwriting, almost lenges facing us eighteen months today revolve Author Nelson Price, Jeanne White-Ginder, and Greg Louganis after the events around the very sign books at the book launch program for in Ferguson, the concept of commuThe Quiet Hero: A Life of Ryan White. Missouri Historical nity engagement and Society continues relevance. Who is to develop and facilitate programs that address deep-seated your audience? Who is your community? Has your organiissues of inequality in the region. The institution did not zation been able to adapt to the changing demographics of simply respond to the events in Ferguson, it instead continthe community it was designed to serve? Does your mission ued doing the types of programs they had been doing for allow for that? Answering these questions will not only help more than a decade—programs that encourage the commuyou deal with questions of relevance and community value nity to come to the museum and have difficult conversations but doing so will also position your organization to better on issues of race, class, education, and housing. By working handle the sorts of unexpected events or issues that it may with community organizations, the Missouri Historical face now or in the future. Society is able to remain relevant and explore these issues in Leveraging Everyday Work a way that allows all voices to be heard. There is probably no need to reinvent the wheel. Much In order to be prepared to facilitate topics that may result of our everyday work is already about connecting people to in heated discussion and uncomfortable confrontations, the history that surrounds them and seeking to find relemuseums must first look at their institutional mission and vance in that. In some cases it may not be that different from values. Are the conversations you want to have in line with where you’ll end up if you try to incorporate preparing for the type of organization you want to be? Do you have the unexpected events into the DNA of your organization. Are necessary trust of the community to host such conversathere things you are doing now that already prepare you tions? Do you have the skills or access to the right commufor the unexpected—or would with some minor tweaking? nity partners to develop a successful program? Fortunately, Leverage and build off of those activities. Once you build the institution’s mission encourages the exploration of relerelationships, maintain them. Look for ways to extend what vant topics and how they connect to the region’s history. you do outside of your own space. Make sure the community The Missouri Historical Society did not become a safe has a voice in the work that you do. The truth is that if you space in the community overnight. The creation of a space address the other steps suggested above, the accumulated of trust took years and included work done by all museum effect should be represented in how you do this work. And departments, from the executive office to exhibitions to visthat can have a big effect on whether you are ready when it itor services. It is not enough for one department to decide is time to jump. it wants to address challenging topics. It has to be infused throughout the institution and reflected in the organization’s UNFOLDING EVENTS IN ACTION: language and actions. THE MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY As time went on, some members of the St. Louis community openly discussed “Ferguson fatigue”—a weariness of discussing Ferguson and the inequalities it brought to light. So, what does this look like in the real world? First, let’s Despite this challenge, the institution encountered scant look at the Missouri Historical Society. Over the years, the pushback as it continued to explore topics of regional coninstitution has earned a strong reputation for serving as a cern. Because of the depth and breadth of community partspace to learn about and discuss difficult topics that affect nerships, the institution is able to address topics in a variety of its community. From issues of educational inequality to race ways, from theater to music to documentaries. It is also able to housing segregation, the museum has spent the last two find ways to connect back to the history, such as programs on decades providing opportunities for the community to grapthe founding of the St. Louis police department, citizenship ple with these ongoing issues. Instead of only responding to issues explored through the Dred Scott decision, and housing a specific local, regional, or national event when it happens, segregation addressed in the restricted covenants popular in the Missouri Historical Society is proactively and constantly many St. Louis neighborhoods. providing programs that reflect community issues and the rel-
16
SUMMER 2016
Indiana Historical Society /Ed Stewart
Community Engagement
Patrick McCarthy
Indiana Historical Society /Ed Stewart
As events continue to unfold around the country and the world, it is important for history organizations to learn how to use history to contextualize the events and make them relevant for their audiences. The society uses its resources to create opportunities for dialogue that lead toward understanding and positive change. But the response to Ferguson is just one example of this principle in action. Starting with the exhibition, Race: Are We So Different? eight years ago, the organization designated a yearly theme. These themes have included race, class, homelessness, and hunger. The 2015 annual theme was immigration with the title, Finding Home: An Immigration Series. This year-long series included two exhibitions: one on German immigrants who traveled to St. Louis in 1834, and another more recent look at immigrants who made St. Louis home in the late twentieth century. Through these exhibitions and programs such as lectures, documentaries, panels, and a naturalization ceremony, the St. Louis community learned about what it was like to be an immigrant at different points in time. More than fifteen years ago, the Missouri Historical Society established a relationship with the Bosnian community when it hosted an exhibition for the fifth anniversary of Srebrenica, the Bosnian genocide that brought more than 8,000 refugees to St. Louis. This year, as part of its immigrant series, the society further developed this relationship by not only hosting the twentieth anniversary of Srebrenica, but creating a series entitled Bosnia 101. The institution developed this three-part series in conjunction with the Bosnian community to provide a forum for St. Louisans to learn about the people and culture of Bosnia. The program started with a presentation by the International Institute, the organization responsible for relocating the Bosnians when they arrived in St. Louis. They spoke about the politics of Bosnia, the Srebrenica genocide, and the aftermath of the war. Grbic, a local Bosnian restaurant hosted the second program, which had a more festive tone as it explored Bosnian life and culture. The final program looked at what the Bosnian community brought to St. Louis and the positive impact of the refugees’ relocation. This series welcomed eighty people at each session and was well-received. Many participants said they knew Bosnians came to St. Louis, but they didn’t know why or much about the culture. This series allowed the Bosnian community to share its story with the wider community and for the latter to learn about their neighbors. With the current political rhetoric around immigration, the Missouri historical society plans to provide two Immigration 101 programs each year. One will look at historic immigration from western Europe. The second will examine more recent immigrant stories (such as Latinos) or refugee resettlement (e.g., Syrians). Because of the success of the Bosnian 101 program as well as the historical society’s strong partnerships with diverse community organizations, the expanded programs are poised to show that everyone deserves a chance at the American dream.
Brittany Jones and Alice Hoenigman in front of their prominent place in the A Visual Journey: From AIDS to Marriage Equality exhibition celebrating LGBT history in Indiana.
UNFOLDING EVENTS IN ACTION: INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY The Indiana Historical Society (IHS) is another example of how organizations can deal with issues that drop at their front door. In March 2015, the state of Indiana became a top news story when Governor Mike Pence signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The law’s passage and signing was met with both strong support and widespread criticism. Opponents of the law claimed it targeted LGBT communities and legalized discrimination against them. Proponents viewed the law as protection for individuals who may be forced to violate their religious beliefs. Thousands protested against the policy locally while many national businesses and cultural organizations called for a boycott of Indiana. The reputation of Indiana, known worldwide for its “Hoosier Hospitality,” was on the line. This tempestuous time happened to align with public programs coming from a number of initiatives the organization had been pursuing for some time. In 2014, IHS presented a museum theater piece and community conversation titled Will You Marry Me?, which profiled legal and cultural prohibitions on who could or could not marry in different periods over time. Also in 2014, IHS launched an LGBT collecting initiative, recording more than fifty oral histories and acquiring several large collections including more than 60,000 photographs taken over three decades by Indianapolis photographer Mark A. Lee. Additionally, the IHS Press published a new book in its youth biography series, The Quiet Hero: The Life of Ryan
Bosnian 101 program at Grbic Restaurant, a traditional Bosnian-style restaurant in St. Louis. HISTORY NEWS
17
Indiana Historical Society /Ed Stewart
White, by Nelson Price. On April 1, IHS readied The book marked the for a far larger-than-ever twentieth anniversary expected audience as Jeanne of Ryan White’s death White-Ginder and Greg and told the story of the Louganis provided media middle school hemointerviews connecting philiac student who was Ryan’s life and sacrifice with blocked from attending the present situation. IHS school after acquirPresident and CEO John ing HIV/AIDS from Herbst opened the program a blood transfusion. observing, “Here everyone Ryan’s situation had is welcome and IHS is comto be addressed by the mitted to telling everyone’s courts and advanced the story.” The evening demonfight against discriminastrated to the staff, the board, tion, educated the puband the audience that IHS is lic about the disease, a leader in the community. and increased medical One day later, the legislacare and research. ture passed a fix to the origiIHS had planned a nal bill that did not overturn book launch on April local ordinances. The part1, 2015, that was to ners decided to keep SHA in include a panel discusIndianapolis. And the Indiana sion with the author, Historical Society continues Ryan’s mother and to do its work in surrounding AIDS activist Jeanne communities. The debate on Nine-year-old Dominice Denny shares her story as part of the White-Ginder, and RFRA continues. transgender community in the exhibit A Visual Journey: From Olympic Diving chamFrom events we can preAIDS to Marriage Equality. pion Greg Louganis pare for to those that no who had become a close one sees coming, museums, friend of Ryan’s. In March leading up to this event, several historic houses, and other cultural heritage institutions are members of the Indiana legislature backed off on their supuniquely positioned to be a beacon of light in the stormy port for RFRA while Governor Pence continued to defend seas of an uncertain world. Whether we are providing histhe new law, which included a disastrous interview with torical context that helps place current events within the George Stephanopoulos on ABC. This interview caused an larger human experience or are creating safe spaces for diffiavalanche of negative reaction. Out-of-state organizations cult conversations to occur, our organizations can help foster threatened to cancel conventions in Indianapolis and major positive social growth and help our communities to heal, as corporations such as Eli Lilly, Cummins, Roche, and Angie’s long as we put ourselves in the right position to do so. List denounced what they perceived as a negative climate for In some other famous words attributed to Yogi Berra, recruiting and retaining a highly qualified workforce. “The future ain’t what it used to be.” In reality, we may not This brought IHS into the fray on a national level. The have the ability to predict the future as well as Berra could, IHS is the host of Developing History Leaders @SHA (forbut the reality is that no matter what we do to prepare, we merly the Seminar for Historical Administration or SHA), will have to face the future when it arrives. Which begs the sponsored by a number of partnering organizations and question: are you doing all you can to be ready when the institutions. As RFRA continued to be debated nationally and future comes? t Hoosier leaders worked on a fix, the SHA partners debated moving the seminar out of Indiana in 2015. Like many other Jason Crabill (jcrabill@ohiohistory.org) is Manager of businesses, cultural institutions, and professional associations Curatorial Services, Ohio History Connection and is on caught in the middle, IHS faced a dilemma. While it wanted the AASLH Leadership in History Awards Committee. to continue to offer SHA a home, it would not defend RFRA and its implications particularly because it would overturn Melanie A. Adams (adams.melanie28@gmail.com) is Indianapolis’s own antidiscrimination codes that specifically Managing Director of Community Education and Events, included LGBT Hoosiers. Meanwhile, key IHS leaders, Missouri History Museum. staff, and board members worked behind-the-scenes with VisitIndy, the Indianapolis Arts Council, and its mayor who Kyle McKoy (KMcKoy@indianahistory.org) is Vice helped lead the movement. Blue circular stickers began President of Education & Exhibits, Indiana Historical appearing on doors and windows of businesses and cultural Society and is faculty for Developing History Leaders organizations stating, “This business serves everyone” in sup@SHA. port of a grassroots effort to create distance from the law.
18
SUMMER 2016
Why Old Places
Matter
By Thompson Mayes
Montpelier Foundation
Participatory events are not only fun, they create lasting memories and connections to old places. Here, schoolchildren form a human flag to celebrate the 250th birthday of James Madison at Montpelier, his home in Virginia.
M
any of us involved in state and local history are in the place-saving business. Yet few of us really spend time talking about why we save these places. We use phrases like “Save our heritage” and “It’s our history” and “It’s who we are”—phrases that capture deeply felt meanings. Yet even though we may feel strongly about the importance of the old places, we rarely delve into why. Is it history? Is it art and architecture? Is it culture? Why do these old places matter to us and to other people? Why should we save Antietam Battlefield, the homes of Malcolm
X and William Faulkner, the county courthouse, Fort Ticonderoga, Greenwich Village, or historic Charleston? What good do these old places actually do for people? Thanks to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the American Academy in Rome, I’ve published a series of essays titled Why Old Places Matter (see http:// go.aaslh.org/Mayes.OldPlaces) through the National Trust’s Preservation Leadership Forum. I know I am probably preaching to the choir in History News, since many AASLH members work to save, preserve, and interpret historic places every day. Or as someone posted in response to one of my essays, “[It] seems kinda crazy that we even need to ask.” Yet I started this project precisely because I thought people HISTORY NEWS
19
A summer performance at Brucemore in Cedar Rapids, IA. People who attend the performances develop shared memories and experiences of the site, which both delights the members of the audience and builds support for the site.
Greg Billman
engaged with the work of preserving old places didn’t have ready answers, and that expressing the reasons could help us save more places—and perhaps more importantly, guide us in how to use these places to make people’s lives better. In trying to capture the reasons that old places matter to people, I explored the reasons I heard most often: continuity, memory, identity, beauty, history, learning, architecture, sacredness, creativity, ancestry, sustainability, community, and economics. I’ve since heard many other words: belonging, stability, comfort, security, recreation, and inspiration. I know I’ll continue to hear more. These reasons overlap. Some may apply to one site but not to another, and they may resonate with some people at some sites, but not others. This complex layering of reasons, while making it hard to answer the question easily for any one place and for any one person, highlights the richness of meaning that old places have in our lives. What I’d like to share in this article is not a reiteration of the essays, which I encourage you to read separately, but the implications that some of the reasons have on the work that you do every day in saving and interpreting historic places,
Robert Barnes
The audience of Liberty to Go to See on the stair at Cliveden, in Philadelphia. The interactive performance, developed through a collaboration with the Philadelphia Young Playwrights and produced by the New Freedom Theatre, uses the spaces of Cliveden and the Chew Family Papers to spur creativity and give depth and present-day meaning to history.
and how these reasons can guide us in helping to make people’s lives better. Let me say at the outset that I’m a lifelong preservationist, and like many people, I feel deeply that old places are important. Yet I came away from this project thinking that old places are actually more important than I had thought—and for more reasons—but not only for the reasons that I and many others in public history and preservation think. Although I had primarily thought of old places as being significant for history and architecture, after talking with many people inside and outside the preservation world, and reading theories of phenomenology, environmental psychology, place attachment, and place identity, it became clear to me that old places, while important for the disciplines of history and architecture, are meaningful to the greatest number of people because of the sense of continuity, memory, and identity they provide. Old places contribute to people’s sense of who they are and their place in the world and give them emotional and psychological stability, a stability that is critically important (and is, in fact, a basic human need). We see how important this sense of stability is when we witness the devastating impact of displacement—where people lose the network of people and place that supports their very conception of who they are. This year, we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), the key federal historic preservation law. Interestingly, the NHPA doesn’t only talk about history as a purpose, but, in evocative language, describes the way historic places, if kept and used, can continue to be a living part of our society and provide a “Sense of Orientation” for the American people. These ideas of continuity, memory, and identity (and the other reasons in all their layered complexity) are what the drafters of the NHPA were hoping to capture in that phrase “sense of orientation.”1 When we save or interpret a historic site or other old place, even if we think we’re only doing it for history or
Why Do Old CONTINUITY: Old places create a sense of continuity that helps people feel more balanced, stable, and healthy. MEMORY: Old places help us remember. INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY: Old places embody our identity. CIVIC, STATE, NATIONAL, AND UNIVERSAL IDENTITY: Old places embody our civic, state, national, and universal identity.
20
SUMMER 2016
BEAUTY: Old Places are beautiful, and beauty is profoundly beneficial. HISTORY: Old places give us an understanding of history no other evidence possibly can. ARCHITECTURE: Old buildings are part of the history of civilization and they place us on the continuum of time. SACREDNESS: Sacred old places provide deep spiritual and psychological benefits of peace, serenity and inspiration.
Jamie Orillion Robert Barnes
architecture, we provide people with this important sense of orientation. Yet in delving into the many reasons that old places matter to people, I wonder how preservationists and public historians might foster even stronger connections to old places, and in the process make the old places we care for even more meaningful to a broader range of people. How can we do a better job fulfilling more of the reasons these old places matter? We have the opportunity to strengthen the connections people feel to the sites we work to save and interpret, and to give people that sense of orientation they so desperately need. At the same time that people need a sense of belonging and identity, we are experiencing an evolution in historic house museums and historic sites. Some are seeking to reinvent themselves (or in other cases, responsibly close down), because they are withering for lack of attendance, funding, and interest. This seems to present a conundrum. If people need old places for continuity, stability, and identity, why aren’t they supporting some historic sites? As I looked at the way people attach memories and identity to place, I realized to my surprise that people may form attachments to places in only a single generation—and many places can therefore become “old” in a very short time. That’s why we’re now seeing people mourn the loss of places we haven’t traditionally thought of as historic—from mid-century modern shopping malls to subdivisions. I’m struck by the possible connection between growing attachment to places of the recent past and the withering of attachment to some of our more traditional historic sites. We need to ask ourselves if people don’t care as much about some of these historic sites Top right: HOPE (Hands-On Preservation Experience) crew at the
African House, Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches Parish, LA, building skills—and connections—to this historic place.
Middle: Children playing a giant outdoor game of chess at the Glass House, New Canaan, CT. Actively using a site builds memories and attachment to the place, and gives people pleasure and joy.
Places Matter? CREATIVITY: Old places inspire creativity and entrepreneurship. LEARNING: Old places teach us about the past and give us perspective on the present in a way nothing else can do. SUSTAINABILITY: Old places—through their embedded energy, the avoided impacts of demolition and new construction, use of traditional design features compatible
Robert Barnes
Bottom: Reenactors at the Battle of Cedar Creek, Belle Grove, VA. old places permit us to understand history in a way that no other evidence can.
with local climates, and locations close to existing infrastructure—are inherently “green.” ANCESTRY: Old places connect us to our ancestors, giving us a sense of identity and belonging. COMMUNITY: Old places give people a sense of shared community. ECONOMICS: Old places foster a sustainable and equitable economy.
HISTORY NEWS
21
The Wonder-filled World of Worms! a composting workshop for children at Villa Finale in San Antonio, TX. The more people use and engage with the site, the more it remains a part of the ongoing life of the community.
22
SUMMER 2016
National Trust for Historic Preservation
because the places have removed themselves from being part of our everyday lives. Historic sites and house museums that have engaged in rich experiences for audiences continue to be successful because they give people the opportunity to have meaningful experiences and to form ongoing and contemporary attachments to places—i.e., they are delivering that sense of orientation. This leads to the question: how can we open our sites to people and foster experiences that are meaningful and moving and that will continue to nurture attachment to the place? How can we let people discover something about themselves and create new memories with these old places? Let me start with the idea of history, since that’s the bread-and-butter work many of us do. Although I think we need to pay attention to other purposes, I’m a firm believer that history remains an important reason to save and interpret old places. The capacity of old places to tell history is powerful and long-lasting. As Joseph Farrell, professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania wrote to me, “For many, places and things are a much more effective way of being in touch with the past than reading is.” Learning history at the actual place where it happened permits people to understand it with all of their senses—sight, smell, hearing, touch, and sometimes even taste—as well as getting that something extra—the sense that our intuition, memory, and experience brings to our visit to the place. That’s why the only history that many people remember from school is what they experienced on a visit to a historic site. We learn things at the real place that we cannot learn in any other way.2 The question is, how can we deepen audience engagement with history and learning in a way that also gives people present-day attachments to historic places and that helps fulfill the many other reasons old places matter? As I note in my essay on “History,” I’m a strong proponent for letting people experience historic places as openly as possible, with all of their senses. The traditional way of interpreting historic places through guided tours with one-directional interpretation limits the opportunity for a rich experience. As the artist Catherine Wagner told me, “The moment someone tells you what the experience is supposed to be, they keep you from finding your own voice.” The International
Coalition of Sites of Conscience has been a leader in dialogic interpretation, which engages people in a way that leads to discovery, even epiphanies, where people are moved and changed by the experience of the place. If we engage the people who visit our sites in a deeply meaningful way that allows them to make their own discoveries—to find their voice—they have moving and life-changing experiences. There’s immense power in this engagement. In the essay on “Collective Memory,” I note that although there are many critics of what society chooses to preserve and why, the power of historic places is that they can be the venues for shifting ideas of history, national identity, and collective memory. They can also be places where difficult aspects of our collective past can be acknowledged and where reconciliation can happen. The old places we steward and interpret are the very places where our collective identity is reshaped and re-formed. The continued existence of places permits (even fosters) changing viewpoints and interpretations. Rather than shying away from these difficult topics, we should embrace them and unleash the power of these places to do what they do best—serve as a venue for discovery and change in our society today. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the American Association for State and Local History, the National Council on Public History, and regional and state museum associations have been encouraging the field of public history toward more engaging interpretation. And if we do that, people will have experiences that will keep these sites as a living part of our society. In addition to engagement through interpretation and dialogue, how can we create more experiences for people at these places—moments of beauty, sacredness, creativity, or simply more memories? Sofia Bosco of Fondo Ambiente Italiano (FAI), an Italian preservation organization, told me that her organization had discovered that for its membership, it simply wasn’t enough that a historic place was saved and carefully preserved. For people to care about the place, they needed to create their own experiences, to volunteer and help, to visit and use the site—essentially to develop their own memory and identity tied to the place. As a result FAI began to change its programming to have more people come to their sites for more types of events—dinners, suppers, and picnics; weddings and parties; games and wine tastings; and a whole host of everyday human events. The more people came and experienced the place, the more they cared—precisely because they were developing their own memories and identity with the place. They were forming attachments. Or as Page Lee Hufty of the Preservation Landmarks Commission in Palm Beach recently put it, “We need to fill these places with life, instead of preserving them as an empty shell.” The bottom line? Continuing use is important. If the places are not used, people don’t care about them, and they begin to lose their power.3 The National Trust has been promoting the notion of shared use as a prototype for the re-imagination of historic sites, house museums, and other historic properties. The idea of shared use is that using a site for several different and compatible purposes creates a more dynamic, vibrant, and peopled place that engages and expands audiences. Shared use, which was the focus of both an online and
Paul Rocheleau
Visitors enjoying a sculpture by Albert Paley on the grounds at Chesterwood, the home of Daniel Chester French, who sculpted the seated Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial. Through residencies, contemporary sculpture shows, and other programs, Chesterwood continues to foster creativity for people today.
onsite session at the 2015 AASLH conference, creatively infuses a dynamic interpretation of a place’s history across multiple nonprofit and commercial uses—all in ways that are resonant with the property’s history.4 The transition to using a site for a variety of purposes can challenge existing stakeholders and audiences who may think a historic site should only be used as a single-purpose museum. As challenging as the idea may be, increasing the use of a site has the capacity to greatly expand audiences and make a site more relevant for more people today. As Katherine Malone-France, Vice President, Historic Sites at the National Trust told me, “The more people experience the site, and in as many different ways, the better. We want people to engage with the site through dining, shopping, listening to music, seeing unexpected works of art, wandering through a landscape, or attending an event with deep, personal meaning, such as a wedding or a bar mitzvah. Accidental interpretation, in which someone is engaged with the history of a place while they are there for other reasons, holds such tremendous potential for engagement and discovery. Ultimately, we want our sites to be part of the fabric of people’s lives. But we don’t just want to do this so they care and will help preserve these places. We do it because it makes peoples’ lives better. We want them to be delighted, enlightened, moved, and changed.”5 As I think about why old places matter to people and how the historic places we care for can fulfill these reasons more effectively, these ideas of engagement and use seem critical. If people use these old places in their everyday lives, if they have moving experiences and develop memories and iden-
tity through the site, if they have moments of beauty and creativity, we fulfill that promise embedded in the National Historic Preservation Act to provide a sense of orientation to the American people. This is why old places matter—to fulfill this fundamental human need. I’d love to hear your thoughts about why old places matter—and how historic sites are giving people the sense of orientation they need in their lives. t Thompson (Tom) Mayes is Vice President and Senior Counsel for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and has written and lectured widely on historic house museums, preservation easements, shipwreck protection, the Americans with Disabilities Act, preservation law, and the importance of old places. A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Rome Prize in Historic Preservation in 2013, Tom authored a recent series of essays titled Why Old Places Matter. He can be reached at tmayes@savingplaces.org. 1 “[T]he historical and cultural foundations of the Nation should be preserved as a living part of our community life and development in order to give a sense of orientation to the American people.” Section 1 of the National Historic Preservation Act, Pub. L. No. 89-665, as amended by Pub. L. No. 96-515. 2 Joseph Farrell, email to author 5 December 2013. The first chief historian for the National Park Service, Verne E. Chatelain, is quoted saying “An historic site is source material for the study of history, just as truly as any written record.” From Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service, prepared by the Organization of American Historians at the invitation of the National Park Service, 2011. 3 Comment to the author following “Why Old Places Matter” presentation, Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach lecture series, 18 February 2016. 4
See go.aaslh.org/NTHPSharedUse.
5
Interview with author 20 February 2016.
HISTORY NEWS
23
Above Water
O
By Sarah W. Sutton
n any day there is likely to be saltwater in the basement of 74 Bridge Street, a Newport (RI) Restoration Foundation property, once the home and workshop of celebrated eighteenth-century cabinetmaker Christopher Townsend. The sump pumps, fans, and a ceiling-mounted baseboard heater run 24/7 to keep this basement dry. The frequency and degree of flooding threatening the site and the entire neighborhood known as The Point drove Pieter Roos to action. As executive director of the Newport Restoration Foundation he was host of the conference Keeping History Above Water. In April 2016, 350 planners, homeowners, climate scientists, preservationists, historians, engineers, architects, and community representatives and organizers gathered for a pivotal discussion: how to decide what to protect and how to protect it against the greatest global preservation challenge—sea level rise due to climate change. Tom Dawson, managing director of SCAPE, Scottish Coastal Archaeology and the Problem of Erosion, articulated the blunt options: “Defend the line? Retreat the line? Or no active intervention?”
Organizers thoughtfully selected presentations and discussions for a narrative arc: reinforcing the gravity of sea level rise and storm events and their potential for devastation of historic sites; providing examples of risk, loss, and responses from around the world; and recommendations of what to do next. Throughout the days, the conversations developed two themes: the absolute necessity of cooperative, integrative efforts to identify risk and plan solutions and presaging changes for the field.
Climate Change and Historic Properties
Adam Markham, deputy director of climate and energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, established the scientific baseline. Overwhelming scientific evidence supports our understanding of how human activity has contributed significantly to an unprecedented accumulation of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere causing the Earth’s temperature to increase (this includes the air and the oceans). Those changes mean that weather disruptions—extreme heat events, storms and floods, and fires—happen more frequently and are likely to be more intense. Storms are likely to dump more water more frequently. In an urban setting, the impermeable surfaces of roads, parking areas, and buildings send all their runoff into over-
Above: Jon Ford from Horsley Witten Group and Tanya Kelly of PLACEstudio landscape design present their ideas to the team during a closing
presentation of the 74 Bridge Street Project Charrette. The two-day session brought together more than thirty individuals for a case study on solutions mitigating sea level rise and flooding for 74 Bridge Street, Newport, RI.
24
SUMMER 2016
Ashley Mercado
Keeping History
Right: 74 Bridge Street, The Point Neighborhood, Newport,
RI. Adjacent intersection is a four feet above sea level.
dreds of years.” Yet we had gathered in Newport to discover what we can do even if we can only slow, not necessarily stop, sea level rise. The rest of the conference focused on ideas ranging from anticipatory documentation of existing sites to adapting the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties to allow physical changes to the landscape and buildings. Presenters and participants discussed, primarily, how to plan for climate related changes, and, with decreasing detail, how to adapt, rescue and begin to let go.
Plan
The presenters identified urgent first steps: •C onduct storm surge, sea level rise, and flooding vulnerability assessments for your site or sites using free global, state, and local data and reports (see sidebar for some sources). •D ocument sites in a manner that qualifies them to receive Federal Emergency Management Administration grant funding before or after a disaster event. • I nclude the community in understanding risks and defining and prioritizing responses. • I nclude pre-disaster mitigation steps in historic preservation plans. Jeremy Young warned everyone to record historic structures and synchronize that information with community and state climate or disaster plans. As project manager for disaster planning for Historic Properties Initiative, Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office, Young stressed this tactic as critical for eligibility for post, and some pre, -disaster funding. Mary Kate Ryan agreed. As state survey coordinator for the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources, she knows that cultural resource management and climate
Frank Amaral, NRF
whelmed storm sewers. As construction replaces wetlands, and walling-in the rivers constricts the channels during a storm event, the river cannot cope with as much water before overflowing, and now structures in a wider flood zone are under threat. Worse, the water isn’t just wet, it’s also filthy, rushing at speed, and wielding debris. Our sites are not designed for any of it. Sea level rise is a stealthier attack. Of all the heat generated and trapped since 1955, 90 percent has gone into the oceans, not the atmosphere. Warmer water expands, so the oceans take up more space. As the warmer atmosphere accelerates the melting and breakup of glaciers, all that ice and water flows into the oceans and expands. This is sea level rise. During a higher tide, a storm surge, or both together, the waves and the storm surges are more likely to reach and damage more sites along the coastline. Then, in a nasty form of double jeopardy, some land areas are subsiding as humans pump out fresh groundwater at a greater rate than it can be replenished. Some of the highest sea level rise incidents are on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and Gulf Coast. Together with storm surges and subsidence, sea level rise is wreaking havoc in the areas with high concentrations of native and early European sites.1 “There are 2,000 historic properties in Rhode Island, alone, threatened by rising seas… [We can] see and imagine the possibilities of loss and the challenges of adaptation,” said Edward P. Henry, president of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, a conference sponsor. Sea level rise, he said, “threatens and…will destroy historic buildings, landscapes, and neighborhoods here and around the world.” Cities such as Boston, Newport, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire have many structures built on fill, a historic design fault allowing saltwater intrusion at a faster rate than in natural areas. Other cities such as Jamestown, Virginia, or Galveston, Texas, are in naturally low-lying, exposed areas. And many sites are located on the water because water defined them historically—from the City Dock area on the waterfront of historic Annapolis, to the fish ponds and sacred sites of Pu’uhona o H’naunau and KalalokoH’nokohau National Historical Parks in Hawai’i. The history field has dealt with water level issues before—such as the loss of artifacts and heritage to manmade dams, and their rediscovery when water consumption drained those reservoirs. Rivers have changed course to reveal or cover burial places and villages, and storms have washed away or uncovered coastal sites. The differences now include the widespread reach, increased frequency and intensity, and less time in between storm events to recover. And there is new technology and aggregated data for advanced warning, developing mitigation approaches, and the shared experience to raise awareness and facilitate smart responses to what we know lies ahead. Roos noted, “Even if we do the right thing, right now, global climate change will not reverse for hun-
HISTORY NEWS
25
NOAA
Do First
te and local is documented with sta Confirm your property disaster e you easier access to authorities. This may giv record. o provides a historical money if needed and als risks and timeframe. • Identify any sea level er-end of the d risks, then take the low • Identify 100-year floo risk as your estimate. ng agencies. h local emergency planni • Connect regularly wit • Educate yourself. ate related perties to minimize clim dapt practices and pro •A disasters. Resilience Plan: er Response Plan to a • Upgrade your Disast 1 risks to your scenarios 3 Add climate related move collections 3 Plan to protect and/or and defense measures 3 Evaluate mitigation se scenarios 3 Test damage respon Climate Change: A Using Scenarios to Explore National Park Service, .org/NPS-Scenarios. aslh go.a 3, 201 July s, Handbook for Practitioner 1
Above: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Association Storm Surge Simulation
26
SUMMER 2016
SCH@RP volunteers have carried out a rescue excavation of this Bronze Age burnt mound on Sanday, Orkney. The site, one of only a handful of known complex burnt mounds, now lies on the beach and is being damaged by wave action. The local community on Sanday instigated a project to excavate and relocate the structures at the Sanday Heritage Centre.
SCAPE
change are not standalone issues, but is concerned they are not yet interrelated in the eyes of most planners. She includes cultural resources in town hazard mitigation plans, involving citizens in community planning and response. In her experience, historic buildings are valuable landmarks for emergency gathering points, deploying resources in a disaster, and galvanizing collective action. “Communities can withstand change because they are rooted in their own history,” she said. Lisa Craig is a recognized champion for engaging the public in the planning process. As chief of historic preservation for Annapolis, she is working with the community to develop a response to frequent high-tide flooding in the waterfront streets. When high tide is combined with a storm surge blowing water onshore, many more of the city streets and structures (and businesses) are under water. The Weather It Together program is Annapolis’s multiagency planning effort to respond to climate change challenges. Craig uses the data, statement, and priorities set out in the Maryland Climate Action Plan as a baseline and the FEMA Hazard and Mitigation Planning Process to guide planning. 2 The process has four steps: 1) Organize resources (tools, data, stakeholders, expertise) 2) Assess risks (types, and extent) 3) D evelop a plan (set priorities and create long-range plans for avoiding or mitigating the hazards), and
4) Implement and monitor the plan. The second Weather It Together planning day, also held in April 2016, focused on understanding land use, building codes, and public engagement and how all of them intersect with nature. An important part of the process is a continuing online public survey. It assesses respondents’ activities, property ownership, favorite places in Annapolis; priorities for historic site protection and salvage after a disaster; flood insurance rates; what mitigation and response activities they feel are most important; and who they think bears the most responsibility for mitigation and damage costs. Conference presenters and participants repeatedly stressed the importance of engaging all member groups in the community to understand needs and to prioritize needs and responses. Some participants placed an emphasis on nonexpert involvement—meaning nonprofessionals who are local residents and users and members of indigenous and cultural groups. They are experts on local conditions and culture and many aspects of community needs with great insight for planning.
ADAPT: Physically
and Philosophically
Historic adaptations, indigenous or European, are valuable precedents during this change. Matthew Pelz, Center for Coastal Heritage director, Galveston Historic Foundation, shared historic photographs of houses designed to be relocated as needed, and other less-mobile ones being raised on jackscrews after Galveston’s devastating 1900 storm. The city raised the land around the houses and businesses, sometimes up to eleven feet. And Matthijs de Boer of Rotterdam, Netherlands, noted that the Dutch have been holding back water for many more centuries than we have in the United States. The uncharted process of learning how to protect 74 Bridge Street triggered this event in the first place. The 74 Bridge Street team held a two-day charrette to understand the problem and explore potential solutions. They worked out on a micro level much of what the conference worked out on a macro level. The recommendations are more a series of potential next steps, inevitably hampered by the need of a whole neighborhood to change itself. The first step is to pursue saltwater management, then construction adaptation, then the designs and policies to implement these at other sites. Barring neighborhood-wide action by the city, saltwater management (keeping it out) is impractical. Instead the site
the future. Make them visible, integrated with the community, and well-designed.” Roos concluded that it is time to rethink design guidelines. “Rising waters don’t care about the Secretary’s Standards.”
RESCUE: Document
explored wet flood proofing, allowing the water to flow in and out. This requires alterations to physically let the water flow through the basement; it also means elevating mechanical and electrical systems above flood zones, as they have already done. A next-step solution may be to raise the kitchen, a lower grade level addition, and raising electrical outlets on the first floor by a few feet or more. The group has more thinking to do, but raising the building above the average high water at high tide would require thirteen feet of height; Newport’s preservation guidelines currently allow only seven feet. Either would put the building out of visual alignment with historic profiles and its neighboring structures. This is a conundrum on many levels. All this talk of lifting and moving structures drove the group to taboo: discussing changes to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards. First responses were resounding no’s. Pelz commented, “Preservation standards aren’t the problem; it’s the way they’re used. The slowness of the process is problematic.” He recommended standards include local incentives for hazard mitigation. Staff from the National Park Service mentioned that the NPS is working on a preservation brief for responses to sea level rise and flooding. The discussion shifted to the value of the original versus the value of change. Someone asked, “At what point does adaptation alter the resource?” Another asked, “Does visual character of a historic site need to be preserved, or can its identity exist in its function, its resilience?” If we change a historic property by raising and other means (including physically moving them), is the preserved function and our adaptive measures the new value, or is the only value in the site and its setting? Another queried, “When does sea level rise become part of the history of the place?” Roos described this as “architecture of inundation,” and asked “Are we altering a structure for forever? Or is this just another point in its history? It becomes a resilient structure and that resiliency becomes part of its history.” De Boer further explained, “Human responses to environmental changes have become part of those cultural resources…Don’t be afraid of bold solutions; if well-designed, these monuments [such as his examples of the flood gates at Rotterdam] will be artifacts of
and Salvage
When an audience member asked, “Who decides which culture gets on the Ark; which culture disappears into the deluge?,” participants and presenters had to acknowledge we will be able to save less and less. Preservationists have always struggled with this. Now the angst is even greater. The planners in the group said the first thing was to understand the values of what some called assets and others had more respectful names for, and then how to prioritize actions and plan projects. Some speakers had point systems for valuations; the nonprofessionals argued for community-preference valuations. Tom Dawson of Scotland’s Coastal Heritage at Risk Project (SCH@RP) presented an impressive citizen science approach to identifying and protecting national heritage. The work begins with surveys, then prioritization of values and vulnerability, and proceeds through citizen-led projects. With 12,500 site surveys representing only 40 percent of Scotland’s coast, involving the community in leading projects is the only way to make progress in identifying sites and damage to them due to rapid coastal change from changing weather patterns. The philosophy, Dawson noted, “[Is that] eroding coastal heritage provides opportunities for anyone to enjoy and benefit from taking part in archaeological and historical exploration and discovery.” Scotland’s Coastal Heritage and Problems of Erosion is documenting sites and potential damage, and then identifying documentation and interpretive projects to preserve and share history, as well as some relocations—and new discoveries. Markham showed slides of structures at Meur Burnt Mound falling apart during a 2014 documentation and removal process. This Bronze Age site was relocated to a new, nearby community center in an impressive professionally guided volunteer rescue process. The community felt so strongly about the site as part of its heritage that they dedicated themselves to its rescue. The irony is that the community did not know about the mound until 2005 when a storm first uncovered it.4
What Wasn’t Discussed
T
his conference did not discuss evacuating collections. 74 Bridge Street has no historic collections in its above sea level rooms, but for those with concerns in addition to historic preservation, collections do factor into this worry. There is great value in a meeting of the minds on resilience planning for collections. Let’s not plan for disasters; let’s plan to do our jobs well despite them. There were no discussions of U.S.-based salvage projects for archaeological sites, or serious discussion of removal of coastal structures. As more sites are threatened more completely, we must develop an understanding of how to assess, plan for, and implement salvage operations.
HISTORY NEWS
27
Let Go
Sarah Penrhyn Jones of Bath Spa University described two programs. One in Wales is a community-generated archive, mainly digital, collecting and protecting intangible heritage threatened by eroding coastlines. Another is on a sea island nation documenting what will be lost. Jones described sea level rise damages at Kiribati as “a rupture in their heritage.” She eloquently champions capturing of stories because “intangible heritage is likely to be separated from material culture.” Recording intangible heritage, she said, “Connects past, present, and future, and it can travel with a displaced community.”
All Preservation is Local and Global
As Edward P. Henry told us all, “We need this conversation, and communities across the globe need solutions.” Andrew Potts, executive director of US/ICOMOS, explained, “This is a global situation requiring translation of our local skills to an international arena…International skills will become increasingly important in preservation due to climate change.” The climate change and heritage communities must come together to establish “heritage as a [United Nations] pillar of sustainable development,” thus joining environmental and economic sustainability and social equity.
Dealing with these challenges is too complex to address only one building at a time. Adaptation at 74 Bridge Street in isolation, without adaptation in the neighborhood, compromises the work at 74 Bridge Street and ignores its neighboring buildings. There will be sea level rise. What matters is how we respond to it. This requires collective study, practice, and implementation, from local to global. What we learn will help us decide how to care for our sites in the new climate: plan, adapt, rescue, and let go. t Sarah W. Sutton is a sustainability consultant for museums, sites, zoos, and aquariums. She is the author of Environmental Sustainability at Historic Sites and Museums. She can be reached at sarah@sustainablemuseums.net. 1 Ocean Scientists for Informed Policy, “Ocean Warming,” go.aaslh.org/ OceanWarming; Debra Holtz, Adam Markham, Kate Cell, and Brenda Ekwurzel, National Landmarks at Risk: How Rising Seas, Floods, and Wildfires Are Threatening the United States’ Most Cherished Historic Sites (Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists, 2014). 2 City of Annapolis, “Weather It Together Survey,” go.aaslh.org/Annapolis. Federal Emergency Management Agency; “Hazard Mitigation Planning Process,” March 2016, go.aaslh.org/HazardMitigation. 3
Scotland’s Coastal Heritage at Risk, “Meur Burnt Mound” go.aaslh.org/Meur.
“Communities can withstand change because they are rooted in their own history.”
Great Speakers, Fascinating Topics
Look who’s joining the OAH Distinguished Lectureship Program roster in 2016-2017.
FOR INFORMATION OR TO SCHEDULE A LECTURE
lectures.oah.org
28
SUMMER 2016
AASLH thanks the following individuals for their leadership as members of the AASLH Legacy Society. The Legacy Society provides AASLH members an opportunity to donate to the endowment via estate planning.
Ms. Sylvia Alderson Winston–Salem, NC Anonymous Mr. Bob & Ms. Candy Beatty Franklin, TN Mr. Robert M. & Ms. Claudia H. Brown Missoula, MT Mr. & Mrs. Charles F. Bryan Jr. Richmond, VA Ms. Linda Caldwell Etowah, TN Ms. Mary Case & Mr. Will Lowe Washington, DC Ms. Terry L. Davis Nashville, TN Mr. Stephen & Ms. Diane Elliott St. Paul, MN Mr. John Frisbee (Deceased) Concord, NH Mr. J. Kevin Graffagnino Barre, VT
Mr. John A. Herbst Indianapolis, IN Mr. H. G. Jones Chapel Hill, NC Ms. Katherine Kane West Hartford, CT Ms. Kathleen S. & Mr. James L. Mullins Grosse Pointe Shores, MI Mr. Dennis A. O’Toole Monticello, NM Ms. Ruby Rogers Cincinnati, OH Mr. David J. Russo Ontario, Canada Mr. Will Ticknor Las Cruces, NM Mr. George L. Vogt Portland, OR
Speaking History to Power: History Policy Briefings
in the Classroom E d i t o r ’s N o t e :
A previous version of this article appeared in the American Historical Association’s blog, AHA Today, on March 1 and March 29, 2016.1
By Jessica Choppin Roney
W
e are in a moment when history and other liberal arts disciplines are under pressure— in some cases even attack—to prove their usefulness in a forward-facing world of STEM and digital literacy.
Many students and their families have come to think of history classes as interesting but not helpful in preparing students for future careers. Teachers of history are under pressure to explain why what we do matters, in the classroom or beyond. The historians at the National History Center (NHC), the policy arm of the American Historical Association in Washington, D.C., have pioneered one strategy to do just that. Their Congressional Briefings by Historians program brings eminent historians to Capitol Hill to brief members of Congress and their staffs on the historical back-
The students chose to look at the causes of poverty and how different generations of Philadelphians addressed the problem. This image from England, Thomas Rowlandson’s Pass-Room at Bridewell, provides a sense of how early modern poverty and institutional responses to it.
ground of current policy matters. Historians have spoken about everything from immigration to the Ebola crisis, explicitly avoiding partisanship or policy recommendations and instead providing a rich, complex context in which to situate current events. The Congressional Briefings program foregrounds history for busy policymakers, reminding them of what others have tried before and with what outcomes. What would happen, though, if we took these briefings outside Washington and ceded authority not to the experts but to local students studying their own communities? That was precisely what Dr. Amanda Moniz, assistant director at the NHC, asked herself when she drew up a guide for educators for a Mock Policy Briefing program to be implemented in classrooms. My “History of Philadelphia” class at Temple University had the honor of being the first to try out her suggestions. As part of a larger class on the history of the city, students would research the history of a modern-day policy matter important to Philadelphia. At the end of the semester they would discuss their findings with actual Philadelphia policymakers through a half-hour presentation followed by thirty minutes for questions and discussion. Selecting and researching a policy matter for which the entire class would prepare a single presentation was an ideal way to marry my own course content, lectures, and pre-selected readings with student-generated content and their own explorations into primary and secondary sources. It would move the authority for asking and answering historical questions HISTORY NEWS
29
Students wanted to understand better how we got from this…
George Heap, East Prospect of the City of Philadelphia, 1756 away from me and onto students. They could explore some of their own concerns as residents of Philadelphia and discern change over time. They could bring to the classroom their own rich personal or family memories and share a range of perspectives and experiences with each other, thereby teaching and learning from one another. Another benefit of this idea was that it moved the students out of my classroom into libraries and local archives. Temple University is home to the Urban Archives, a treasure trove of Philadelphia history, of which most of our student body is unaware. After a class meeting with the history research librarian and the head of the Urban Archives, students became very familiar over the course of the semester with this resource and were able to find and analyze materials beyond a cursory Internet search or secondary literature review. (One student even ended up getting a job there!). Finally, I was excited about the Mock Policy Briefing program because it would put history into practice. It would encourage students to ask: “Why does this matter?”; “How can this information help guide or inform us today?”; “What is the most effective way to present it so that policymakers can make use of the information?” It would give students tools to ask big questions, search for answers, and translate their findings for a public audience. It would also provide a sense of purpose because what they researched and wrote would not be for my eyes only but would have life in a larger context, one that they hoped would have real policy implications. When I sat down to write the syllabus for the “History of Philadelphia,” I faced a real dilemna: could I create a group project that involved the entire class? If I did, how could I meaningfully and fairly assess the contributions of each individual student? Group work notoriously falls on the shoulders of one or a few students in the group. How could I make sure that each student in a twenty-two-person class had real input and shouldered her fair share of the work? The entire class had to collaborate on a single research project, translate findings into a unified, coherent presentation, and deliver it persuasively and effectively before an audience of Philadelphia policymakers. How exactly were we going to
30
SUMMER 2016
do all that? Fortunately for me, the National History Center had a template, one I adapted pretty much whole-cloth. Organizationally, I divided the semester into two parts—the first based on individual work; the second working as a group.
Researching Individual Topics
Students first chose and then researched individual topics. We were privileged to have former Philadelphia mayoral candidate and current historical documentary filmmaker Sam Katz speak to the class about how to ask good questions and help them think about some of the issues facing the city today. Then students started their research. The topics they chose ranged considerably. Some wanted to know more about the Philadelphia public school system, which is currently experiencing considerable difficulties. Others evinced interest in contextualizing the recent real estate boom and neighborhood change (gentrification) in many parts of the city. One young woman wanted to examine the century-long history of one-party rule in Philadelphia municipal government. Others wanted to study police-community relations, hunger, and women as community organizers. Students had to research their topics using primary and secondary sources. To help them, I organized a session with Temple’s magnificent history resource librarian and special collections librarian. The students were surprised by the sources available to them in their own campus library; they had no idea that Temple’s archive held so many primary sources about Philadelphia right at their fingertips.
Presenting Individual Topics
Once students researched their individual topics, they had to present them to the rest of the class. The class would then vote on single topic going forward. Each student prepared two sets of materials: a one-page informational bulletin with graphics and text, and a four-slide PowerPoint presentation. To help with both, I invited a representative from the graphic design team of the College of Liberal Arts to discuss effective presentation and design strategies. I emphasized that students should think of their presentations and visual aids as a “pitch” to convince constituents (classmates) to vote for that topic,
Philadelphia Skyline at Night, 2013
Jon Holiday
…To this.
because now all the groups could see what their classmates had been doing. They provided one another feedback, asked questions, and thought about how to make their individual segments more consistent with one another. Soon after, each group presented again, incorporating the suggestions of their classmates and whatever new research they had done to fill in any gaps or to add consistency with other groups.
Small Group Work – Tasks
both by interesting them in the topic, but also by outlining how the class might go about researching it. To that end, initial research was important, but so was the ability to convey effectively the stakes behind and the viability of a particular topic.
The Vote
Finally, the big day came: the students gave their presentations and tried to persuade classmates to choose their topic. Then I distributed ballots. Students agreed that everyone would get two equal votes so that everyone didn’t just vote for their own topic. The first ballot narrowed us to two topics and in a run-off vote between schools and poverty, the students ultimately chose to study poverty in Philadelphia. I was surprised. Only one student had researched poverty as an individual topic, whereas a number had been looking at schools. However, the young man who presented on poverty gave such an effective presentation, and had outlined so clearly avenues of future research for the class, that he won over the majority. Going forward, the class became a committee-of-the-whole.
Small Group Work – Research
We brainstormed together the best strategy and how to divide up research among smaller groups. After floating many different possibilities, students divided up into three groups based on chronology. The first would study poverty in Philadelphia from 1775 to 1900; the second from 1900 to 1950; and the third from 1950 to the present. In their small research groups the students developed lists of questions and a wish list of resources: statistics they’d like to have, images that would aid their presentation, and so on. Each student took responsibility for a particular question or area to research and then, after two weeks, had to circulate a report to the rest of their small group. They checked in frequently with one another, shared resources, and assembled within their own group a rough outline of what they had and what they still needed. Near the end of the semester, each group put together an eight-minute presentation of their research for the rest of the class. This was an important phase in the process,
These research clusters were not students’ only small group assignments, however. In addition to having a research group and responsibility, each student joined a committee with a different function. One group completed its work early: they were responsible for inviting Philadelphia policymakers to our final presentation. They drew up the list, drafted the invitation, and corresponded with invitees. The majority of the work came at the end of the semester for the other groups. One was responsible for the final presentation. They took the images and work of the three research groups and made a single, consistent presentation with as much graphic impact as possible. Another was responsible for the final script. It took the outlines and research of their peers and made sure they worked together in the final analysis. The script committee also was responsible for writing the introduction and conclusion of the presentation. Finally, this group was responsible for an informational bulletin to distribute to guests. This would be a handy reference, especially for statistics or graphics to which the audience might like to refer through the presentation.
Final Presentation
We had a dress rehearsal of our final presentation in the second-to-last class, and then in the final class, the students gave their presentation. One student acted as the emcee; it was her job to open and introduce the entire presentation and to offer the conclusion at the end. She also was responsible for calling on audience members during the discussion (though not for answering their questions; that was the responsibility of the entire class). Students divided the body of the presentation into three chronological periods reflecting the research groups. One or two students from each group gave an eight-minute section of the presentation. In all, six students out of twenty-two actually formally presented. The rest, all dressed professionally, sat in the front of the class ready to field questions at the end of the presentation. We got some probing questions, and the students were very good about sharing the work of answering them. No one was an expert on the entire presentation, but each was an expert on some individual part of it. As the conversation deepened, moreover, students’ personal experiences and reflections as residents themselves of Philadelphia came more and more into the conversation.
Reflections
We learned a great deal piloting the mock policy briefing model. The students were unanimous that they wished we had had more time to work as the committee-of-the-whole. They felt that they had put too much of their time and resources into their individual proposals, and that as a conseHISTORY NEWS
31
Joseph Giordano
32
quence the final presentation had entailed more of a scramble than they would have liked. Some offered that we should have selected a single topic much earlier in the semester, or even that I should have assigned one from the start. One regret from my own perspective was the audience of policymakers. This was only my second year at Temple, so the networks on which I might draw were still relatively thin. I took for granted that local municipal authorities would respond positively to students from a university in • Lay the groundthe heart of their city. Not that work and then council members or the mayor follow up with himself would show up, but that the people we might get a few staffers who invited would be interested in our find• Draw on the ings. In fact, we got zero from expertise of any elected official or bureaulocal historians cratic office. I left the students • Partner with in charge of deciding whom a particular to invite and though I worked organization with them, the invitations came from the from the students, not from beginning me. In retrospect, I wish I had done more to lay the groundwork and then follow up with the people they invited. We did get response from some local nonprofits working on poverty, the president of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Moniz herself, so we had some impressive members in our audience, but for all their hard work, I wish the students could have reached more people. In closing, I offer a strategy I have been revolving in my own mind for next time I teach this class, one that would hopefully address both of my regrets from the first time we did the policy briefing. Next time I might approach a local nonprofit in advance of teaching the class and ask them to brainstorm what historical question might aid them in their work. Then the class would partner with that particular organization from the beginning to focus on the question or general area they had indicated. This partnership would allow the class to get moving on a single question or at least in a general area from the beginning. It would also begin to solve the question of who the audience for the final presentation would be, especially as the nonprofit might be able to help identify stakeholders invested in the question. Just as I would reach out to nonprofits, next time I would make connections earlier with archives and historical associations beyond our campus. This move would 1) introduce students to the resources in their community; 2) draw on the expertise of local historians who could contribute both to the question the students ask and the primary sources they might draw upon to answer it; and 3) expand the network of constituents for the final presentation, creating a diverse audience that might build on the event to make connections or convey information of their own. On a related note, after I taught this class at Temple, I gave a presentation about it to high school teachers at an SUMMER 2016
event sponsored by the NHC, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and Library Company of Philadelphia. One of the teachers asked whether we might form our own Philadelphia History Center on the pattern of the NHC, a forum through which students at all different levels might prepare and deliver policy briefings to local officials and community members. If a collaborative network of this sort between local schools, libraries, archives, and museums can get off the ground, formally or not, it would prove a major asset in aiding students in their research and providing a platform for them to share it. The Mock Policy Briefing program addresses the skillsbased education that so many administrators and families demand. At the same time, it is rooted in the analytical, research-based methodology of the discipline of history. My students collaborated together to conduct primary and secondary historical research, analyze findings, and put together a professional presentation that addressed questions important to current policymakers. At each stage, the audience for their work was never me, the professor, but instead was oriented toward the entire class and eventually to policymakers. If they didn’t keep up their end of the research, the students felt they were letting their classmates down. In short, they learned a great deal about what it is like to work collaboratively, as they will probably do in their professional lives. The passion the students brought to the class surprised me. They responded extremely positively to having to research and write for an audience that wasn’t just their professor. Students felt that what they were doing mattered in a way that an ordinary term paper simply didn’t. They had ownership over this project, not least because it was about their own community. We implemented the Mock Policy Briefings in a college class in a large city, but I see no reason why it could not be adapted and implemented in any community and in secondary schools. Philadelphia, like any community, has a wealth of current policy questions that benefit from a longer historical perspective. Empowering students and helping guide them to the tools to do the work of filling in that background is a service, not only to them but to the larger community of which they are a part. At its best, that is what this program can do. t For more information on the National History Center’s Mock Policy Briefing program and materials, visit go.aaslh.org/ NHCMockPolicy. Jessica Choppin Roney is Associate Professor of History at Temple University. Her research interests center on early America and grassroots political development. Her first book, Governed by a Spirit of Opposition: The Origins of American Political Practice in Colonial Philadelphia, examines civil society and voluntary association in colonial America. She can be reached at jessica.roney@temple.edu. 1 See Jessica Choppin Roney, “Making History Relevant to Policymaking: The NHC’s Mock Policy Briefing Program in History Classrooms,” go.aaslh.org/ RoneyAHA and “Making History Relevant to Policymaking: A Classroom Guide on Implementing the Mock Policy Briefing Program,” go.aaslh.org/RoneyAHA-1.
Award Winner Spotlight >
By Laura Caldwell Anderson
Sharing Nashville’s Civil Rights Past with the Police
Partners
Beginning in 2014, the Nashville Public Library partnered with MNPD to develop a diversity education curriculum rooted in lessons about the Civil Rights Movement in Nashville. Responding to increased media coverage of interactions between white law enforcement officers and African American citizens nationally, developers of Nashville’s diversity training for law enforcement wished to encourage new recruits, seasoned officers, and agency leaders to examine ways Metro Nashville’s past likely influences its current social climate.
More Than a Tour
According to Andrea Blackman, who heads the Special Collections Division and its Civil Rights Room at the library, the Civil Rights and a Civil Society program is an extension of tours of its Civil Rights Room. Yet the law enforcement training program goes well beyond a normal tour. It puts Civil Rights Room resources— including photographs, oral history interviews, and ephemera collected
Amber Williams
I
n October 2015, the Nashville Public Library hosted Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) recruits, active officers, and their supervisors to the library’s award-winning Civil Rights Room for a history lesson. The purpose of the program was to provide law enforcement officers with information about local events of the Civil Rights Movement. At the same time, the program aimed to guide officers and trainees in consideration of contemporary social justice issues related to law enforcement and the public, particularly for communities of color. Because Civil Rights and a Civil Society represents not only good practice, but, in the words of one reviewer, “Possibly live-saving work in training law enforcement officers.” The program earned the library one of three 2016 HIP (History in Progress) Awards from AASLH.1
Nashville Public Library’s Civil Rights and a Civil Society program encourages law enforcement personnel to use lessons from history to imagine solutions to contemporary challenges related to policing and community relations.
during demonstrations and sit-ins—into participants’ hands. Staff follows this with a facilitated discussion. “By bringing history into diversity training, we are able to discuss complex community dynamics in a way that encourages open discussion and greater understanding through a historical framework,” explains Blackman. “Our goal is to educate [law enforcement professionals] about the past to inform their present and future interactions with civilians in our community.”2 Participants in Civil Rights and a Civil Society start their program with a visit to the Civil Rights Room, where they gather around a mock lunch counter surrounded by photographs from the Nashville Movement. A staff member welcomes participants and gives them a brief overview of the Nashville Sit-Ins of 1960. Participants then move into a classroom-style space in which they view together a documentary about school desegregation in Nashville. During the second half of the program, law enforcement officers and trainees analyze photographs of events in the Nashville Movement. Working in groups, they locate the stories depicted in the photographs. In this atmosphere, and with
encouragement from library staff, dialogue takes place. Topics discussed in small groups include the role of media in movements for social change, the role of law enforcement in such movements, and, sometimes, participants’ personal experiences. In a town that is rapidly diversifying and with a police force that is predominately white, these are important conversations to have. The program opens a dialogue among the participants that continues throughout their training and, hopefully, their careers.
National Issue, Local Conversation
In a May 2016 speech delivered in Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, FBI Director James Comey said to officials from every level of law enforcement that local, state, and federal officers, “All need to understand and stare at…hard truths.” Explaining why he, like his predecessor Louis Freeh, has analysts and agents-in-training study in a course dedicated to the FBI’s interactions with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Comey said that he and others in law enforcement at every level, “have to see ourselves clearly. We need to understand our history, much of which is not pretty. The truth is that HISTORY NEWS
33
the history of law enforcement in the United States was that we were often the enforcers of the status quo, which was mighty rough on a whole lot of folks especially minority communities, immigrant communities, communities without power. We have to remember that history because the people we serve and protect cannot forget it.”2
Creating Community
Civil Rights and a Civil Society program participant and MNPD police officer trainee Nakia Reid told a local news station that she decided to become a police officer after she recognized police officers helping others. Still, she said that the history-based training at the library was unexpected and that it sparked conversation among trainees even after they left the library. “Once we left [the training], I came out more knowledgeable of how the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s affected Nashville, how the community handled it. We were all on the bus together and kept talking about it.” Media coverage of the program is also part of what makes it a model for
other history museums and institutions. MNPD volunteer chaplain Michael Joyner observed that participation in the program would not only benefit the officers, but would also “give the community more confidence in knowing that our police department has gotten aggressive enough” to engage in diversity training based on an understanding of history.3 Citing the Nashville Public Library program’s importance in the midst of a wave of police killings, U.S. News and World Report ran an article focused on the role educator and peace activist Bernard Lafayette played in the program. A veteran of the Nashville Movement of the early 1960s, Lafayette speaks internationally about his own training in nonviolent direct action protest, which happened when he was a student in Nashville. Following that experience, Lafayette went on to leadership positions in both the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, among others. His involvement in the Civil Rights and a Civil Society program, then, adds to its credibility. Lafayette expressed his hopes
Many Voices Are Stronger than One
OAH Partnership Program
Align your organization with a vibrant and diversified group of history professionals. The OAH Partnership program strives to strengthen our support of history, history education, and history practitioners. This Partnership will help you keep abreast of the latest trends in scholarship and news about and for the profession; it offers professional exposure and provides discounts on publications and services. FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT
34
SUMMER 2016
oah.org/partners
that programs like the one at the library will help new recruits better understand their role as protectors. He later noted, “There is no separation between police and community.” The veteran activist is glad to be associated with training that encourages law enforcement officers to do more than simply stop shootings, but to create a sense of community in the carrying out of their work.4 Nashville Public Library’s Special Collections Division intends its Civil Rights Room to be a safe space for difficult conversations about race and injustice, particularly for officials charged with the safety and welfare of the public. Participants in the Civil Rights and a Civil Society program overwhelmingly agreed the program was pertinent to their jobs and would help them build relationships with the community. In fulfilling their aim to offer space and programs to the general public or special groups, however, the program does more than educate. Civil Rights and a Civil Society also supports the “telling and appreciation of… stories of marginalized people whose experiences challenge the racial privilege of the majority and strengthen the power of minority communities.”5 In so doing, the program makes a novel contribution to the history field and serves as a model. Its creation and success results not from the space in which the training happens, but from the power of stories brought forward for mutual consideration by the participants. t Laura Caldwell Anderson is Director of Operations for the Alabama Humanities Foundation. Formerly an archivist at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, she is a 2014 graduate of the Seminar for Historical Administration and serves as Chair of the AASLH Awards Committee for Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. She can be reached at lauracaldwellanderson@gmail.com. 1 Phyllis D. K. Hildreth to AASLH Leadership in History Awards Committee, 24 February 2016. 2 Nashville Public Library, Leadership in History Award Nomination, 2016. 3 Hayley Mason, “Metro Police Take Part in Civil Rights Training,” WSMV.com, 21 April 2015. 4 Lucas L. Johnson II, “Nashville Program Teaches Law Enforcement about Civil Rights Amid Wave of Police Killings,” U.S. News & World Report, 18 November 2015. 5 Jennifer B. Kahn to AASLH Leadership in History Awards Committee, February 2016.
Book Reviews > Cities, Museums and Soft Power By Gail Dexter Lord and Ngair Blankenberg, eds. (Washington D.C.: The AAM Press, 2015), 263 pp. Reviewed by Anne Petersen
I
n Cities, Museums and Soft Power, Gail Dexter Lord and Ngair Blankenberg chart a new course for museums in global cities. Soft power, first described by political scientist Joseph Nye in the 1990s, is the “ability to influence behavior using persuasion, attraction or agenda setting” (9). The growth and importance of cities and the increase of museums as tools for civil society (referring here to the volunteer and nonprofit sectors) in the new millennium have made them a powerful instrument of soft power. The authors note a marked change from the historical role of museums as elements of “hard power,” when their most frequent patrons and sponsors were governments and corporations. Lord and Blankenberg’s opening essay provides a thorough explanation of why and how museums’ influence within their cities is changing. They follow this with a series of thirteen essays from diverse writers applying aspects of the soft power concept to the roles of museums in cities the world over, from London and Dubai, to Shanghai and São Paulo. This global overview complicates the soft power concept in interesting, and often expected ways. Several connecting threads run through the essays that explore the nuances of the soft power concept. Hyfa Matar’s essay, “Museums as Signifiers in the Gulf,” explores the complex relationship between museums and the state in Persian Gulf countries such as Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait where the transition from hard to soft power has not yet begun, or is being only subtly challenged. Batul Raaj Mehta’s essay on museums in the Indian subcontinent discusses countries previously defined by foreign colonial powers now experiencing a flourishing of new museums seeking to establish and support local community identities. Gege Leme Joseph explores the uneven development of soft power in Brazilian cities
as state influence and economic might still exclude smaller communities and rural areas from cultural access and influence. A persistent theme in the book is that museums cannot become elements of soft power unless they develop along with the infrastructure and economy of their city. The success of the Gugghenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and its transformative effect on the local economy, for example, is referenced frequently, with the acknowledgement that its construction was fully integrated with a larger development plan that supported Bilbao’s rise as a global destination. Although the exploration of the global trend in museums’ increasing influence on residents and visitors alike raises important issues, it is Lord and Blankenberg’s final essay, “Thirty-Two Ways for Museums to Activate Their Soft Power,” that will be most applicable for History News readers. This instructive list includes concrete actions museums of any size and location can take to increase their soft power. Suggestions focus on leveraging connections with other local organizations and institutions in citywide development efforts, strategies for engaging and activating a local audience, entrepreneurial funding approaches, and maintaining an open, flexible stance on the museum’s role in the city now and in the future. It is here that readers will find inspiration and strategy for enhancing the role of museums in their community. t Anne Petersen is Executive Director of the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation. She holds a Doctorate in Public History from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an M.A. in American Civilization and Museum Studies from Brown University. She has over fifteen years’ experience working in museums and historic sites and is a recent (2015) graduate of the Seminar for Historical Administration.
The Idea of a Human Rights Museum By Karen Busby, Adam Muller, and Andrew Woolford, eds. (Manitoba, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015), 371 pp. Reviewed by Ereshnee Naidu-Silverman
T
he twentieth century saw some of the most brutal and horrific atrocities against civilian populations. As conflict dynamics shifted from wars between states to targeted attacks on ordinary people, the political discourse shifted to a victim-centered narrative that focused on survivors’ rights to justice and recognition. While the world attempted to make sense of mass atrocity, a new memory discourse emerged. Where once memory and memorialization practices were within the territory of the nationstate, these practices became what several scholars refer to as democratized or nationalized. Ordinary men and women now had the right to share their experiences of violence and violations so that the world could recognize their suffering, to rebuild their community, and to share with the world lessons of its responsibility to never allow such acts to be repeated. This emergent memory discourse also influenced and gave rise to new museum practices that aimed to foster cultures of human rights and raise public awareness of human rights violations. The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, born of a seminar series organized by the University of Manitoba’s Center for Human Rights Research, explores the proliferation of human rights museums and, through the lens of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), examines critical issues that human rights museums need to address to fulfill their goals. The book’s sixteen chapters are divided into four sections that focus on the idea of the human rights museum, spatialization and design, curatorial challenges, and the obligations of the museums. The editors note that in addition to being a conversation with the CMHR, the book also seeks to “demonstrate the complexity and contingency inherent in the idea of a human rights museum” (13). HISTORY NEWS
35
By highlighting some of the public controversies that emerged throughout the different phases of CMHR’s development, the authors broadly emphasize the need for the museum—or human rights museums more specifically—to engage with and embrace the difficult issues and debates that may arise with openness and transparency. Implicit in these arguments is that such actions will ensure that any museum remains relevant and credible as well as stays true to the goal of promoting cultures of human rights and pluralistic views. A theme, explored by Angela Failler and Roger I. Simon and Amanda Gryzyb in their essays, is the question of “learning from the past” versus “learning about the past.” These authors argue that instead of presenting static information, the central role of a human rights museum should be to stimulate dialogue, promote new learnings, and facilitate public action. Stephen Jaegar furthers this argument in his essay—which draws comparisons to the Military History Museum of the German Armed Forces— by highlighting the necessity for human
rights museums to make links with the past, present, and future. He notes that such an approach will both educate about human rights and instruct audiences about the possibilities of current and future actions that can further human rights causes. David Petrasek, Karen Busby, and Christopher Powell explore a related theme, arguing for a bottom-up approach to representing human rights within a museum. They call for a museum practice that explains human rights in a dynamic way, problematizing concepts and meanings and framing human rights as an incomplete outcome of ongoing and evolving struggles for rights and justice. Furthermore, they advocate for human rights representations that appeal to a broader public rather than an economic elite. A. Dirk Moses and Christopher Powell, respectively, explore the difficult questions related to the politics of representation. By focusing on the privileged space of the Holocaust narrative within the CHRM, and conversely how the museum represents Canada’s policy toward indigenous peoples—refusing to frame the country’s history of human rights violations towards indigenous peoples as genocide—the authors highlight the potential dangers of human rights museums in creating hierarchies of victimhood. On a more practical level, Moses begins to expose the links between
identities of victimhood, representation, and how these relate to resources such as funding and donor contributions. Finally, authors such as Armando Perla, Jennifer Carter, Adam Muller, Struan Sinclair, and Andrew Woolford explore the moral obligations of human rights museums to contribute to social justice and advocacy efforts and to build empathetic communities. Despite its density, The Idea of a Human Rights Museum brings together a rich collection of essays that draw on examples from around the world as it critiques the CMHR. The book is accessible to scholars in the field and provides valuable lessons and questions to consider for anybody looking to take on the task of creating a human rights museum. More important, the book traverses a range of disciplines, including political science, sociology, museum studies, and law. Indeed, it is through this multidisciplinary approach to learning from the past that we can collectively address the ongoing struggles for rights and justice and develop innovative solutions for future actions. t Ereshnee Naidu-Silverman is Senior Advisor with the Global Initiative for Justice, Truth, and Reconciliation at the International Coalition for Sites of Conscience. She may be contacted at ereshnee@gmail.com.
AASLH acknowledges and appreciates these Institutional Partners and Patrons for their extraordinary support: Patron Members $250+ Jacqui Sue Ainley-Conley Arvada, CO Bob Beatty Franklin, TN Pamela J. Bennett Indianapolis, IN Ellsworth Brown Madison, WI Karen Cooper Minneapolis, MN Georgianna Contiguglia Denver, CO John R. Dichtl Nashville, TN Stephen Elliott St. Paul, MN Leigh A. Grinstead Denver, CO Lori Gundlach Fairview Park, OH John Herbst Indianapolis, IN Jeff Hirsch Philadelphia, PA
36
Lynne Ireland Lincoln, NE Trevor Jones Frankfort, KY Katherine Kane Hartford, CT Thomas A. Mason Indianapolis, IN Lorraine McConaghy Kirkland, WA Jean Svandlenak Kansas City, MO Richard E. Turley Salt Lake City, UT Bev Tyler Setauket, NY Tobi Voigt Detroit, MI Robert Wolz Key West, FL
Institutional Partners $1,000+ Alabama Department of Archives and History Montgomery, AL Arizona Historical Society Tucson, AZ Atlanta History Center Atlanta, GA Belle Meade Plantation Nashville, TN Billings Farm & Museum Woodstock, VT Bullock Texas State History Museum Austin, TX Cincinnati Museum Center Cincinnati, OH Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Williamsburg, VA Conner Prairie Fishers, IN First Division Museum at Cantigny Wheaton, IL Florida Division of Historical Resources Tallahassee, FL Hagley Museum & Library Wilmington, DE Historic Ford Estates Grosse Pointe Shores, MI Historic House Trust of New York City New York, NY
Historic New England Boston, MA History New York, NY History Colorado Denver, CO Idaho State Historical Society Boise, ID Indiana Historical Society Indianapolis, IN Indiana State Museum & Historic Sites Corporation Indianapolis, IN Kentucky Historical Society Frankfort, KY Massachusetts Historical Society Boston, MA Michigan Historical Center Lansing, MI Minnesota Historical Society St. Paul, MN Missouri History Museum St. Louis, MO Museum of History and Industry Seattle, WA Nantucket Historical Association Nantucket, MA National Trust for Historic Preservation Washington, DC Nebraska State Historical Society Lincoln, NE
North Carolina Office of Archives and History Raleigh, NC Ohio History Connection Columbus, OH Old Sturbridge Village Sturbridge, MA Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission Harrisburg, PA Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library Lexington, MA Senator John Heinz History Center Pittsburgh, PA The Sixth Floor Museum Dallas, TX Strawbery Banke Museum Portsmouth, NH The Strong Rochester, NY Tennessee State Museum Nashville, TN Utah State Parks Salt Lake City, UT Virginia Historical Society Richmond, VA William J. Clinton Foundation Little Rock, AR Wisconsin Historical Society Madison, WI Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources Cheyenne, WY
™
The PerfectFit Kit…moving painting storage perfected. Meeting the evolving storage needs of today’s private and corporate collections, conservation labs, historic houses and art museums.
PerfectFit
PerfectFit™ is provided as an easy-to-assemble kit that fits perfectly into even small environments. Site-erectable by two individuals, collectors can now utilize space previously unusable. The PerfectFit™ kit requires no loading dock or freight elevator. And the legacy of CSI Moving Painting Storage systems is built into every facet of its aerospace aluminum design. TM
Painting Storage Systems
PerfectFit™ may be just the perfect kit for you. Contact us today.
Please Visit Us at the Annual Meeting in Detroit
For More Information about PerfectFit, please visit www.csistorage.com
1401 Lincoln Avenue • Holbrook, New York 11741 USA Tel: 1-631-467-0090 • Fax: 1-631-467-0061 info@csistorage.com • www.csistorage.com
1717 Church Street • Nashville, TN 37203-2921
New look! Still packed with insights on the latest developments in museum exhibition practice and award-winning designs. Published twice a year, Exhibition offers 100 pages of thought-provoking articles, exhibition critiques and commentary, technical articles and essays.
Only $25 a year
Exhibition_AASLH.indd 1
PERIODICAL
Subscribing is easy! http://aam-us.org/aaslh
4/1/16 12:32 PM
NEW TITLES FOR YOUR PROFESSIONAL COLLECTION
978-0-7591-2436-3 • $75.00 • Cloth 978-0-7591-2437-0 • $34.00 • Paper 978-0-7591-2438-7 • $33.99 • eBook
978-1-4422-6380-2 • $65.00 • Cloth 978-1-4422-6381-9 • $29.00 • Paper 978-1-4422-6382-6 • $28.99 • eBook
AASLH members always get 20% off when ordering AASLH Book Series* titles. Use this promotional code at checkout: AASLHMBR20 when calling Rowman & Littlefield Customer Service at 1-800-462-6420 or at rowman.com. *When ebooks are available, the discount applies.
978-1-4422-3973-9 • $80.00 • Cloth 978-1-4422-3974-6 • $39.00 • Paper 978-1-4422-3975-3 • $38.99 • eBook