The Future of Public History - Where is it Going?

This week’s readings ask us to think about the future of public history. Just as the public we work with is constantly evolving, so too do public history professionals need to adapt to the different ways that people think about history and the world around them. While we need to be mindful of the specific needs of each place, “office” and public historians also need to be aware that the greatest immediate need is a nuanced approach to history.

            Several prominent historians including Gary Nash and David Thelen participated in a study on behalf of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) to examine the effectiveness of the National Park Service’s (NPS) history programs. What they found was shocking. While a large number of programs were living up to the expectations of what constitutes “good history,” these historians also found that respondents collectively agreed that history in the NPS is “endangered” (16). The historians who conducted the study argued that those working in the NPS profession need to be professionally trained in the academy. Additionally, “office” historians need to play more of a role in strengthening the NPS through collaborative work.

            In the same way that the study of the NPS called for much-needed changes, James Chung, Susie Wilkening, and Sally Johnstone envisioned the future of museums. As technology becomes ever-prevalent, women’s place in the work force is expanding, and the energy crisis continues, these events will all play a role, according to this study, that will shape how museums will contribute to the global community. These authors envision that future museums will play a role in helping people understand their role in societal shifts and “be oases of the real in an increasingly virtual world” (43).

            Major American cities such as Philadelphia have struggled to adapt to the very real changes in the nation’s cultural sector, particularly due to the Great Recession. The study did find that the most attended cultural institution was history, with over five million visitors. This says quite a bit about our role as public historians. With many Americans looking to major cities as a platform to learn both about national and local/urban histories, it provides hope that the desire to learn about the past is not gone. It also goes to assert the premise in Rosenzweig and Thelen’s The Presence of the Past that Americans are most trusting of museums when it comes to learning about history.

            Thus, Americans still continue to look to the public history sector as an important authority in how they understand their history. It is time that major institutions such as the NPS be more open to presenting historical nuances and controversies. The American public is certainly not given enough credit for their understanding of their own history. What I would like to see in the future is more of an emphasis on cooperation between museums in the international community. In an increasingly connected world, it only serves to the benefit of the American public history sector to create bridges with other institutions. It does not serve in our interest to become insular, for that leaves institutions and the public isolated from the nuance that is necessary to conducting “good history.” 

Public History as Labor

This week’s readings introduced us to the living history museum, its living history performers, and their role in the larger work force. The historian Amy Tyson examined the Historic Fort Snelling, a living history museum in Minnesota, in The Wages of History: Emotional Labor on Public History’s Front Lines. In her study Tyson coined the term “emotional/public history proletariat” to explain the idea that while historic sites were entrusted with educating the public, they were also responsible for providing personalized customer service and positive interactions with visitors. In this way, living history performers were just as much a part of the general cultural work force and were subject to many of the tensions and competition common to the workplace environment. Tyson’s principle argument is that workers in cultural institutions seek to maintain a self-identity rather than adhere to the collective identity “embedded in the larger workplace culture” (Tyson 24). This is seen in various examples throughout Tyson’s study, particularly in her examination of the relationship between living history performers. Many sought to maintain their autonomy as they developed various skills specific to their character that would set them apart from their coworkers. In seeking to solidify an identity for themselves, tensions arose when workers competed with one another to maintain a foothold at Historic Fort Snelling. Methodologically, Tyson’s work is reminiscent of Cathy Stanton’s The Lowell Experiment, which Tyson cites heavily throughout. Tyson, like Stanton, conducted an ethnographic study of workers at these respective historic sites. Tyson, however, immersed herself as a living history performer during her job at the Fort. Stanton called for public historians to be reflexive and understand that they are not exempt from the various forces that we look for in visitors. Tyson responded to this call, particularly in her explanation of her quasi-conflict with a fellow coworker. In Chapter 4, Tyson talked about when she was reprimanded by a coworker for forgetting her shoes during her “performance.” Tyson writes that, “Although being subject to this kind of surveillance was upsetting in and of itself, what was especially upsetting to me was that I was made to feel alienated for doing something that I had felt was a minor but nonetheless thoughtful contribution to the larger organizational goal…” (Tyson 132). This situation highlighted that Tyson was not exempt from the workplaces forces that made her feel excluded and shamed. Tyson’s immersion in the situation of her subjects provided an excellent element to better understanding the taxing emotions of the cultural sector, particularly at this site. Tyson’s work extended Stanton’s study at Lowell. However, while I am a proponent of self-reflection as a public historian, I wonder if Tyson was too emotionally invested in her subjects and if that negatively colored her ability to write her research conclusions. But perhaps I am being too harsh - after all, she did state that she wanted to demonstrate how this work could become emotionally taxing, which Tyson did effectively.

"Can the scholar's history be the public's history?"

This week’s readings provide fodder for understanding the ways in different which histories are told at various sites. The anthropologist Cathy Stanton delved into Lowell National Historical Park (NHP) in her study. Stanton’s The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City is an ethnographic study of the rituals that surrounded the Park’s creation and its later functioning roles. Like many other American towns and cities in the 1960s, Lowell was experiencing the effects of deindustrialization. As a measure of economic and cultural revitalization, the city of Lowell, “found new ways to yoke public and private investment together in aid of turning the city’s fortunes around” (5). Stanton takes an interesting approach in her study. She analyzed the performative nature of “history-making processes” and the role of public historians in creating interpretations for exhibits in Lowell where present-day actors were struggling to recapture a nostalgic view of the past.

Stanton, in particular, focuses on the ethnic demographics of Lowell throughout the twentieth century and the ways in which Lowell NHP’s leaders struggled to reconcile this history with the exhibit. Patrick Mogan, superintendent of schools in Lowell at the time, was heavily involved in revitalizing Lowell by turning to its past, but he resisted focusing on the conflicts that arose between different ethnic groups. While audiences were quite open to the nuances and challenges that this history demonstrated, Mogan was resistant to the idea. Stanton writes that, “Despite Mogan’s personal disapproval of interpretations that included emphasis on conflict or tension, the new social historians associated with the project as consultants and researchers were able to connect the plan with their own more critical focus on ethnic, immigrant, family, and labor histories” (89). Stanton fleshed out the controversies that arose as different groups sought to tell conflicting stories about their past.

            Similarly, the historian Gary Nash described the tensions of the National Park Service’s (NPS) exhibit on the Liberty Bell and the President’s House here in Philadelphia. The Liberty Bell was originally housed in Independence Hall, but was moved across the street in 1976. In the late 1990s, the NPS, in service of the 1997 General Management Plan that wished to create “a new VISION for the park in the twenty-first century,” worked to create a new exhibit for the Liberty Bell (Nash 76). The Liberty Bell was within steps of where several important American figures had not only lived, but owned slaves. Nash, along with other prominent historians and concerned Americans, contested the story that the NPS was telling about liberty and freedom within the confines of the Liberty Bell when ignoring the very real presence of slavery in the Philadelphia in the early republic.

            A consensus at both Lowell NHP and various sites at the NPS in Philadelphia was met. An important lesson taken from these two instances is that the public is much more open to historical nuance than perhaps they are given credit for. The general public wants to be involved in the history-making process, as evidenced by the outcry that came from Philadelphians and the national public in response to the NPS’s exhibit on the Liberty Bell. It seems from these readings that contention arises just as much, if not more, within the academic community rather than between the public and academia. Public historians struggle to find consensus with one another. This may be one of the reasons that Stanton’s book is so important to the field of public history. Her self-conscious analysis of public historians delved into the processes and influences that seep into the history-making process. Public historians should not consider themselves exempt from many of the influences that work into the lives of the general public. We need to be just as much, if not more, aware of how these processes seep into our own professional outlook.