FOR the LOVE of History We Are All in This
TOGETHER
Slaves and Slaveholders of
Wessyngton
“
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
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WINTER 2016 VOLUME 71, #1
PAGE
24 ON THE COVER Allen, Emanuel, Granville, and Henny Washington at Wessyngton, circa 1890. It was a copy of this photograph in John Baker Jr.’s social studies textbook that inspired him to search for his roots. All four were Wessyngton slaves who worked as servants at Wessyngton following emancipation. Courtesy Tennessee State Museum, John F. Baker Jr.
PAGE
13 Departments
Features
3 On Doing Local History
7 Slaves and Slaveholders of Wessyngton
By Carol Kammen
By Rob DeHart
5 The Value of History
13 For the Love of History: The Benefits of Collections-Based Research
By W. Todd Groce
27 Award Winner Spotlight By Jason Crabill
31 Book Reviews By Michelle Moon and Nathan Richie INSIDE: TECHNICAL LEAFLET
Demonstrating Relevance By Mark Sundlov
C O N T R I B U T O R S
By Katheryn P. Viens
18 We Are All in This Together: Twenty-FirstCentury Museum Leadership By Karen Whitehair
24 International Students Encounter Local History By Sarah E. Elia IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
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
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. History News (ISSN 03637492) is published quarterly by the American Association for State and Local History, a nonprofit educational membership organization providing leadership, service, and support for its members who preserve and interpret state and local history in order to make the past meaningful. 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 Š2016 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
Nelson Chenault
I came to our work from outside the regular channels of formal museum studies. I didn’t begin my history career until I was about halfway through an M.A. program in American (not public) history. I was not taught the long history and importance of community engagement in the American museum field. Instead I earned most of my public history chops as I interacted with the community. These experiences led to my epiphany that at the root of those exchanges was the hunger people felt for knowing and understanding the past. But they all boiled down to this: people want and need to find themselves in history and to relate that history to their own stories. This is certainly not a new concept. Then, “value” was the common term. Past issues of History News include innumerable references to the phrase (JSTOR records more than 1,200). The implication was that institutions had to be more than collections of old things. They had to be treasured resources to our communities. This remains true today. But at some point, the importance of our discipline in education and public discourse became threatened. Our value dialogue turned to something larger, that of the relevance of history itself. The magazine you hold in your hand is evidence of this precept at work in state and local history. Relevance is found in most issues of History News, but the connection
is more explicit than usual here. Articles highlight relevant exhibits such as the Tennessee State Museum’s Slaves and Slaveholders of Wessyngton, relevant programs like Sarah E. Elia’s work with international students at SUNY New Paltz, and relevant collections in Katheryn P. Viens’s piece on the importance of collections-based research. Relevance underpins Karen Whitehair’s article on leadership and is the focus of Mark Sundlov’s Technical Leaflet. It is through our institutions, cherished community entities that they are, that people encounter history in a tangible way. History organizations provide a venue for people to connect to the past; they make history relevant. “History is crucially important to the wellbeing of individuals, communities, and the future of our nation.” These words feature prominently on the website of the History Relevance Campaign, a grassroots initiative that AASLH has been a part of since its inception. Fundamentally, we believe this to be true. It is my hope that this issue will inspire you to think about how you can put that belief into action in your own communities.
Bob Beatty
We’ve been Standing Still for over 50 years!
Lifelike Realistic Figures since 1957.
Conservation Forms since 1996.
© Birmingham Museum of Art
OFFICERS 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 Maymont Foundation
COUNCIL Bill Adair, Heritage Philadelphia Dina Bailey, National Center for Civil and Human Rights 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, Association of Midwest Museums Ken Turino, Historic New England Tobi Voigt, Detroit Historical Society Phyllis Waharockah-Tasi, Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center Will Ticknor, Center for Museum Resources
STAFF
© Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum
800-634-4873 www.museumfigures.com
2
WINTER 2016
Aja Bain, Program Coordinator Bob Beatty Chief Operating Officer Cherie Cook, Senior Program Manager John R. Dichtl, President and CEO Bethany L. Hawkins, Program Manager Hannah Hethmon, Membership Marketing Coordinator Terry Jackson, Membership Associate Sylvia McGhee, Finance and Business Manager
On Doing Local History >
By Carol Kammen
The Local Historian as Public Intellectual Editor’s Note: Carol Kammen adapted this from her 2015 Leadership in History Awards Banquet address. Listen to the full talk at http://on.aaslh.org/Kammen2015.
I
n 1835 Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered an oration on the anniversary of the bicentennial of his town. “The History of Concord” is part of his great opus and widely available online. Emerson was a preacher, transcendentalist, lecturer, poet, essayist, romantic-localist, and travel writer. He was the—perhaps I should write The—public intellectual of his day who engaged in writing about large topics, most of which still engage us today. But it is often forgotten that Emerson was also a local historian. It is my contention that public and local historians are also public intellectuals, though not always recognized as such by our audiences or even by ourselves. It would seem presumptuous to stand up at a public meeting and say, “Well hi, I’m a public intellectual.” That would not go over well. However, in not claiming ownership of our status as being public intellectuals, we ignore an important feature of our role as investigators of our local history and we miss the opportunity to use our local knowledge for public enlightenment. As historians we raise questions worthy of our attention and of our audience. We are, after all, motivated by seeking an understanding of the past—not for commercial, and certainly not for personal, gain. So what is this thing called a public historian? I have gathered some definitions. A public historian is first and foremost, a teacher of his or her community. Check! A public historian is a translator of academic interests to a general public. Check! A public historian is a speaker and writer about community topics and about our discipline. Check again, perhaps even twice! Emerson was a public historian. So have been Gore Vidal, Wendell Berry, Susan Sontag, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, and most recently Ta-Nehisi Coates. These are the things we do, especially when we think carefully and respectfully of our privileged place within a community. We are expected to explain, to teach, to translate, to raise questions—even those that make people uncomfortable. We are respecters of the past and also
participants in contemporary life—something that the great French historian Marc Bloch thought important and that separates us from the charge of being antiquarians. I would argue that over the past thirty years we have made great strides in living our roles as public intellectuals by raising topics of importance to the people we live among, broadening our topics and our audience. There are some cautions, however, as we stretch for audience. Polls and some recent political speakers show that Americans are woefully ignorant about the past. There seems to be an indifference to fact. There has been a move from the Jeffersonian and Emersonian belief in the burden of the past to a superficial passion for youthful memory. In some ways we have gone from a history of shared and broad significance to trivialization and fragmentation. We need to remember that history is not story. This does not mean we should not tell history well and in an engaging fashion, using the storyteller’s ability to engage the public. What it means is that history is not shaped by literary convention, with a beginning, middle, and end. Rather, history sometimes takes its own shape and the end might be in the future, as yet unformed. One historical society director recently said that in his organization, he was replacing the traditional lecture series with storytelling. He wanted to present, he commented, “The history they didn’t teach in school. A little bit goofy and a little bit funny.” I understand why he said this, but I think it demeans not only history and history teachers, but perhaps even his public. The StoryCorps approach is inclusive and heartwarming, but without analysis and context we are left with vignettes. It would not be enough for Marc Bloch. We have sometimes allowed ourselves to think that a cultural exhibit covers a subject. In our world, Hopi pots and Hungarian lace are lovely to look at and important to know about, but they are not enough to convey the subject of government-Indian relations in regards to land
and culture nor to explore the sometimes awkward welcome we have offered immigrants to this country. These cultural exhibits (which I always enjoy looking at) mask the greater and tougher questions of how we treat others, of how we all fit into a stew of people who are Americans. That is the bigger and more important subject. So what questions should inform our work as public intellectuals? Below are some that concern me but I will not attempt to answer them. You will have others, I am sure. Each of us will have different ways of approaching these large issues, will have different evidence, and often arrive at different conclusions. Such is the practice of history. I think it is very important that we ask how we became modern—whatever that means at the moment. We are obviously always evolving, both personally and as societies, but the question for me is how did we get to this place, right here, right now. The route is not straight or complete, but it is important. Geography of place is important. What advantages does one place have, and have those advantages changed over time? What pulled people to a place and what pushed them out? And what have we done to our environment? I think community evolution is important: how and when our communities took on the roles they have today. When did the poormaster evolve into the social service department? What are our responsibilities to each other as well as to ourselves as we attempt to create a just and better society for all? I like to ask why public participation in voting is so sadly lacking. The idea of the family as a crucial unit of society is important to me. I think we should look at how families have been defined and how that definition has changed over time. What does being a member of a family mean and how has that also evolved? What are the consequences of our changing roles within a family (however it is structured)? What has been the consequence of a declining birth rate among some Americans and a high birth rate among others? What do HISTORY NEWS
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On Doing Local History > these changes mean to the needs of families and communities? Significantly, I think it is important that we look at history itself: how we have told the community’s past and how we are telling it today. And what does that say about us? We should examine how we construct a historical question or narrative. How can we involve the public in that very construction because they are, as are we, living through history? What do we leave to the future that our times might be better understood? I am interested in how our population has diversified and how we have opened up the democratic experience. This is true not only for suffrage, but also for education, business, mobility, and countless other factors. How has our sense of who we are as a community, as a people, changed over time? Whom do we include? We need to think about our national myths. Are we all equally free? Is our democracy working? Is there fairness under the law? For any of these, the answer is certainly not always, and not for everyone. Other myths involve the idea of how we have amalgamated into one people. Yet, have we really? Are we a melting pot, a salad bowl, or do we sit at separate tables in the cafeteria and talk to our own? To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., the arc of justice needs to further bend. We need to ask what we can learn from the past, without being, in
Emersonian terms, beholden to the past but rather energized by our history. Emerson’s history will no longer satisfy. He honored his own ancestors excessively. He mythologized Concord. He called it a favorite and fortunate place. He talked of the merit of its famous people and the high character of its old stories. He wrote, “[In Concord] I find no ridiculous laws, no eavesdropping legislators, no hanging of witches, no ghosts, no whipping of Quakers, no unnatural crimes.” He wrote Concord’s history as if it was nothing but heroic.1 But this approach is no longer good enough for us. Our histories have to be more complex because our world is complex and we reflect that in the questions we ask. We have broadened our topics and let in light. We have acted as the public intellectual, searching, preserving, researching while conscious of the bias in our documents and in ourselves. We have imposed order, and we have provided an immortality to events, places, and people of the past. We translate the documents of the past, pay attention to what scholars have to offer, and bring knowledge to our communities. It is our job to ask the large questions of the day, going beyond the beauty of artifacts, beyond the heroism of ancestors. We have to also look at the condition of those who might be called the common people, who did not make it to prominence but whose histories accumulate to create our own. There is really no one else to ask these questions. Others use
history, but we explore it to find out what is there and tell it in our hometowns so that others might know as well. In this fractured time of boutique politics, ethnic and class divisions, inequality of condition and opportunity, and the gross misuse of history for partisan goals—of positions taken without sound historical bases—local history provides us with a place of quietude where we can find common ground and shared language. It’s a base from which to investigate, to debate, to listen, and to learn. And it is the right place to ask the important questions of our time. Local history is our common space, and we need to use it, preserve it, and treat it well. We need to justify what we do and we must just do it well. There is no one else. The local historian is qualified and trusted. Unlike some, we have not lost our audience. We are not an eddy of history, for many people we are the mainstream. If we do not ask the hard moral questions about the past, if we do not inhabit the role of public intellectual, who over time will do that for our age? What could be more worthy of our attention? 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 Moncure Daniel Conway and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson at Home and Abroad (London: Trüdner & Co., Ludgate Hill, 1883), 21.
AASLH acknowledges and appreciates these Institutional Partners and Patrons for their extraordinary support: Patron Members $250+ Bob Beatty Franklin, TN Pamela J. Bennett Indianapolis, IN Ellsworth Brown Madison, WI Jacqui Sue Ainley-Conley Arvada, CO Karen Cooper Minneapolis, MN John 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
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Lynne Ireland Lincoln, NE Trevor Jones Frankfort, KY Katherine Kane Hartford, CT Russell Lewis Chicago, IL 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 M. 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 The Hermitage Nashville, TN 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
The Value of History >
By W. Todd Groce
When History and Memory Collide Editor’s Note: This piece originally appeared in October 2015 in the “Jamil’s Georgia” column of the SaportaReport.1
A
s another academic year gets set of absolute meanings and stories, under way, I am reminded of a possessed as the heritage or identity of a study released this past May that community. Memory is often owned, hisreveals how little American students know tory interpreted. Memory is passed down about their nation’s history. According through generations; history is revised. to the National Assessment of Education Memory often coalesces in objects, sites, Progress, last year only 18 percent of and monuments; history seeks to undermiddle school students scored at a level of stand contexts in all their complexity. proficiency in history. Additional studies History asserts the authority of academic have demonstrated that this glaring lack training and canons of evidence; memory of historical knowledge is not confined carries the often more immediate authorto the young, but is a pervasive ity of community problem even among adults. membership What’s fascinating about and experience.” History is the these studies is that they have Bernard Bailyn meaning that the appeared at a time of intense has aptly stated debate about history. Since the memory’s appeal: present gives to shooting in Charleston last “Its relation to the the past; as society June, Confederate iconography past is an embrace has undergone a dramatic reex… ultimately changes, so too does amination. The passion with emotional, not our interpretation which we are arguing about intellectual.”2 the removal of the Rebel battle Unlike history, of the past. flag and statues of Confederate memory is a static, heroes seems to disprove the fixed narrative we findings of the experts. typically learn as How can we square our supposedly children designed to be passed down, poor understanding of history with this unaltered, from one generation to keen interest in the future of historical another. Any deviation from this story, symbols and the larger discussion about any attempt to provide context, meanthe role they play in our contemporary ing, or a new understanding, is often lives? If we are ignorant of the history, condemned as historical revisionism, a why do we care so much about it? phrase that carries an ugly, threatening Everyone, even an individual without connotation. According to such critics, if a formal education, has some notion we could just get back to the facts and rid of what he or she thinks happened in ourselves of political correctness and its the past. This notion usually derives corrupting influences, we would get at the from family stories, school and religious true story once again. instruction, political leaders, or movies What many people don’t realize is that we’ve seen. It shapes how we perceive all history is revisionism. Any time someourselves, the way we interact with othone picks up a pen or sits at a keyboard ers, and the decisions we make, big and and writes the story of the past, they are small, every day. engaging in revisionism—a revising of the This personal notion of the past can be story to give it meaning, context, and usetermed “memory” and should not be confulness to the present generation. Just like fused with “history.” In fact, memory is medicine and any other field of learning, frequently at odds with history. According history is continually revised based on to Yale University professor David Blight: new research and findings. We don’t want “History is what trained historians do, doctors treating patients with medicinal a reasoned reconstruction of the past bleeding and unsterilized instruments, so rooted in research.… [On the other why would we want history that is frozen hand,] memory is often treated as a sacred in time?
As Blight points out, memory is deeply emotional rather than intellectual. During the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the Georgia Historical Society installed two new historical markers about the March to the Sea, which attempted to de-mythologize the subject. Despite decades of scholarly research demonstrating that Sherman’s destruction was primarily limited to foodstuffs, livestock, factories, and railroads, the suggestion that most private homes escaped unscathed triggered an angry reaction from those raised on stories of Southern victimization. “Some of us still remember,” declared one outraged older Savannahian when she read the marker text. “My grandmother told me that Sherman burned all the houses to the ground. Are you telling me she was a liar?” Obviously, this woman wasn’t alive during the Civil War, but memory is not confined to eyewitnesses. It is transmitted across time. De-mythologizing the past and supplanting memory with history is not easy. It’s difficult to think anew about something that seems familiar, to look at the past dispassionately and with a sense of wonder rather than defensiveness. The recent backlash over the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol shows just how deeply attached we can be to heritage—a term synonymous with memory—and how that heritage and even our identity can appear to be under attack when they are called into question by history. If history and memory are not interchangeable terms, the same can be said of history and the past. Although the past never changes, history does. History is the meaning that the present gives to the past; as society changes, so too does our interpretation of the past. For instance, prior to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, hardly anyone (especially in the South) talked about slavery’s role in triggering secession. In fact, African Americans seemed irrelevant to the conflict. Today, however, we understand just how seminal slavery was to tearing apart the nation, as well as HISTORY NEWS
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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
The Value of History > the vital role that African American soldiers and sailors played in defeating the Confederacy. Did the facts change? No, but society did. Black political participation and leadership encouraged historians to reexamine the history of the war and helped restore the centrality of African Americans to the story of our nation’s greatest crisis. Ironically, at a time when the clash between history and memory is more heated than ever, there are educators and politicians who consider history increasingly irrelevant as a subject of academic study. Confronted by the new emphasis on STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and math), a number of major historical organizations across the country, including the Georgia Historical Society, have launched a “History Relevance Campaign” aimed at promoting the value of history. If you would like to read more or learn how you can get involved and support this worthy effort, go to www.historyrelevance.com. The ongoing debate about flags, monuments, state holidays, and street names is
the latest battle in the long war between memory and history. Whether we are finally able to resolve this debate depends upon our willingness to look beyond memory and seek a historical understanding of how we got to this point. If we are willing to take the past on its own terms and accept it as it happened—even if that contradicts what we have always believed—then maybe we will find a measure of reconciliation with our history and with one another that has escaped us for so long. Ultimately how we decide to see our past—either through the lens of history or that of memory—will determine the kind of people and society we will become. t W. Todd Groce is President and CEO of the Georgia Historical Society and the author and co-editor of two books on the Civil War era. He can be reached at WTGroce@georgiahistory.com. 1 See Groce’s original piece at http://saportareport. com/when-history-and-memory-collide/. 2 David W. Blight, “Historians and ‘Memory,’” Common-place, www.common-place-archives.org/vol-02/ no-03/author/, April 2002.
J. M. Ke l l e y l T D.
Specializing in the Preservation of Period Architecture and Interiors 5075 Old Traveller Lane • Mechanicsville, VA 23111 • Phone: (804) 200-5705 • www.jmkelleyltd.com
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Slaves and Slaveholders of
Wessyngton By R
A Top: The
Wessyngton “big house� in 2014. The property is privately owned.
Bottom: Filming
o b
DeH
a rt
s a fifteen-year museum professional working in history collections and exhibitions, I have experienced the ups and downs of interpreting controversial topics. I have always welcomed these types of projects because I enjoy challenging the public to think critically about American history. But as many in the museum field have experienced, not all stakeholders at an institution share this enthusiasm. It has taken decades of bold work by public historians to counter the celebratory narrative that was ingrained in our museums and historic sites. Because of these efforts, slavery is just one of many topics that has gone from neglected status to a central tenet of historical interpretation.
costumed interpreters at a restored slave cabin at Wessyngton.
Top: Jerry Atnip/Tennessee State Museum; Bottom: Tennessee State Museum
HISTORY NEWS
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John F. Baker Jr.
Washington, about 1890. Born a slave at Wessyngton, he was believed to be the son of slaveholder George A. Washington and an enslaved woman named Fanny. Below: Jane Washington’s “Negro Clothes book, 1858-1865.” Jane listed the names of male slaves next to the clothes they received in 1861. The book also lists sizes and clothes given to enslaved women.
p/Tenn Jerry Atni
m ate Museu essee St
Above: Granville
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Tennessee State Museum
S
ince opening at its present location in 1981, the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville has followed this trend of uncovering lesser-known aspects of the state’s history with expansion of its permanent exhibitions and development of thought-provoking temporary exhibitions and programming. In 2014, it took another step forward by devoting significant space and resources to a major temporary exhibition on slavery, Slaves and Slaveholders of Wessyngton Plantation. Yet it would be incorrect to say the museum was totally confident in its success. We shared the same fears revealed by a recent survey of museum professionals and public historians conducted by the Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery. We worried if there would be white resistance to the exhibition leading to decreased attendance. By the same token, would African Americans show interest in the exhibition? Could we be sensitive about the issue without sugarcoating it? Would museum members support it?1 As the exhibition’s curator, I hoped for the best and braced for the worst. Thus, I was somewhat surprised (and exceedingly pleased) by the positive feedback and attendance generated by the exhibition. It attracted 68,000 visitors in seven months, a 10 percent increase over typical attendance. The museum received a large unsolicited private donation to create an exhibition catalog, hosted many sold-out programs, and Nashville’s public television affiliate produced a half-hour documentary on the exhibition that aired in markets across the nation. Additional grant funding allowed the museum to create a traveling version of the exhibition that will be displayed at twelve venues over three years. Reflecting on our original fears and resulting successes, I have to ask, “What made this exhibition about slavery resonate with such a broad audience?” This article examines the question by looking at key aspects of the exhibition planning, interpretation, and marketing that made it work. It also should be noted that this exhibition would not have been possible without the work of past and current innovators in the public history field and groundbreaking programs and exhibits too numerous to list. Slaves and Slaveholders of Wessyngton Plantation was a great achievement for the Tennessee State Museum, but also a victory for the public history field.
We divided the exhibit into seven large sections—“Journeys,” “Wessyngton,” “Negotiations,” “Ties that Bind,” “Civil War,” “Southern Culture Connections,” and “Reconstruction.” CHOOS E W I S E LY
With the mission of interpreting Tennessee’s history, the museum had the luxury of choosing from a variety of sources to find the best vehicle to interpret plantation slavery. We based the exhibition on a book by John Baker Jr., The Washingtons of Wessyngton: My Family’s Journey to Freedom. Baker served as the primary scholar for the exhibition. He grew up in Robertson County, Tennessee, which borders Nashville’s Davidson County to the northwest. While attending seventh grade in 1976, he spotted a photograph of four African Americans, simply captioned “Slaves,” in his social studies textbook. Instinctively drawn to the photo, he showed it to family members and discovered that two of the people were his great-great-grandparents, Emanuel and Henny Washington. They had been enslaved on a tobacco plantation called Wessyngton, owned by a powerful Virginia/ Tennessee Washington family (no relation to the nation’s first president). Wessyngton was one of the largest and wealthiest plantations in the state with 13,000 acres and 274 slaves in 1860. Further investigations led to the Tennessee State Library and Archives where the plantation’s records had been meticulously preserved. This documentation, combined with interviews Baker conducted with more than twenty children and grandchildren of former Wessyngton slaves led to one of the most complete and compelling stories of plantation slavery in Tennessee, if not the entire South.2 Baker eventually created genealogical charts tracing the history of twenty enslaved families. The plantation records covered slave purchases, punishments, rebellions, food and clothing rations, medical treatments, and correspondence between plantation overseers and masters. The plantation essentially became a small town in Baker’s research, with people assuming different community roles and responsibilities. Wessyngton revealed the diversity of enslaved individuals who were healers, musicians, surrogate mothers, storytellers, and artisans. There were some who continually rebelled and those who had close relationships with their masters. It was clear that Baker’s work gave the museum an incredible opportunity to breathe life into a world where historic characters are frequently presented as one-dimensional. Identified photographs of many of the slaves existed, and the Tennessee State Library and Archives and private collections contained numerous Wessyngton materials that could be
displayed. However, these rich stories needed proper context to be effective. While our museum staff possessed enormous expertise, it was impossible to keep up with the rapidly expanding scholarship and trends in specialized areas. Especially since the content of the exhibition had the potential for controversy, it was important to have people in our corner offering scholarly support for questions that could arise from visitors, the media, and stakeholders. For this reason, we formed an advisory committee of three university professors with specialties in women’s, African American, and southern histories. These scholars were invaluable for moving the interpretation into the most relevant directions, and as they reviewed draft outlines and text, their thoughtful and blunt responses saved many costly mistakes. To provide one example of a typical exchange, in the introductory text for an exhibition section entitled “Women of the Plantation,” I wrote: The women of the “big house” managed the domestic slaves that performed the cooking, cleaning, and laundering.
One of the scholars responded: Visitors will come away with the wrong impression if they think plantation wives “just” oversaw cooking and cleaning.
She was right. I was selling the women of the plantation short by falling into the trap of placing all of their activities in the private sphere. Instead I wanted to show how the plantation as a business could not succeed without the duties performed by women. So we revised the text to read: The women of the “big house” were important to the success of the plantation. A large slave labor force needed clothing and food. Mary, and, by 1849, her daughter-in-law Janesupervised the production of these essentials.
Genealogical chart tracing the descendants of two Wessyngton slaves. Visitors cited this as one of the standout elements of the exhibition.
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Tennessee State Museum
Slaves and Slaveholders of
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Filming the firstperson portrayal of rebellious Wessyngton slave Davy White. Visitors ranked these portrayals high in evaluations.
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This text, combined with the journals that the women kept to keep track of clothing, tools, and food distributed to slaves, demonstrated their important roles. The journals even contained entries about slaves being whipped for returning tools in poor condition, connecting plantation women directly to the discipline of slaves, and thus challenging the perception of refined southern belles who did little outside of entertaining guests. Without the assistance of outside scholars, the museum may have missed many opportunities to use available resources to their full potential. LI S TE N TO S TA K E H O L DE R S
John Baker Jr.’s research has informed thousands of whites and African Americans scattered across the country of their ancestral connections to Wessyngton Plantation. Some of these descendants possessed valuable photographs and artifacts and the museum reached out to them and identified them as major stakeholders. Their influence led to some very important design and interpretive decisions. But it should be noted that listening to stakeholders does not necessarily mean doing everything they say. A case in point is debate that occurred over the title of the exhibition. We wanted a concise title that clearly expressed that the exhibition would cover the lives of both slaves and slaveholders at Wessyngton and the complex relationships they forged. However, after learning about the title, white descendants did not like the idea of their ancestors being referred to as slaveholders. Likewise African American descendants objected to the term “slaves” preferring a more general reference to slavery. We took these concerns seriously and considered dozens of alternatives, but still could not identify a better title that more accurately described the exhibition content for a general audience.3 But the desire to tell the stories of both sides described led to a very important design element. The exhibition utilized a dual storytelling technique, often using opposite walls to interpret two perspectives. For example, we named the first section “Journeys.” One wall traced the immigration of the Washington family from England to the Virginia colony during the 1600s. It showed how descendants from this family owned slaves and eventually migrated to Tennessee. The opposite wall told the story of a very different journey. Here visitors learned about Africans’ forced immigration to the colonies. Coinciding with the Washington family’s move to Tennessee, this wall demonstrated slaves’ forced removal
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west to provide labor for plantations. This approach clearly illustrated how white and African American families experienced different realities in early America. The use of film vignettes of actors portraying historical characters became very important for discussing the meaning of family to slaves and slaveholders. In one film, an actor portrayed an enslaved man named Davy White. He attempted to run away from Wessyngton three times, once making it to the banks of the Ohio River before capture. After the third time, the Washington family sold him in New Orleans. Amazingly, White returned to Robertson County after the Civil War to rejoin his family and sharecrop, thus demonstrating the strong family bonds forged within an institution that so assaulted family connections. Another film featured a costumed actress telling the story of Jane Washington, wife of slaveholder George A. Washington. In it she talks about her refined education and love for her husband and children, but she also laments that she is often left alone to manage the plantation’s enslaved workforce. Geneology was another important element. My experience has often been that visitors have little interest in the genealogy of strangers, but in this case they were fascinated. Visitor evaluations frequently cited these film portrayals as well as a genealogy chart that listed thousands of descendants of two early Wessyngton slaves. One visitor commented, “Surprising to see the history of slave families so clearly outlined. Usually our [African American] history is lost due to the nature of the slavery system. I think seeing this exhibit makes me want to trace my own roots.” Focusing on family relationships within the slavery system, which grew out of stakeholder considerations, resonated with a broad audience. B E A FO R U M
The exhibition’s stakeholders also persuaded us to present a very objective and non-emotional interpretation of slavery. This statement sounds strange because how could any interpretation of slavery not contain emotion? Indeed, visitors frequently commented on the number of feelings that the exhibition evoked. Rather, this served as a guiding principle for us to keep our own emotions out of the design and text. We wanted to create an interpretation that did not make villains of slaveholders nor victims of slaves. Instead we wanted to be a forum for exploring this history while challenging visitors to think about the nineteenth-century American mind, so alien to us today, that could view slavery as a moral and practical institution. Public historian Abigail Gautreau summed up the results of this approach. “The exhibit does not fetishize the violence and brutality of slavery,” she wrote, “nor does it try to paint a picture of happy slaves under a ‘good’ master. It simply describes what was and leaves it to the visitor to make what he or she will of it.”4 Slavery was a messy business and no exhibition could completely demonstrate its varying levels of complexity. Thus we divided Slaves and Slaveholders of Wessyngton Plantation into seven large sections—Journeys, Wessyngton, Negotiations, Ties that Bind, Southern Culture Connections, Civil War, and Reconstruction. Subsections provided insights into vari-
GIVE SLAVE S A G E N C Y
Because slavery depersonalized people into commodities and left such one-sided records, the museum devoted much attention to ensuring that enslaved people possessed agency in the exhibition stories. A good example was how the exhibition presented differing reactions by various slaves to the Civil War. Some chose to fight for their freedom by
Tennessee State Museum
ous aspects of life on a plantation. Text was concise and stuck to facts. Distribution of material culture, graphics, fabrications, and film presentations created visual interest. Taken together, these elements offered multiple levels of engagement for visitors. Not every story had a clear ending (happy or sad) and sometimes a moral to the story was not evident. Edward T. Linenthal recently made a comment on teaching disturbing historical topics in the classroom that I think was appropriate for this exhibition. He said, “My hope is that students emerge from these classes willing to acknowledge that ‘understanding’ grows more difficult the more one knows, and that living with creative tension about so many of these issues is, perhaps, more fruitful than the urge to wrap it all up.” I had this same hope for visitors.5 For example, we had many internal discussions about whether the exhibition should address the issue of the rape of enslaved women by male slaveholders. This discussion came about because one of the Wessyngton slaveholders, George A. Washington, at the age of fifteen likely had an affair with an enslaved female named Fanny, also fifteen, leading to the birth of Granville Washington in 1831. Some on our staff believed this could not be viewed as anything but rape because enslaved women had little recourse to resist sexual advances by their owners without serious repercussions. Others thought that it was difficult to use this label because George and Fanny were teenagers, and we really do not know the details of the encounter. In the end we decided rather than have the museum take a stand, why not let others have this same debate? Interestingly, I was giving an exhibit tour to high school students and told the story of Granville, and it was their teacher, not I, who brought up the issue of rape with her students and used it to talk about power relationships. Visitor evaluations demonstrated that sticking to the facts, telling the stories, and providing minimal interpretation provoked many intuitive responses from visitors. It made me think I may not have given visitors the credit they deserved to make informed conclusions in previous exhibits. But despite these efforts, journalists still tried to provoke controversy. One reporter asked me in an interview how I would rate Wessyngton on the atrocity scale. First, I told him that I did not know an atrocity scale existed. And second, I was not sure if this should be the role of a museum. A visitor is welcome, and encouraged, to draw conclusions like these. But should museums make these kinds of judgments? I think the exhibition worked so well because we did not. Of 76 visitors interviewed, 64 percent stated that their perceptions about slavery were challenged by the exhibition. And visitors overwhelmingly recognized the brutality and injustice of the institution, despite the museum’s unwillingness to label Wessyngton as an atrocity.
School tour in the “Negotiations” section in the exhibition.
joining United States Colored Troops units. Others stayed at Wessyngton, but did not make life easy for their owners. Marion Simms Green, a house slave, took the opportunity to express feelings she had probably kept hidden for years and verbally fought with her owner. A field slave, Dick Terry, claimed he was “no longer under Washington control” and refused to leave or work at the plantation, influencing rebellion in other slaves despite the Washingtons’ best efforts to get him to leave the plantation. Then there was Granville Washington, the reported enslaved son of slaveholder George A. Washington, who stood by his master protecting the plantation from thieves. Unfortunately, at many museums and historic sites we only learn about the Granville character because it is for these “faithful” slaves that the most information has been preserved. We need to recogVisitors nize that for every Granville on a plantation, there learned could have been ten Dick Terrys that we just don’t the subtle know about. This acknowledgment provides a depth ways both of understanding that depicts slaves as individuals with individual goals, feelings, and strategies. sides Another way the exhibition addressed slave agency attempted was to envision the plantation as a negotiation of to shape power between slave and slaveholder. For this theme, their the dual-storytelling technique was very effective. identities Two stories coexisted in this section—one of slaveand obtain holder control and one of slave resistance. Visitors their learned the subtle ways both sides attempted to goals. shape their identities and obtain their goals. They expressed surprise in evaluations that Wessyngton slaves earned income through the task system and received medical treatment, but visitors also understood these practices as subtle acts of control by the slaveholder. Likewise, they recognized the courage of enslaved families who secretly practiced religion at Wessyngton and took food to supplement their diets while risking severe punishments. MAR K ETIN G SLAVERY AS A SH AR ED H ISTO RY
Shortly before the exhibition opened, I was asked to give a brief preview of it for a group of travel journalists. These journalists had spent days visiting the haunts of country music history in Nashville and learning about the fun side of Music City. So it is not surprising that their eyes glazed over when I started talking about the region’s legacy of enslaving and trafficking hundreds of thousands of African Americans. After my presentation, one journalist did approach me for HISTORY NEWS
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Slaves and Slaveholders of
Wessyngton
Tennessee State Museum
more information on the exhibition—he worked for an African American publication that he thought would be interested. Right away I knew we John Baker Jr. leading a tour of had a problem. Despite our best efforts in the the Wessyngton slave cemetery. public history field, a belief still persists by many in the media, and some in museums, that exhibitions covering slavery will attract a primarily African American audience. This idea is wrongheaded for many reasons. Foremost, as one of the exhibition’s African American scholars often reminded me, a distant ancestral connection to slavery does not mean one wants to learn about it. And as Lonnie G. Bunch III wrote, “Far too frequently, the interpretation of African American history is still viewed as exotic, ancillary, or a necessary palliative that shows a commitment to, or at least, the recognition of an underserved audience … this culture must be seen as the quintessential American story.”6 Following this encounter, I immediately drafted a list of talking points for the media. In all subsequent interviews, I used terms like “shared history” to describe the exhibition’s content. I always mentioned how slavery drove the economic engine of antebellum Tennessee and how it took the cooperation of non-slaveholding whites to keep slavery alive. I also would inform reporters how northern businesses profited from the labor of slaves, especially the tobacco brokers in New York City who sold the Washingtons’ tobacco. I wanted people to realize that no matter their ancestry, they should be interested in this history and its implications for today. There were a number of ways we emphasized these points in the exhibition, but I was most impressed with how this played out in the press. The Nashville Scene, Nashville’s edgy entertainment weekly, ran a cover story on the exhibition, a first for a history exhibit at the Tennessee State Museum. The journalist paired the feature with an article on slaves owned by the city of Nashville for labor on civil projects entitled “When We Were Slaveowners.” I could not have asked for a better media launch for the exhibition. The companion article demonstrated how the institution of slavery touched everyone who lived in that the era. Whether or not one’s ancestors were slaves or owned slaves was not the issue. This was America’s story and relevant to all.7
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C O NC LUS I O N
As I reflected on Slaves and Slaveholders of Wessyngton Plantation, I identified a number of reasons this exhibition about one of the worst chapters in American history worked so well. Selecting the right content with the advice of a scholarly committee was the first step in creating an excellent exhibition plan. We listened to stakeholders and told stories in a balanced fashion with equal treatment of the lives on slaves and slaveholders to highlight their connectivity. The museum did not design the exhibition to make anyone
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feel guilty or sad, but it did provide a forum for visitors to explore these feelings. The exhibition portrayed slaves as active players in their own lives. Under very challenging circumstances, they pushed the boundaries of enslavement and planned for freedom. And finally, the exhibition worked so well because we marketed the story of Wessyngton as something that all need to experience, regardless of race or ethnicity. The history of slavery in America is not an isolated condition that only affected one segment of the population. It deeply affected everyone alive at that time, and despite those who try to deny it, led directly to our Civil War. I think the greatest confirmation of the exhibition’s effectiveness lay in the many examples of community interaction that it influenced. White and African American Wessyngton descendants hosted reunions in Nashville during the run. Many times I went out on the gallery floor to see John Baker with a large group of people taking a tour. I remember how an eighty-year-old woman, who was born in one of the former slave cabins at Wessyngton and later worked as a sharecropper, took a bus from Chicago to be at one of Mr. Baker’s programs. I wish I could have recorded the amazement on other attendees’ faces when she stood up and talked about what it was like to grow up in one of those cabins. There was also the public program when the museum screened the Wessyngton Nashville Public Television film shortly after the tragic shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and how the discussion unexpectedly turned to racial profiling. And I will never forget the bus tour the museum sponsored to take people to the Wessyngton property, which is today privately owned. After estimating only a few people would want to take the long muddy trek to the slave cemetery, it turned out everyone, despite physical condition and our worst fears about lawsuits, took that journey with John Baker. It is my hope that the exhibition allowed many visitors to take a journey to understand and reflect on the nation’s shared history of slavery, the resiliency of families, and its implications for today. t Since 2010, Rob DeHart has worked as a history curator at the Tennessee State Museum. With focuses on cultural history and science and technology, he has won regional and national awards for his programs and exhibitions. Rob is a graduate of the public history M.A. program at Middle Tennessee State University and can be reached at Robert.DeHart@tn.gov. 1 Kristin L. Gallas and James DeWolf Perry, eds., Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), xiv. 2 John F. Baker Jr., The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation: Stories of My Family’s Journey to Freedom (New York: Atria, 2009). There is also an exhibition catalog available through the Tennessee State Museum. 3 In the exhibition text we primarily used the term “enslaved” when referring to families and individuals, rather than “slave.” The museum believed that the term “slaves” worked better in the exhibition title because it was more general and succinct. 4 Abigail R. Gautreau, “It’s Complicated,” Abigail R. Gautreau Public History Blog, https://thepastpresently.wordpress.com/, 28 April 2014. 5 Edward T. Linenthal et al., “Trauma and Trigger Warnings in the History Classroom: A Roundtable Discussion,” The American Historian No. 4 (2015): 32. 6 Lonnie G. Bunch III, foreword to Interpreting African American History and Culture at Museums and Historic Sites, ed. Max van Balgooy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), x. 7 Betsy Phillips, Kay West, and Abby White, “Old Times Here are Not Forgotten: A Century and a Half after the Civil War, Nashville Still Grapples with Slavery’s Bitter Legacy,” Nashville Scene, 13-19 February 2014.
For the
LOVE of History By Katheryn P. Viens
The Benefits of CollectionsBased Research Visitors in the Old Colony History Museum’s military history room look closely at a display detailing King Philip’s War, which began in southeastern Massachusetts in 1675. This conflict marked the last major attempt of local Native Americans to drive colonial settlers out of the region.
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he copy-shop brochures on my desk told me that I could invite Eleanor Roosevelt, photogenic lighthouses, and a Victorian afternoon tea to my museum. They attracted my attention more than you might expect. In desperation to develop programs on a shoestring as director of a small historical society, I would often look to presenters who rode the local circuit offering lectures on topics that would broadly appeal to our audience, one largely made up of retirees. I could sometimes relate these programs to our exhibits, but in other instances there were no discernible connections. For example, since my museum was located inland, it was a little hard to make the case that the program on lighthouses was relevant to our organizational mission. This ready means of programming is still far too common among local historical societies and museums. And it is a problem because it is detached from museum collections and leads directly to the crisis that has been the subject of so much recent debate in the pages of History News and among participants at professional meetings.1 HISTORY NEWS
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A “canned” program performs a social function.
Above: Students touring the Old
Colony History Museum gather around a Native American display that features artifacts of the local Wampanoag tribe. Right: Document with the marks of local Wampanoag leaders.
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Old Colony History Museum
It brings together members and visitors for an enjoyable experience, adds to attendance figures, and may promote repeat visitation. It is often educational, and at its best truly thought provoking. But its benefits are often illusory. Perhaps the organization has advanced its mission, maybe based on where the event occurred. However, another museum, public library, or social club will offer the same program in a few weeks. Thus, the program has done little to distinguish the organization that hosted it in the minds of attendees, much less to garner support for the museum and its collections. As a building block for developing a sustainable historical organization, it is as soft as sand. This is because programming that originates outside of an organization too often fails to connect to the museum’s collections. There is simply no chance to tie an exhibition of the museum’s holdings to an unrelated peripatetic program. This represents a missed opportunity for both the museum’s staff and its audiences to learn the significance of the objects, documents, photographs, and architecture central to the organization and for which it has a legal responsibility. Before every “Wow!” there’s a “Why?” Without the chance to learn what makes a collection special and exciting—without connecting to collections in this fundamental way—historical societies and museums find it hard to instill an appreciation for their holdings and gain support for their conservation and care. Our collections are hardly “lazy”; rather, we fail to make opportunities for their use and preservation.2 How did we arrive at this impasse? The answer lies in a fundamental disconnect between sources of historical knowledge, which can help us make the case for the importance of our organizations and collections, and museum staffing today. These sources of knowledge generally flow from the academy and a body of historians who have been trained professionally and are actively engaged in research. Their scholarship places local history into a national or even global context, demonstrates cause and effect, and communicates change over time. Moreover, it captures the past with all of its diversity, drama, and contradictions; promotes empathy and asks bold questions; and teaches us how to
cope with a continually evolving historical narrative. The profession is committed to “historical thinking as central to engaged citizenship,” a goal that is precisely in line with the mission of historical organizations.3 This is exactly the body of knowledge that historical societies and museums need in order to understand the objects in their care and to develop engaging, relevant exhibitions and public programs. In the process, an organization gains the opportunity to demonstrate the enduring value of the institution and its collections for the community. This scholarship establishes a collection’s value better than an antique dealer’s evaluation, which can steer museums back to the days when collections were valued and interpreted primarily according to the standards of connoisseurship or antiquarianism. It far surpasses auction sales figures, which seldom correlate to an object’s educational value and promote a tendency to consider collections in monetary terms. And yet, how often do we continue to copy references to these dealer sources for our files in a shorthand effort to compensate for meaningful research in our collections? Over time, this disconnect between scholarship and museums has become embedded in the job titles and staffing structures of historical organizations. Nonprofits define development as donor cultivation. We even create programs and events for select giving circles to encourage financial contributions. But if we consider for-profit enterprises, development has another meaning altogether. It refers to the process of bringing to fruition a product or deliverable. For a history organization, this is an exhibition or program. And yet, for-profit organizations seem to know something historical societies and museums don’t: that they must conduct research that promises to improve their product, test new ideas, and learn how to use that information to their profit. They must embrace experimentation, failure, and success. Research and Development, R&D, it has a nice ring, doesn’t it? At the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS), I work in the Research Department. In some ways, this department was a natural outgrowth of the society’s
Massachusetts Historical Society
Left: Massachusetts Historical Society Research
Fellow Justin Clark engages in a discussion of his project at a brown-bag lunchtime program. Right: Ellis Hall, the Massachusetts Historical Society reading room, provides a comfortable setting for using the collections.
extensive manuscript collection. Founded in 1791, the organization holds the papers of John Adams, the personal papers of Thomas Jefferson (the second largest collection of Jefferson’s papers after the Library of Congress), a collection on the African American 54th Massachusetts regiment (featured in the movie Glory), and millions of other documents and artifacts essential to writing American history for more than two centuries. Scholars from George Bancroft and Francis Parkman to Jill Lepore and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich have used the collection. Our sources are cited in dozens of books, articles, and film documentaries annually. They have contributed to numerous works honored by the Pulitzer Prize committee, including two recent volumes of the Oxford History of the United States: Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood and What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, by Daniel Walker Howe. The function of the Research Department is to foster this scholarship by offering grants that support research trips to the society; presenting seminars, brown-bag lunches, and conferences where historians network and gain feedback on their current projects; editing scholarly essays for publication; and offering an annual prize for the best book on the history of Massachusetts. To evaluate the hundreds of grant and program proposals we receive from scholars annually, the society draws on its own expertise. Our Director of Research, Conrad E. Wright, holds a Ph.D. in history, and I am a doctoral student in American and New England studies. Still, with a staff of only 1.8 FTE, we must happily invite our colleagues among university faculty to serve on committees that assist us in this work. This investment in historical scholarship that Research Department programs represent pays enormous dividends. Every book and article that cites a Massachusetts Historical Society collection is a resource that staff refer to in writing exhibit labels, website text, conservation reports, and grant proposals. This reinforces the importance of our mission and our collections and even provides direction for the future. For example, with firsthand knowledge that historians were turning toward environmental topics, the society developed a collection on twentieth-century environmental conservation in Massachusetts.4 More satisfying public programs with stronger ties to our collections are all part of the bargain. Academic historians are a generous people and often welcome the opportunity to share what they have learned with the public. Civil War historian John Stauffer has presented several popular programs in which he has emphasized the importance of the society’s work. Stauffer recounts the engaging story of why
the pen Abraham Lincoln used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation is in the historical society’s collection. At the request of the abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner, the president gave the pen to member George Livermore out of gratitude, because he had been so influenced by Livermore’s historical writing on African Americans. Stauffer’s own project, a cultural biography of Sumner, has been facilitated by the MHS-National Endowment for the Humanities Long-term Fellowship he received in 2014. Former MHS short-term research fellow Natalie Dysktra, the author of a book on the photographer Clover Adams, helped the society develop an exhibition, drawn from our own collection, on Clover’s life and work. And Mary Fuhrer, who received a short-term fellowship as well as a New England Regional Fellowship Consortium award, was the project scholar and a presenter for Old Towns/New Country, an NEH-funded educational outreach program that used primary sources from our collections to teach local historians how to use their own collections to interpret the history of the American Revolution in communities throughout Massachusetts.5 All of this programming is of the highest caliber. It is exciting and thought-provoking because it is based on the latest historical knowledge and grounded in meticulous academic scholarship. This is programming that advances our mission to promote the history of Massachusetts and the nation and to preserve and increase our unique and valuable collections. And it would be impossible to develop without an institutional commitment to support research activities. Academic historians ride their own circuit, however, and it often leads them through the libraries and archives of a tier of nationally known historical societies and museums. You may be thinking, “These resources are easy to come by if you’re at the Massachusetts Historical Society!” Scholars may indeed find it impossible to write a book on the beginnings of the American Revolution, for example, without using the institution’s collections. And yet, as historians broaden their areas of inquiry, the materials they need in order to complete their research are frequently in the hands of smaller institutions. After she had exhausted the Native American material collections of the historical society, Christine DeLucia, a professor at Mount Holyoke College, contacted the Old Colony History Museum in Taunton, Massachusetts, where I had previously served as the director. Named for the Plymouth Colony home of the Taunton settlers, the museum was established as the Old Colony Historical Society in 1853, when the town grew into a successful manufacturing center. It occupies a two-story brick structure, the former Bristol Academy building designed by Richard Upjohn. Capitalizing on local pride and funding sources, in 2007 it sponsored the publication of a 625-page community history HISTORY NEWS
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Perhaps it is time to think about the materials we hold in a by William Hanna, can also expand on its different way, by privileging a definition of historical collections a historian on the website the narrative as valuable evidence that will never result in a definitive museum’s board. The description of its colinterpretation but will continue to raise engaging questions. monograph serves as lection. Some instia valuable reference tutions with a long on the social, politihistory have found cal, and economic life of that antiquarian volumes the Taunton region. of their published collecWith such relatively early beginnings, the Old Colony tions have appeared online in digital formats and pointed Historical Society developed an endowment that now scholars in their direction. Networking with organizations supports a small paid staff, as well as a collection of books, whose collections are of similar interest to researchers can manuscripts, and artifacts that has attracted the attention of also be invaluable for raising awareness. nationally known scholars including Ron and Mary Zboray, This lack of visibility is a greater impediment to scholarly historians of books and reading in the early republic, and research than the absence of collections cataloging. Smaller Brock Jobe, a decorative arts scholar from the Winterthur institutions may be hesitant to promote their holdings for a Museum. At the museum, DeLucia found artifacts importvariety of reasons: fear of theft; a concern that demands for ant to her research on seventeenth-century Wampanoag research space and collections access will be more than they peoples and King Philip’s War. These professional conneccan accommodate; embarrassment about the condition of tions raised the visibility of the museum, through references some collections (I’ve been there!); and uncertainty about in books and articles, public programs, and even the loan how to define their rights of ownership, including the ability of some objects to a Winterthur exhibition on southeastern to earn income from a wide range of holdings that may or Massachusetts furniture. More importantly, staff members may not exist in the public domain.6 now have more knowledge about their collections and the None of these issues are easy to surmount, but what, really, history of their region. is the alternative? Most museum staff members, even those For many historical organizations and scholars alike, who have training in historical methodologies, do not have the most significant barrier to research in local collections the time to devote to original research or even to read the is the lack of information about what smaller institutions literature that represents the most current historical interprehold. This is a circular issue. Scholars can’t identify relevant tations that are relevant to a collection. Inviting scholarship collections because they haven’t been cataloged, and useful is the only way an organization can achieve the goals of precatalog records can’t be created because the collections havserving its collection, using its materials to offer exhibits and en’t received scholarly attention—or so the story goes. In programs relevant to both the institution and its audience, many organizations, the backlog of uncataloged documents and increasing public support for its unique mission. To do and artifacts with unknown function or significance leads nothing is to do a disservice to the institution, to the field of to paralysis. Objects themselves become too daunting to history, and, most importantly, to the community as a whole. approach, subject to deterioration as they sit on shelves with In many instances, the arrival of professional historians does their interpretive potential hidden. not create any additional work for an organization beyond Perhaps it is time to think about the materials we hold in a the ordinary effort involved in making collections accessible different way, by privileging a definition of historical collecto researchers. In fact, their extensive experience working in tions as valuable evidence that will never result in a definitive academic libraries, special collections, and museums often interpretation but will continue to raise engaging questions. represents a kind of basic course in security and collections Historians stand on the shoulders of generations of scholars care. Upon their arrival they are prepared to observe the best who came before them. In the hands of capable researchers, practices of the field. Staff members can usually count on our collections will continue to yield new insights. In this them to leave water bottles, backpacks, and ballpoint pens at context, every curator’s contribution is a welcome addithe door and to handle documents and artifacts with care. In tion to the field, and no individual need feel the burden of their scholarly works, professional historians routinely provide achieving a catalog record that is complete, or free of error. full credit for the sources they use, and they often acknowlIt is ironic that in an era when collections management edge the staff assistance they receive. In addition, they are software, digital photography, computer literacy, and online often pleased to furnish the organization with a copy of any resources for conducting research have made collections publications that result from their research. cataloging easier than ever, other demands on staff time disHistorical societies and museums can also promote scholcourage this ongoing project. arship by defining their own research projects and raising the When catalogs and other finding aids do exist, they are funds necessary to complete them. Many granting agencies often beyond the reach of scholars. Professional historians ranging from the NEH to local cultural councils and founhave neither the time nor the money to make an out-of-thedations have shown that they prefer to support projects that way research trip without a good indication that a visit will engage professional historians. In Massachusetts, the state be worthwhile, and they turn to the Internet to make this humanities council, MassHumanities, has awarded more determination. To meet them more than halfway, an instithan three dozen Scholar-in-Residence grants since 2004. Its tution can make its finding aids available online. These do dual goal is to connect historical organizations with expernot need to provide item-level cataloging. An organization tise to which they would not normally have access, and to
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historic demonstrations including spinning, weaving, and gardening. Right: Young farmers help with a harvest. all the way back into collections storage areas. They promote an appreciation of history and pride in those organizations that preserve it. Research activities lead to the development of exhibitions and programs that historical societies and museums can “take to the bank” in the form of grants, donations, and earned income. These resulting programs carry weight with educators due to their historical integrity. They also demonstrate the capacity of the organization for legislators on advocacy day. Knowledge is power. Whether a history organization has an annual budget of $2 million or subsists on only $2,000 a year, knowing the significance of the collections it holds, and more importantly, the regional history it exists to preserve, promote, and share is the key to meaningful, innovative, and effective programs, exhibitions, fundraising, and public advocacy. Historical research is the foundational activity for demonstrating the value of historical organizations to society and obtaining the resources we need in order to survive and thrive. Collections-based Research and Development should become the buzzwords of our future. t Gore Place
Gore Place
Left: The annual sheep shearing festival at Gore Place features
encourage scholars to use the collections of smaller institutions. Through this funding, professional historians receive support for their research; historical societies and museums receive information about their communities and collections that will be of enduring value; and the public enjoys fresh, engaging, relevant programs built on the foundation of solid, nuanced historical scholarship. In recent years these awards, currently $3,000, have supported research in materials as diverse as a small-town early-twentieth-century medical collection (Hatfield Historical Society), the cultural landscape of Herman Melville’s farm Arrowhead (Berkshire Museum), and a collection regarding New Organization Liberty and Free Soil abolitionists (Historic Northampton). In 2010, Gore Place Museum in Waltham received a Scholar-in-Residence grant, and I had the privilege of serving as the project researcher. The museum was offering tours of the Federal period mansion built by Christopher and Rebecca Gore but wanted to expand its interpretation of the forty-eight-acre estate, where Christopher had experimented with scientific agriculture. A volunteer had transcribed the 1820-1826 farm journals in the Gore Place collection, but the staff needed more information about early-nineteenth-century farming and the communication networks that fostered new agricultural methods. The research I conducted in the collections of the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture at the Massachusetts Historical Society and in the archives of Historic New England contributed to a report on Federal-era farming at Gore Place that included a glossary of terms, a bibliography of sources, and suggestions for future research. The guidelines of a Scholar-in-Residence grant stipulate that the output will include a public program in addition to any planned academic article or monograph, but as I’ve noted, that is the end goal of every historical organization. I presented my findings for an audience at Gore Place and to academic historians and museum professionals at the 2013 Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife. Gore Place staff refer to the report in managing the museum’s historic landscape and used it to develop a self-guided tour of the farm and grounds that encourages exploration. For this purpose, families can rent activity backpacks that contain binoculars, a magnifying glass, and directions for seasonal activities appropriate for young children. These are the kinds of activities that genuinely advance an organization’s mission. Built on substance, they reach much deeper than the snazzy graphics on a postcard or text panel,
Katheryn P. Viens is Research Coordinator and Book Review Editor of the Massachusetts Historical Society and a doctoral student in the American and New England Studies Program at Boston University. She is a former Executive Director of the New England Museum Association. She can be reached at kviens@masshist.org. 1 Rick Beard wrote the most recent piece addressing the issue. See Rick Beard, “Collections: Our Curse and Our Blessing,” History News 70, no. 3 (Summer 2015): 11-16. 2 See Elee Wood, “The Active Collection Project,” History News 70, no. 3 (Summer 2015): 14-15, which highlights the concept of “lazy artifacts” and invites readers to consider possible metrics for determining an object’s usefulness. I argue here that in history museums, metrics based on counting instances of use will be inherently flawed until those who are responsible for a collection have achieved the ability to articulate its historical significance. (Such metrics may be flawed for other reasons, relating to object conservation, for example, but that is beyond the scope of this article.) 3 For more on the Core Competencies to which the profession is committed, see the American Historical Association “Tuning Project” at www.historians.org/ teaching-and-learning/current-projects/tuning/history-discipline-core. 4 Following a Research Department conference on the environmental history of Boston, we edited an essay collection published by the University of Pittsburgh Press and remains a key resource for students. 5 The New England Regional Fellowship Consortium is a collaboration of twenty-one organizations including university research libraries and AASLH members. The Connecticut Historical Society, Historic Deerfield, the Maine Historical Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Mystic Seaport, the New Hampshire Historical Society, the Rhode Island Historical Society, and the Vermont Historical Society were among the institutions who collectively sponsored eighteen $5,000 fellowships in 2015 (www.nerfc.org). 6 The latter may be easiest to address, since information about copyright, use policies, and the theory behind them is readily available online and from professional associations.
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We Are All in This
Together:
By Karen Whitehair
Leadership. This word conjures up a variety of images in people’s minds. For many, the first response is to envision a general or a politician. For others, they see their high school class president who got straight A’s, played on the school’s football or basketball team or both, and charmed every adult he encountered. Then there are the business executives who lead companies that create things that change how we work, live, and even play. Yet, none of these images provides us with a concrete definition of how people become leaders or what is involved in effective leadership. The Crisis in Leadership
The question of what is leadership is even more acute when we take a look at the museum field, because numerous indicators point to a crisis in leadership. One of the easiest ways to test this is to look at museum job announcements. Many are calls for a director. Reading these announcements is astonishing. Many boards of directors want to hire a demigod who can slay the financial Goliath with one hand and soothe the demanding, fickle public with innovative, experiential learning programs with the other. All the while, she should build with her mighty Shield of Integrity a solid business and museum professional infrastructure while diplomatically silencing naysayers and coaxing do-nothing boards (and staff) into action.
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A director should do all this for a salary lower than most entry-level, fresh-out-of college, MBA-based positions at a Fortune 500 company. Who in their right mind would want a job like that? To add to this hiring crisis at the top, the field still faces sustainability challenges in funding, visitation, and the expense of collections care. This is especially true for the largest segment of the museum community—history-based museums. This fact has precipitated an ugly fight between those who insist on moving into the modern era by meeting the needs of the public populated with self-actuated learners and traditionalists who want to keep to the hands-off standard, with the passive, calm programs of tweed-jacketed curators. On top of that is the debate about the role collections play in all of this, with aggressive attacks against their very necessity, even though objects were considered the heart of any museum for the past two centuries. There are even arguments over the issue of whether museums are even necessary now that we can have digitized experiences. Are you tired? I know I am! What can be done about this? Some of the key thinkers within the field and outside it have looked at the problem and their answer is effective, innovative, courageous leadership not only at the top, but at all levels and at all sectors of the field. And they do not mean leadership in the sense of a military general or someone who would win popularity contests, but instead people who possess key characteristics that provide the necessary ingredients for strong, effective, innovative leadership. Those people who can transform institutions and lead them into what is now the new paradigm. Most importantly, they believe this type of leadership can be taught.
What Are These Leadership Characteristics?
So I began a quest to discover what these leadership characteristics might be and how these attributes can make a stronger, more effective institution. Reading books and articles and taking classes on the subject provided a solid foundation, but asking questions directly to those with whom I have intersected professionally and others I’ve greatly admired for efforts to improve the museum field in various ways helped to clarify things even more.
Twenty-First-Century Defining Leadership
The first order of business is to gain a clear understanding of what the word “leadership” means. It can be difficult to do this because we all have different ideas about what a leader is, based upon our personal life experiences. Yet during my conversations with museum professionals who have demonstrated effective leadership skills, I discovered two key abilities that seemed to define leadership. The first is the ability to understand and manage all of the day-to-day tasks necessary to run an effective institution, all the while planning for the future. In other words, to have a vision. As Kristen Laise, Executive Director at Belle Grove Plantation wrote, leaders have to have “micro and macro thinking.” Catharine Hawks, Professor of Preventative Conservation at George Washington University, explained this idea this way: “Having a vision of where a project, program, or institution should be going, and strategies for making that vision a reality.”1 The second is the ability to inspire others, to get everyone on the same page working toward a common goal. “In some ways a museum director is like the orchestra conductor,” said Doug Alves, Director of the Calvert Marine Museum. “Taking diverse individuals/instruments and getting them to all play off the same score and make beautiful music together, many times without the staff realizing it.” In other words, an effective leader has the ability to inspire and to build an effective team. Leadership means to have a vision and the ability to convince others to work hard to make that vision a reality.
So How Does One Become a Leader?
Let’s get personal here. It is easy to look at effective leaders and think they surely had to have been born that way; that it comes naturally. What surprised me most about the responses of skilled leaders is the reality that leadership is a learned skill. “I can’t believe now how unprepared I was for an administrative position, little training in budgeting… and no training in dealing with staff and boards, personnel issues and staff management. I learned a lot by the seat of my pants,” stated Alves. To conquer these challenges, he actively sought out training, such as the Seminar for Historical Administration, to help him gain the skills necessary to be effective.2
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Museum Leadership
Kristen Laise, formerly of Heritage Preservation, currently the Executive Director of Belle Grove Plantation in Middletown, Virginia. She sounded the clarion call about our national cultural heritage being at risk via the initial Heritage Health Index study and wrote the final report A Public Trust at Risk: The Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America’s Collections, published in 2005. This report and the subsequent IMLS-funded Connecting to Collections initiative helped to change the discussion about how to save our national cultural heritage and offered important ways to promote awareness about the significance of the objects we hold in trust not only within our own museums, but also in our communities and beyond.
Catharine Hawks, museum conservator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and an adjunct professor of conservation at the George Washington University Art History, Anthropology, and Museum Studies programs. In her classes, she often discusses ways to balance conservation standards with real-life applications. One of her key aphorisms is: “There are no silver bullets in the museum field, only intelligent compromises.” If I am any good at what I do, I credit Catherine for teaching it to me.
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Being a leader takes courage. Others never sought a leadership role, but then found themselves propelled into situations that forced them to rise to the challenge. “Leadership came to me, much to my surprise,” wrote Mary Alexander, formerly of the Maryland Historical Trust and daughter of Edward P. Alexander, the author of the seminal work Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums, which she revised and updated in 2008. “I think it landed on me because I am unafraid to speak up in group settings and my colleagues seemed to value both my willingness to talk as well as the ideas I expressed. I also think that when I entered the museum field in the 1970s women’s voices were being raised and listened to and I benefited from that trend.” And some found out early and embraced the role. “I guess you can say leadership found me, but I quickly knew it was the only place for me. I really chafe under layers of management,” wrote Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko, President/CEO of the Abbe Museum. From almost the very beginning of her career she moved rapidly up the chain of command because of what she describes as her “determination to get close to the front seat so I could see leadership in action. I had to get up close to the action to be fulfilled.”
Characteristics of Effective Leadership
So, there is no one path to becoming a leader, and leaders can be found in a variety of roles and situations. I think the takeaway message here is that we all have the ability to be leaders. The real question now is, what does it take to become an effective one?
Willingness to Learn No one is exactly born a leader. Yes, some people have more leadership skills naturally than others, but anyone can develop key characteristics that can set the foundation for becoming an effective leader. Throughout their careers, everyone I spoke with has found themselves constantly learning from mistakes, reevaluating situations, and actively adjusting to change. In her comments, Alexander emphasized the importance of mentors. “Over the years I’ve asked a few senior professionals for advice and guidance and never have been rebuffed. They have always been willing to talk and advise.” She also discussed the importance of self-evaluation, or what Catlin-Legutko called the process of becoming self-aware. It is important, Alexander noted, “To review your own talents… and select a few ‘weaknesses’ you’d like to overcome and find a teacher or mentor to help.” Alves took advantage of any opportunity to learn new skills or perfect the skills he already had. Catlin-Legutko said, “There’s always more personal development that needs to be done.” She has worked hard to educate herself about how to be a better leader. One thing is for certain, leaders are hungry learners.
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Effective People Skills (Including Effective Communication and Team Building) Learning also includes developing solid people skills. Everyone I spoke with emphasized how important it is to reach out and listen not only to staff, but also to board members and even out into the wider community and to connect effectively with all of these groups. “You have to put yourself out there,” wrote Catlin-Legutko. Alves refers to the benefits of building positive relationships and actively supporting the staff so they can do their jobs effectively. “Feed the staff or they will eat the visitors,” he said. Volunteers are also critical. “Be nice to volunteers…they bring the museum into the community.” Jeanne Benas, Registrar and Manager of Registration Services at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, wrote that an effective leader, “Must be a good listener, must respect staff before they can respect you, must be encouraging and supportive.” Basically, an effective museum leader is about people building positive relationships. You build these positive relationships by effective communication. Catlin-Legutko stated that enthusiasm is great, but in order to convey your vision you also “have to be an excellent communicator” both orally and in writing, and you have to be willing to alter what you are saying if the message is not getting through. “Be self-aware,” she noted. To do this, learn to read other people’s nonverbal cues so you can interpret their perception of you and thus adjust your message as needed. This way you can determine if your staff and board truly understand the vision and how to reach it. “I have to be hyperaware of each word I use and how I’m playing in a room,” she admits. “I can be very aggressive, and if you let me, I’ll run you right over. That doesn’t get me or the organization anywhere. The worst kind of leader is one who is off and running in the lead and looks back and finds no one is following.” A leader has to be an effective communicator or the team will not follow and the vision will never see the light of day. Once the inspiration has taken hold and the staff is ready to get to work, the leader now has to step back and let the work happen. “Always remember that your role is to support others in their work,” wrote Hawks. For Alves, it is important to remember the maxim, “Don’t take credit; it is always a team effort. No micromanaging, it just pisses off staff and wears you down.” In other words, it is no longer about you. It is about people. A leader needs to trust staff to do its jobs. CatlinLegutko points out that she actively empowers her small staff because she just does not have the time to micromanage. “I’m most interested in being a leader of leaders. If I don’t develop leadership skills in others, then I end up only being a manager and no one is truly leading.” The leader provides the inspiration and the tools to make the vision live. But in the end, a leader does not make the vision happen. People who surround the leader do.
Strategic Thinking and Courage An effective leader must constantly manage current requirements while evaluating and projecting into the future in order to anticipate the tools necessary to reach a goal. In sum, a good leader is a strategic thinker. For Laise, it is critical for any leader to have the ability to plan strategically, to “balance assets—whether financial or human—with current or potential activities.” One of the hard lessons she learned during her career is the importance of having accurate and complete information in order to make intelligent decisions. Some information is tangible (balance sheets and reports) and some not-so-much, such as “the way a potential donor feels about the organization” or member satisfaction. Not all of this information may carry the same weight, but she states clearly that leaders “must be actively gathering and considering information to manage the short-term and plan for the long-term future of the organization.” Effective leaders continually evaluate all the information they receive, distill it, and translate that data into strategic action. Being a leader also takes courage—the courage to risk and the courage to fail. Catlin-Legutko has learned to become “comfortable with risk and failure…. Every time something went poorly or well, there’s a lesson in there and must be studied. I’m a willing student.” Positive change cannot come unless one is willing to risk and possibly fail. One of the most critical concepts anyone should clearly understand is that one always learns more from failure than from success. One also has to face some hard realities if he is going to lead. Alves describes three key lessons he has learned throughout his career. First, “Don’t take [criticism] personally, you can’t make everyone happy.” Second, one should trust his instincts. “For example, just because someone you are thinking about hiring looks great on paper, if the chemistry is not right, do not hire them.” Last, he states, “Museums are innately contradictory and competing interests abound. Remember it is the director who has to make it all work. Being a leader means having the courage to persevere.”
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You have to be self-aware and put yourself out there.
Douglas Alves, Director, Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland. As he tells it, he has been working in museums since he was seventeen years old. He is a graduate of the Seminar for Historical Administration and has served on numerous committees and boards within the museum community including the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums and the Museum Director’s Roundtable via the consulting firm QM2 with Mary Case. He is one person who radiates service as the very core of his being to the point it is infectious. In fact, he quotes W. H. Auden in his email signature. “We are here on earth to do good unto others. What the others are here for, I have no idea.” He also has a great sense of humor that helps everyone keep the right perspective on things.
Mary Alexander, Former Maryland Historical Trust—History Museum Program and Museum Advancement Administrator. Mary is the daughter of Edward P. Alexander, the author of the seminal work Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums, which she revised and updated in 2008. She works tirelessly to promote not only Maryland history museums, but also small museums throughout the country. She eagerly lends an ear to any museum staffer who needs a friendly voice to offer sound advice. She always insists that a solution has to be there, you just have to have the right resources. She is a small museum professional’s best friend.
Other Critical Leadership Skills In my conversations with history museum leaders we also discussed some other necessary skills that can make or break one’s ability to be an effective leader, including: • Good organizational and time management skills • The ability to set priorities, supervise and delegate, understand financial information, work within governing structures, and be respectful and courteous • Being a solution-oriented/problem solver, a good listener, technologically savvy, patient, decisive, and flexible • Having a sense of humor
How Does This Relate to History Museums and Institutions?
Today, many history museums face daunting challenges. The rapidity of modern social and cultural change has caused many of us to feel we are being left behind. But, all is not lost if we are willing to look at the situation honestly and develop strategies for positive change. Laise discussed how the race for money drives museums these days. Yet, rather than complain about this, she has chosen to recognize and even embrace the reality to the point that sometimes she “feels much more like a small business owner than a museum HISTORY NEWS
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Effective leadership matters. director.” She also explains that utilizing technology effectively and knowing your audience are critical to remaining relevant. In other words, whether we like it or not, museums are businesses and what makes a business effective will help a museum be effective, too. We can no longer exist in blissful ignorance of this difficult truth. Alexander also highlights some cold, hard realities. We must recognize, she says, “Historic house museums have lost their allure (for many reasons) and that simply opening the doors on a regular basis is not enough to be successful. Leaders need to have a “willingness to critically analyze current realities and offer alternatives to those practices and as important, the patience to spend time converting others to new approaches.” In addition, “institutions that thrive consider collaborations with a critical eye—what’s in it for both the museum and the potential partners.” Building on that point, Hawks said that building broad, positive relationships is a way to stem the tide. “If institutions are to survive, they have to work in concert with [a variety of stakeholders]. We will never be on firm ground if we are unable to unite with all of those whose work is essential to our missions.” Alves reiterates an important point for history museums. “The challenge is to make history meaningful and relevant to today’s world.” Catlin-Legutko offered perhaps the most passionate response of all. The key, she said, is dynamic leadership. “We need to be activists. We need to start evangelizing and energizing our base and creating converts. The issue, and honestly the history crisis, needs this level of energy expended to turn the tide.” She also offers an important reality check. “All of us know that the content we deliver, whether at a historic site or art museum, has to be relevant to the audiences we’re working with. In the twenty-first century, if you haven’t figured this out, you might as well put your toys away and go home.”
So Can Effective Leadership Make a Difference?
Effective leadership matters. For Catlin-Legutko, “It matters because no ship, no community, no mission, no group can really accomplish its goals and reach its intended direction without someone who can see the end goal, carry and communicate the vision, and who can enable others to act.” In order to do this effectively, the person in the leadership role must be constantly learning, constantly pulling ideas from the greater community, and applying them to their institutions. “A broad understanding of how the world is working will help you become an anticipatory leader.” Alves stated that the first job of a director is to survive. “If you are not there, you can’t make a difference.” The next job is to leave behind “a better place when you leave than when you came. [The
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institution] must be able to stand on its own and not fall apart.” Laise points out that the director is often the image of the museum and that image can be the difference between surviving and not. “Demonstrating good leadership builds a good image for the organization, and funders give to strength. Good [leadership] skills also address issues before they become larger problems that consume time and money or could damage the institution’s image. Finally, good leadership helps an organization become more proactive than reactive as they move into the future.” Alexander offers several critical issues that historic sites in general must consider. “Museums, especially historic houses, need to assess the cultural landscape and make adjustments to new neighbors and demographics, new interpretation options, and financial realities. This is especially challenging as history museums are by their very nature conservative institutions that perhaps spend too much time looking back to understanding history, while ignoring the environment changing around them.” She brings up one more cautionary idea. “Staff costs consume most of museums’ budgets, so if the staff is not working at maximum capacity, which means effective leadership, one might question the value of the institution as an investment.” Innovative, courageous, anticipatory leadership matters, as leadership isn’t only found in the director chair.
Where Do We Go from Here?
How do these comments match up with the conclusions drawn by experts who study the nature of leadership? I believe quite well. In 2008, the conclusions of the Global Leadership Fellows Program sponsored by the World Economic Forum describes leaders as “coaches, learners, teachers, and mentors who demonstrate the discipline it takes to make changes to other people’s lives and to our world.” In one of the most definitive works written about leadership theory, The Leadership Challenge, published in 1987, the authors James Kouzes and Barry Posner list five key elements of what leaders do. Leaders “challenge, inspire, enable, model, and encourage.” Closer to home, in Hugh Genoways and Lynne Ireland’s Museum Administration: An Introduction (which CatlinLegutko is revising), the authors list multiple traits that help to make an effective museum leader: passion for the work; have a planned vision and charisma to sell that vision; courage; willingness to embrace change; willingness to embrace diversity; be a team builder; take responsibility for actions and promote results; celebrate and share success; understand financial information; garner resources; communicate effectively; promote professional standards and actions; ability to balance all of the competing interests within a museum; and willingness to cultivate and educate the board. The leaders I contacted to ask about the nature of leadership directly addressed almost all of the elements critical for effective leadership. And they know, for they have lived it.
So how does this all relate to the real world? There has to be a real effort to challenge the status quo and force naysayers who fear change into the twenty-first century. Yes, change is scary. But consider how many times Congress, for example, has passed groundbreaking legislation, such as the Clean Water Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act (the list goes on), only to be met by fearmongers declaring social or economic disaster if these laws are enacted. Yet when all is said and done, and these laws, in the end, have made lives better in countless ways. Museums need leaders with a willingness to open up institutions to a broader world is no different. We have to think out of the box and be willing to do nontraditional museum programming that provides a true community service. Museums can no longer be for a select few, but need to speak to people from many ethnic groups, socio-economic statuses, and educational levels. We have to be a welcoming place. We have to be willing to reach out if we want to survive. We also have to develop new ways to help people interact with our collections so we can increase understanding of them. In other words, the objects need to communicate to people more deeply, not just sit passively in a glass case. They must tell stories that people can relate to. And are museums still necessary? You bet! But we have to work consciously to become partners within our communities and serve the needs of our communities just as your local public library has done. We cannot remain that elitist monolith upon a hill. Effective leaders who understand this will be the ones who can turn the tide, who will save their museums from irrelevancy. But the leader at the top cannot do it alone. They need help, help from anyone who is involved within the museum. There must be leaders at all levels of the museum community in order for this to work. Now, as museum professionals, all we have to do is have the willingness to train people in what it takes to be an agent of change and then get them working so we can face the new millennium standing erect and strong, ready for anything. t Karen Whitehair has twenty-five years of experience working in the museum field. She has worked for the National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and historical sites located in Washington, DC, Florida, and Maryland. She currently is working on contract for the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. She can be reached at sourdoughcreek@earthlink.net.
Acknowledgments
The essay was originally created as part of a writing requirement for an online course in the AASLH Small Museum Pro series, Leadership and Administration in History Organizations (see http://on.aaslh.org/ SmallMuseumPro). I would like to thank those who made this essay possible. First, to Anne Ackerson for not only
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The delivered content has to be relevant to the audience.
Cinnamon CatlinLegutko, President/CEO of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine. She has contributed to the field in countless ways from writing articles to giving presentations at conferences to serving as a faculty member for Developing History Leaders @SHA, and the list goes on. On her LinkedIn.com page she writes, “Professional interested in helping museums achieve their potential by connecting with their communities and by serving as public stewards of our nation’s heritage and culture.” I think this sums her up in a nutshell. She is an inspiration to the rest of us.
Jeanne Benas, Registrar and Manager of Registration Services at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, recently retired. She has always championed finding answers to the often sticky issues related to collections management. She contributed to numerous works on these issues including The New Registration Methods and Collection Conundrums. One of her greatest contributions happened when, as co-chair of the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums Registrars Committee, she started the Old Loans Task Force in the mid-1990s. The results of her work on this task force helped to shape how collections managers address the complicated issues of old loans today.
creating such an excellent course, but also providing such a wonderful and supportive learning environment during class online discussions. I learned so much! I also want to extend heartfelt thanks to Doug, Mary, Catharine, Cinnamon, Kristen, and Jeanne for taking time out of their very hectic schedules to answer so thoughtfully eight questions about museum leadership today for a student’s class assignment. You all have always been incredibly generous with your time and your knowledge. I feel very grateful and honored to know you. Thank you so much for helping me with this essay. It would not have happened without you! 1
All quotes from interviews by author in February and March 2015.
In response to its leadership focus, the SHA partners changed the name of the Seminar for Historical Administration to Developing History Leaders @SHA (see http://historyleadership.org). 2
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ow often do we drive around the country and see a brown sign reading, “Historic Site, 1 ⁄ 4 mile”? For many of us raised in the American landscape, such sights (and sites) are so commonplace that we often don’t even think twice about them. Local history is an embedded part of our national culture. Since the United States is a fairly young nation, it may seem a curiosity that we have so many historical markers, historic homes, and local history museums. Yet, the true measure of our local histories may be seen when cast in the light of who is stopping at the roadsides, taking the time to read these markers, and learning about the histories that make up every part of this republic.
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I grew up in a region and a town steeped in local history. My family also valued and practiced history. It was a regular dinnertime topic. Many times we learned more about the history of old homes, the outcomes of local Revolutionary War battles, or the location of the earliest beer breweries in the county than about more national current events headlining the evening news. I have always enjoyed reading signs and talking to family and friends about this nearby history. It’s the closeness to an event that often makes it more real and understandable. So when I began teaching English to international students at State University of New York (SUNY) New Paltz, embedding local history into my class was second nature. My students were eager and curious and interested to learn about the history of the places they were visiting and living. I gained from this exchange as well, as one often learns much about her own place, home, and history when faced with the observations, questions, and interpretations of others encountering and trying to understand your local, regional, and national histories. My closest personal parallel is to China. It is a country I’ve visited several times. And it has a long, complex history. Chinese culture has been documented for more than ten times longer than the United States. The People’s Republic of China is comprised of very distinct and diverse provinces, cultures, and even languages. Its approach to local history is quite different than that in the U.S. Though one may find signs and statues and plaques dedicated to historical events, the dedication American communities have to small details and local events is much more frequent and visible than in China. When we begin to teach our students, especially those still learning the English language, about our local histories, we accomplish much. Teaching English through local history is not simply a means of learning a new language (though that is one of the chief goals of my programs and teaching). We are instead creating a host of skills and outcomes that make the students’ experiences productive and memorable, those that develop skills of participation, partnership, and friendship with local communities. The relationships we can build between students, staff, and faculty at a local school or university and the community, neighborhood, or society are integral to community development. When our students meet with the local historical society or sister organizations (such as the DAR or regional networks dedicated to the preservation and promotion of a theme, group, or event)
there is a process of exchange and participation that makes all involved gain something. We all are learning, we all are participating, and we all are becoming better members of our communities. History should not just remain in books filled with facts and numbers and dates and names. It’s about engaging with ideas. When we visit local sites; read historic markers; and visit battlefields, historic houses, or museums, we walk back in time. It may not be exactly as it was in the past, but the place on the ground, the trees, the house, the creek, the breeze, all this can evoke an imagination into something more real. And we can experience that together, with our neighbors, new and old. In the spring of 2014, Historic Huguenot Street, a nonprofit organization in New Paltz, New York—located eighty miles north of New York City—began to offer SUNY New Paltz students free memberships providing admission to guided tours, educational events, and other programs about the town. In the seventeenth century, French Huguenots (followers of protestant theologian John Calvin) sought safety from persecution. Some fled to America and settled New Paltz. After the English government granted them a 30,000-acre parcel that stretched from the Hudson River to the Shawangunk Mountains, they established their community on the banks of the Wallkill River. Today, many of the early homes remain on Huguenot Street, within walking distance of the campus. In the past two years, students in the Haggerty English Language Learners Program benefited from their Historic Huguenot Street memberships in the advanced English classes I taught. My students major in various academic fields, and hail primarily from Asia, Facing page, left to right: Jeremy Sapadin wearing a man’s colonial costume, Qing
Wang wearing traditional (red) dress from Qing Dynasty, Davi Haber wearing Gilded-Age era black and white maid’s dress. Center: Qing Wang Above: Historic Huguenot Street tour guide Jeremy Sapadin in colonial costume in front of the Jean Hasbrouk house, Sandra Coleman of Brazil, and Alwaleed Abdullah Al-Harbi of Saudi Arabia presenting at HHS.
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South America, and the Middle East. Some are studying on exchange, while others plan to seek an academic degree in the U.S. One thing they all have in common is an interest in improving their academic language skills. Growing up with my father, a high school social studies teacher, and my mother, a local historian, I have always appreciated history, so I devised a unit on local history to help my stuTop: SUNY dents prepare for future academic New Paltz coursework. students in traditional I focused the unit around a research attire from their home countries: left to right, project and two walking trips to Historic Sandra Coleman Huguenot Street. First, I had students read (Brazil), Jeremy articles about the history of New Paltz Sapadin (U.S.), Qing Wang (China), Davi and the settlement of Huguenot Street. I Haber (U.S.) required them to compile information from Bottom: SUNY New their readings and questions to ask the tour Paltz students Anika Krempl (left) in a guide during our visit at the end of the unit. colonial costume As they worked on this project, students custom made by developed their English language skills Colonial Williamsburg and Qing Wang (right) by incorporating new vocabulary in their in a traditional Chinese responses to the academic texts. Qing dress from the Qing Wang, a student from China, reflected, dynasty. “Reading articles about Huguenot Street expanded my vocabulary. I learned how to skim articles and find the main ideas at the same time. The more I read complex articles, the more I made progress in reading speed.” Students incorporated key terms in their summary assignments including words like cellar, outbuilding, manumission, miscegenation, heritage, and Protestant. Throughout the unit, students created a vocabulary list and repeated these words in discussions and writings. After students gained this basic understanding of New Paltz history, students chose one topic to focus their research on. Topics included historic homes, the original church, cemeteries, Native Americans, and slavery. Using their research, students became experts to their classmates on their individual topics. “I focused on slaves’ burial grounds,” Wang recalled, relating some of the more disturbO ing details of the burial ground’s history. “Their remains had just been thrown into the ground and were not buried deep. Recently, people made a monument to mark the area, and this African American burial ground is now someone’s front yard,” she said. During the first visit to Historic Huguenot Street, we walked around with maps, stopping at each building or historic plot of land. Students took turns presenting the
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information they researched and answering classmates’ questions. They included a socio-cultural comparison between the early history of New Paltz and their home country. (For example, Wang discussed slave life in New Paltz in relation to details about slave life in her home region of China.) The second visit to Historic Huguenot Street, and the culmination of the unit, included an official tour. We began at the visitors center, where we watched a film about the early history of New Paltz. Even if students did not understand all of the language in the film, the visual context gave them a feeling for the sights and sounds of the era. We then toured several historic homes with interpreters. At the end of each tour, students asked guides questions from the lists they created during their research. One such question was, “Do descendants of the original slaves in New Paltz come back to Huguenot Street to remember their ancestors’ history?” After our two visits, students wrote essays on the history of New Paltz. These essays included a comparison of the method of studying history in their home cultures, and a reflection on their experience. The culminating group task was to make a video incorporating research, vocabulary, photographs, and other footage of the local area. How did students feel about the project? “I felt happy to use fun ways to share what I learned, and I think making a video can be a quick way to help people understand the history,” Wang said. “After this unit, I felt New Paltz is a town with a thick atmosphere of history and there are more mysteries of Huguenot Street waiting for people to realize.” Studying local history in this way allows for an engaging process of learning English, but it has many other benefits and applications. For students, it engages multiple levels of sensory learning that allow students not only to remember words and expressions more easily, but also introduces them to the history and context of their present living environments. An ancillary benefit is that they may also bring this type of experiential learning practice back to their homelands, and engage with fellow students, teachers, colleagues, and others in understanding the role of local history in their hometowns. For teaching, the responses from students and the outcomes of their experiences have helped guide me in my own pedagogy. This has afforded me new opportunities to design class programming around distinct, local historic sites, as well as new assignments that rely on the most well received aspects of local history tours and community engagement. Finally, for others in the Teachers to Speakers of Other Languages and the local history communities, such programs may serve as an example of how we can continue to orient our local history outreach with not just regional or our American community, but a global community of visitors and learners, to whom we can give the gift of our own love and dedication of the places we call home. t Sarah E. Elia is President of New York State Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages and a lecturer in the Haggerty English Language Program at the State University of New York at New Paltz. She can be reached at elias@newpaltz.edu.
Award Winner Spotlight >
By Jason Crabill
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ichael G. Kammen, the late Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Cornell University’s Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture Emeritus, spent much of his illustrious fifty-year career asking complex questions that helped to shape the field of public history in fundamental ways. His research explored the nature of historical memory—and the ways we misremember—while examining the impact of these elements on the American psyche and our relationship with our past. The preservation, interpretation, and education work that cultural and historical organizations do today is inextricably connected to the ideas Kammen championed. The American Association of State and Local History annually celebrates these efforts with the Leadership in History Awards, the most prestigious recognition of achievement in the preservation and interpretation of state and local history. In 2015, AASLH announced the Michael Kammen Award, to recognize a history institution with an annual budget under $250,000 that has shown outstanding effort. The 2015 winner of the Michael Kammen Award is the Lombard (Illinois) Historical Society for their Sheldon Peck Homestead exhibit. Sheldon Peck’s story is uniquely American and reveals the best of human nature and perseverance. Peck, a nationally recognized nineteenth-century primitive folk art portrait painter, was also a well known advocate of antislavery and temperance causes and his house served as a verifiable safe house for enslaved freedom seekers attempting to escape to safety in the North prior to the Civil War. At the heart of the new Sheldon Peck Homestead exhibit is the clapboard house Park built in 1839 to raise his family and where he resided until his death in 1868. The house not only served as the family home, but was also a stop on the Underground Railroad. “We are one of two places in Northern Illinois that are members of the Network
to Freedom, a National Park Service initiative to coordinate Underground Railroad-based preservation and education efforts nationwide, and the only Network member site in the region where visitors get a chance to explore this history in the place where it actually occurred,” said Nicole Louis, Director of Education and Exhibits, Lombard Historical Society. “Sheldon Peck was an exception, then and now.”1 But the Peck Homestead’s story isn’t truly complete without sharing the stories of African Americans who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their white counterparts. They risked their freedom and often their lives to guide enslaved blacks in the South to freedom in the North. One of the strengths of the exhibit, and one of the elements that stood out most to the awards committee, is its focus on some of these important, but often hidden, histories. “Sheldon Peck was an incredible man who did incredible things, but it was important to us to bust the myth that white abolitionists were the primary players in the Underground Railroad story,” added Louis. “We really tried to highlight the primary roles African Americans played in these efforts and the story of Old Charley is how we bring a face to
Lombard Historical Society
Lombard Historical Society
In this part of the Peck Homestead exhibit, visitors can see the space allotted to each person on a slave ship. Visitors can have their outline drawn on the wall in chalk to see how they would have fit in the space.
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
$50,000+ Ms. Sylvia Alderson Winston–Salem, NC Anonymous 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 $10,000 – $49,999 Mr. Edward P. Alexander (Deceased) Washington, DC AltaMira Press Lanham, MD Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Williamsburg, VA The J. Paul Getty Trust Los Angeles, CA
Mr. & Mrs. Charles F. Bryan, Jr. Richmond, VA Ms. Sandra Sageser Clark Holt, MI HISTORY New York, NY Martha-Ellen Tye Foundation Marshalltown, IA
Friends of the Endowment Society
$5,000 – $9,999 Atlanta History Center Atlanta, GA Mr. Rick Beard New York, NY Mr. & Mrs. Salvatore Cilella Atlanta, GA Mr. David Crosson & Ms. Natalie Hala San Francisco, CA Ms. Terry L. Davis Nashville, TN
Mr. John & Ms. Anita Durel Baltimore, MD Mr. Stephen Elliott St. Paul, MN Mr. Dennis Fiori Boston, MA Mr. Leslie H. Fishel (Deceased) Madison, WI Ms. Barbara Franco Harrisburg, PA Mr. James B. Gardner Washington, DC Historic Annapolis Foundation Annapolis, MD Indiana Historical Society Indianapolis, IN Mr. Russell Lewis & Ms. Mary Jane Jacob Chicago, IL 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 Ms. Ruby Rogers Cincinnati, OH Mr. Jim & Ms. Janet Vaughan Washington, DC Mr. George L. Vogt Portland, OR Ms. Jeanne & Mr. Bill Watson Orinda, CA
HISTORY NEWS
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the struggles of African Americans of the time and localize the history for our community and visitors.” Old Charley, himself an escaped slave from Missouri, was an Underground Railroad conductor who guided enslaved people to freedom in the North and often used the Peck homestead as one of his stops. As explained in the exhibit, the best understanding of Charley’s route is that he brought people up the Mississippi River and then headed east to Chicago—a popular port to Canada—stopping at Peck’s home along the way. Frank Peck, Sheldon’s son, revealed much of the relationship between the Peck family and Old Charley to the Lombard Historical Society. The exhibit reveals that Old Charley would sing spirituals to the Peck children and he was a good enough friend of the Pecks that a portrait, painted by Sheldon Peck’s daughter Susan and featuring Old Charley and the Peck Family, hung prominently in the family home, a very controversial thing to do in the early-tomid-1800s. That same portrait hangs in the exhibit today.
“For every Old Charley that we know about, there are dozens and dozens of other, unknown African American abolitionists who worked on the Underground Railroad, usually at much higher risk than their white counterparts,” Louis said. “One of the most gratifying things to come out of this exhibit for me is just seeing how people react when they realize the deep history of Lombard and the role this place played in the national story— and knowing that they leave here feeling proud of their community,” This tale of mutual sacrifice and freedom is local to Illinois, but like the struggle for freedom it centers around, the story of the Sheldon Peck homestead is an integral part of our national story. It is another thread in the fabric of America and at the heart of what the Lombard Historical Society has created with this exhibit. The funds awarded by the Michael Kammen Award will allow the historical society to expose this story to an even wider audience with traveling education trunks that will be created and shared with schools from Chicago to Joliet, and beyond. “These trunks will allow schools
who want to share these stories with their children, but lack the financial resources to travel, to make local connections to the national stories that are reflected in the history books.” “We were not expecting to receive the Michael Kammen Award, but are so grateful that we did,” Louis said. “The award makes it possible for us to share the incredible story of Sheldon Peck and Old Charley, while allowing the students of our community and beyond to gain a new perspective on the story of slavery and the Underground Railroad. The national story becomes much more impactful knowing there were proud Illinois residents who played a large part in changing our nation for the better.” t Jason Crabill is Manager, Curatorial Services at the Ohio History Connection and serves as the Region 6 Representative for the Leadership in History Awards Committee. He is a 2011 graduate of Developing History Leaders @SHA. 1 All quotes from Nicole Lewis, interview by author, November 2015.
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Book Reviews > The American Plate: A Culinary History in 100 Bites By Libby O’Connell (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2014), 320 pp. Review by Michelle Moon
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armer’s markets, foraging, the Food Network—the American public is obsessed with edibles. Historic sites and museums working to build on renewed interest in food will find Libby O’Connell’s engaging, accessible overview of American food history a model for fresh interpretive approaches. O’Connell’s fascination with food history began during a college stint cooking at Plimoth Plantation, and direct experience with engaging the public shows in these visitor-ready topics. Recently retired as senior vice president at A&E networks and Chief Historian for the History Channel, O’Connell has a keen understanding of audience interests and a knack for telling a succinct, compelling story. The American Plate presents a history of the United States in 100 short “bites,” microhistories of foods associated with a given phase in the nation’s development. These bites are organized into ten chapters roughly analogous to academic periodizations, but tantalizingly titled after foods of each era: the colonial period offers “Cod, Beaver Tail, and Sassafras,” while the Progressive era serves up “Hot Dogs, Liberty Gardens, and Bathtub Gin.” Short essays open each chapter with discussion of social movements and cultural changes reflected in the era’s food culture. Sweeping in scope but snackable in presentation, the book can be read as a continuous narrative of culinary nation-making, or excerpted as short readings. O’Connell sprinkles her text with sidebars, adding dashes of historical or scientific information. Each chapter includes a few recipes, some appealing (Fried Catfish, Strawberry Rhubarb Pie), some unusual (Roast Beaver Tail, Scrapple). The lens of food surfaces less well known angles on familiar events. For instance, readers learn how the Civil War turned Americans from tea drinkers into coffee achievers. The astonishing cultural
complexity of American food culture is responsibly if lightly presented; among the 100 foods included many to represent Native, African American, Hispanic, Asian, and European immigrant foodways, as well as foods of poverty and prosperity, homegrown and industrial. The book’s best moments reveal conditions that led to the popularization of marginal dishes, ponder the paradoxes of American food (for example, not a single ingredient in “all-American” apple pie is indigenous to this continent), and link food trends with the technological advances that allowed the likes of peanut butter and tortilla chips to catch on. Though an engaging read, the smallbites format does have its limitations. The introduction raises historical questions about the impact of technology on food customs and the interplay between cultures colliding in the kitchen, particularly those of enslaved and enslaver. Those questions, though, are hard to discern in episodic chapters, leaving readers to derive themes and draw conclusions for themselves. (O’Connell herself is forced to depart from the single-food constraint to discuss cuisines like “Cuban-American food” or broad categories like “English garden herbs and vegetables.”) Geographically unique histories are subsumed to chronology, and space does not allow for the presentation of much primary source material. In such a sweeping project, a tension between regional and cultural specificity and widely applicable generalization is inevitable. Written in a lively tone that is informed but informal, O’Connell represents scholarly consensus with accuracy (and thorough footnotes) while seasoning her prose with humor. The American Plate deserves a place on the historic interpret-
er’s bookshelf. Ideally structured for training beginning food interpreters, it situates food history within wider narratives, forging connections between culinary minutiae and major themes of social history. Food is often what puts the “local” in local history. Though site-specific research will always be necessary to build interpretations, The American Plate is extremely useful as a starting point for understanding any site’s place within the sweep of American history, and as an instructive example of historical food storytelling that refuses to sacrifice flavor and enjoyment. t Michelle Moon is author of Interpreting Food at Museums and Historic Sites. She is a member of the SHA Class of 2007. Michelle can be reached at michellenmoon@gmail.com.
Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums Franklin D. Vagnone and Deborah E. Ryan (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2016), 259 pp. Review by Nathan Richie
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t would seem that the museum field is rife with trends that quickly transform from conference session novelty to professional orthodoxy. From the number and types of programs offered, audiences served, and interpretive strategies employed, today’s museum professional is in a near constant state of keeping up with trends and keeping up with the Joneses. Following trends, while sometimes beneficial, is often a pursuit of a flavor-of-the-month idea that distracts us from our core functions and strong suits. At the same time, the museum field is encumbered with a number of best practices from the various specialties (or silos) that are increasingly at odds with one another—historic preservation practices, collections care needs, curatorial HISTORY NEWS
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authority, desire for greater accessibility, and selecting market-driven exhibit and program agendas. In their book, An Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums, authors Franklin Vagnone and Deborah Ryan expose and confront a number of these orthodoxies. They call into question why they have become common practices and illustrate how they hamper our progress as institutions. The Guide outlines five broad areas (community engagement, effective communication, interpretation, collections stewardship, and preservation) that the authors believe, if properly addressed, can remediate the persistent problems that plague historic houses: lack of interest, lack of relevance, and dwindling attendance. Reading the authors’ musings on accepted practice is often refreshing and worthy of field-wide discussion: “Transcend the object!” “Embrace controversy!” “Avoid superlative!” “Question the tendency to over-preserve!” At its weakest—and most ironic—the Guide proposes a dogmatic process for fixing your institutional problems [insert obligatory toolkit here]. Solutions are often interpretive- or exhibit-based
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(and I would posit that “uninterpreted” experiences are a form of interpretation), which seems to reinforce the discredited “blockbuster” cycle that relies on costly, attention-catching gimmicks that have placed many museums on the path to financial instability. Also confounding is that while the authors provide intriguing examples, like a fashion exhibit at the Morris Jumel Mansion that increased visitation 560 percent, they fail to follow up with any longer-term analysis about how and whether the museum sustained that momentum. Despite the book’s own much-ballyhooed anarchy, the authors often step up to the precipice of dissention by posing questions such as, “Are there too many historic house museums?” then step away from controversy by not addressing their own query. Or they make statements like, “Docents are the problem,” but admit docents are not going away and need to be better trained. If you know you have a systemic problem, address the root of the matter. More troubling to me is, if the problems and solutions identified by the authors strike any reader as radical or
revolutionary, what does that say about the field of historic house administration? There are litanies of museum selfhelp books that have been published in the past few decades. Must the words “Historic House” appear on a book title before a professional picks it up? I struggled to find observations that weren’t already addressed at length in other books like the seminal 1992 publications Excellence & Equity and Museums and Communities up to the more recent Opening Doors to Great Guest Experiences in 2007 and The Participatory Museum in 2010. How are we so far behind in a conversation that has been brewing in the museum community for at least a quarter of a century? If anything, Vagnone and Ryan aren’t anarchists—they are advocates for getting with the times. But, if the Guide is the clarion call readers need to be inspired to action, so be it. t Nathan Richie is Director of Golden History Museums. He can be reached at nrichie@goldenhistory.org.
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