What is a museum?

What is a museum?  A building holding old valuable object behind glass cabinets?  That sounds more like a mausoleum and thus prompts Andrea Witcomb to write her article, Re-imagining the museum: Beyond the Mausoleum.  This 2003 piece touches upon hierarchy, cultural power, technology, and materiality as components of the museum's evolution through history.  Both Witcomb and Tony Bennett, who pens "Civic Seeing" and is often quoted by Witcomb, cite the 19th century as a turning point in the  museum world.

Bennet points out that "exhibition practices from the pre-Enlightenment period when the eye was not so singularly addressed or so authoritatively regulated," are making a comeback to facilitate the modern audience's yearning for a multiple sensory experience in tourism.  Along these lines, I think many would agree that museums should not just regurgitate a timeline - but should be interactive, to an extent (without being a full blown children's museum) in order to make learning and civic engagement more immediate to the vast public.

Witcomb cites the Parisian "culture of looking" as a proponent in the "emergence of tourism as a popular activity." Paris lined their streets with restaurants and shops, making everything 'gaze-worthy' for pedestrians and the increasing number of tourists as vacationing became a regular activity.

Richard Handler and Eric Gable's book, The New History in an Old Museum, further examine the shift in "cultural tourism," which could be an umbrella term for museums and historical sites, and the struggle to balance consumerism and authentic an dissemination of history.  They use Colonial Williamsburg as their prime example of a hybrid historical site/entertainment park in America.
If I may digress into how "Alysea fell in love with history," I was one of 'those kids' who kicked and screamed while being dragged toured around Colonial Williamsburg by my parents in first grade, until we found an interactive house that was serving a traditional 18th century meal and teaching angsty elementary school students 18th century games. I walked back out onto the gravel street a changed kid, and before you knew it, I had 2 American Girl dolls and said history was my favorite school subject.
So does "entertainment in history" work in tourism? YES, for the young children who need to be engaged with multiple sensory activities.  But is this public history?  Is Colonial Williamsburg a "museum" by the standards of Witcomb and Bennett?  I would say, Colonial Williamsburg is historical preservation, which goes hand in hand with the traditional institutional museum, and without one or the other, public history may be at a standstill...thank goodness for evolution.

Philadelphia History Museum

What's better - to have many many collections poorly archived, displayed, etc, or to have fewer collections properly displayed?  The Philadelphia Museum at Atwater Kent, must have favored the later when they decided to sell $3 million worth of collections to help fund major building renovations.   

This sticky situation made me think back to my first internship at the Monroe County Historical Association where much cataloguing was via handwritten 1950s notecards and I had to climb over dusty boxes in 3rd floor storage rooms of a 300 year old home to find a specific photograph.  The MCHA was always fundraising for better storage capacity, but I don't know if they every considered getting rid of some of their "dusty boxes" to help fund better air conditioning.

In a city known for its elite cultural institutions, the Philadelphia History Museum at Atwater Kent stirred up quite the controversy by deaccessioning a significant amount of collections to help fund a major capital project. With the "public trust" still fresh in my mind from last week's discussion, it is easy to see why the public may balk at such a practice - a potential in-kind donor will now have to ask themselves, "How can my gift be guaranteed to serve the public, if it might be sold to pay for air conditioning in a few years?"  If funds for renovations are in need, then a capital campaign should be in place, not a garage sale.  


I understand that this is not a perfect world, but selling objects should be the absolute last resort for a museum...one that should not be taken.  Mark Gould is even more blunt to say,  “Those museums deserve to die” in his American Association of Museums article Death by Ethics.  I have to agree with Gould, because as a fundraiser, what is the good of my job asking for money, if someone else at the museum can just sell an entire exhibit for money?  Stephen Weil brings to light the large disparity between a museum's operational funding and the market value of their collections.  However, the value on a museum's collections is not a price tag, and certainly not one with a desperate "everything must go" kind of message.


Although the Philadelphia History Museum claims that they were within the professional standards, by only selling objects that fell outside of their mission and that proceeds would go towards "caring for the collection."  According to the American Association for State and Local History's president Terry Davis,  "As long as deaccessioning is done according to institutional policies that have been set ahead of time, for the long-term goal of taking care of collections, it's a perfectly fine practice to do."


I also have to wonder what the follow up was to any known donors of the PHM's sold items.  Were they notified of the sale of the donations?  From grants administration experience, when a funded project changes its focus, the grantee MUST notify the fundor and may likely be asked to return award money if the project no longer complies with the reason the proposal was funded.  Selling donated objects could be a breach of contract of sorts.  


So many more questions swirled in my head while reading the museum ethics codes and news stories surrounding the PHM/Atwater Kent deaccessioning stories:

• If an organization can't fund support a capital campaign, what are the implications that they could fund future longterm projects?
• Will the revenue generated from modern renovations make up for lost revenue in losing objects?
• What is the opportunity costs of not doing a traditional fundraiser or capital campaign to fund the renovations?

I foresee a running theme of financial crises in our workshops....

The Public Trust

As I was reading this week's texts, I began to compile a list of verbs to answer the question, "what is the functionality of an historical exhibit or artifact?"

• to remind
• to emphasize
• to caution
• to interpret
• to persuade
• to eulogize
• to celebrate
• to arouse emotion

We could go on and argue that any verb is necessary or not necessary for an exhibit.  Linenthal and Englehardt's History Wars' "Anatomy of a Controversy" chapter, explains that when President Harry Truman created the National Air Museum in 1946, its purpose was "to memorialize the national development of aviation; collect, preserve, and display aeronautical equipment of historical interest and significance..." (1996, 21). So when national museums started to produce exhibits that 'stirred the pot' by questioning heroism and giving voice to forgotten or silenced groups, public history controversies arose. 

During my list making, I hesitated at writing down, "commemorate" when I got to Linenthal and Englehardt's passage on "commemorative membrane: "Artifacts like the Enola Gay, however, tend to establish a 'commemorative membrane' around exhibit space within which the language of commemorative respect is often expected to dominate" (1996, 20).  Are exhibits expected to just commemorate events? What about shedding new light on something the public thinks they know a lot about?  

What are the responsibilities of a public historian to its public audience?  Ken Yellis writes that "no museum visitor should ever have to ask and which, if they are asked, make it guaranteed that the visitor experience will be unsatisfying at best: Why are they doing this? What kind of exhibition is this? And my personal favorite: Have I seen this exhibition before?" (11 of 16).  Thus, the public's relationship with historians could be one of trusting that new exhibits will be always uncovering new information and interpreting old stories in new ways...How do we do that?  I think the answer lies in our 4th pillar of "Public History" - Immediate.  Make history more than relevant to visitors to help them understand history and your perspective.

Rosenzweig and Thelen's Poplular Uses of History in American Life, builds on this notion that the public needs a multi-level exhibit, to both inform and spin something they may have learned in their 10th grade 20th c. American History class into something "immediately" relevant to their current life.  I think their study's use of family time as history in the making is a great way to make history "immediate" to the public.  Almost everyone can identify with some level of family identity and making connections through story telling or oral history (in my family, this is often disguised as gossip around the kitchen table) to link personal history to a larger context.  Perhaps over conversations with grandparents, someone could find out about a family member who was involved in WWII or even the bombing of Hiroshima.  Using a family tree makes history relevant and immediate and can capture that sought after public trust.

Fundraising the Dead

I couldn't help but think while reading Fundraising the Dead, that Sheila Connolly Nell Pratt was finally receiving her chance to "shine" and explain her hard work to a a captive audience. Development staff, along with other administrative offices are the stage crew for the performance that is non profits, and in this case the Philadelphia Antiquarian Society.  As a development employee myself, I've learned that one really needs to be passionate about what they are raising support for in order to be successful.  And organization and quick thinking skills do not hurt either.  Nell Pratt's narrative is a guided tour of her detail-oriented, never fail thought process, which she uses to manage staff and donors and also piece together a murder mystery.