Making Museums Matter

This week's readings, as usual, left me with a lot to think about; we were assigned Stephen Weil's collection of essays, Making Museums Matter, Amy Tyson's article entitled "Crafting Emotional Comfort: Interpreting the Painful Past at Living History Museums in the New Economy," and the American Association of Museums's 2008 Annual Report called "A New Journey Begins."

Though there is no mention of Stephen Weil in the 2008 AAM report, it almost seems as though the AAM is taking up Weil's call to arms in effort to continue to make museums matter. The AAM report inspired some questions to which I may have to research the answers. For instance, the text alludes to "ambiguity" in pending legislation about which I'm curious and would like to know more. In the same paragraph, a mention is made of IRS Tax Form 990 and its bearing on the status of museum collections as financial aspects (8). I would love to know details and the outcome of the AAM's efforts.

I am intrigued by the trend Weil takes issue with, that museums have become public service institutions rather than places to gain knowledge. I think the readings this week highlighted some of the dark side of the concept of "shared authority." I am certainly not of the opinion that, as Weil says, that museums be places "maintained by the high for the low" (196). However, I'm really starting to think that education should be the first and foremost goal of museums and similar institutions, for reasons that Tyson highlights nicely in her piece, but more on that shortly.

I found the third section of Weil's book, "The Museum in the Public Sphere" particularly pertinent to the Wagner project. The portion really got me thinking about how an institution can and should interact with the public. Also, it dovetailed nicely with David Post's September 28 discussion regarding copyright and fair use. I think Weil's essays in the third section really brought the issues of how images are used and how this can be a problem even more to life for me.

I was most taken with Amy Tyson's article of the three readings we were assigned this week. I'm especially glad that we read Tyson's essay as it really got me thinking about how sensitive topics should be approached in museums. Tyson really got to the heart of the issues around shared authority and I thought she did an excellent job of approaching authenticity in ways that Kim and Jamal didn't quite reach in the reading from a couple of weeks ago. I appreciated that she tried to take a more psychological look at the phenomenon behind participants' reactions to living history experiences. I was quite arrested by her comparison of the "Follow the North Star" activity to participation in sadomasochistic sexual activities. I'm still not sure if I agree or disagree with the analogy. I think Tyson brings up a really good point about owning experiences. I don't share the view that sensitive topics such as slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, etc., are something to be swept under the rug. I think they should be dealt with and that getting people to own such history might be an important step in bridging some of the racial divide we're currently experiencing. I'm not sure that the right approach to interpretive history is to always ensure visitors' comfort. Sometimes history is uncomfortable and that's okay. Maybe in such a way we can start conversations. I don't feel that taking a "the customer is always right" approach is helpful to anyone. I've recently noticed a trend toward romanticizing portions of antebellum history that I find particularly disturbing; the customer is not right in that case. I really would love for Tyson to have interviewed African Americans or Native Americans for their views on how Fort Snelling and Conner Prairie dealt with the histories of oppression in their respective locales. Right now, I'm not sure what the best way is to handle sensitive issues like slavery or conflicts with Native Americans in living history contexts, but Tyson got my brain going. I don't think such issues should be ignored, but instead it's important to find a way to acknowledge that bad things happened; history isn't always happy.