Preservation Across the Seas (Suzhdal, Russia)

This is the cathedral in Suzhdal, Russia. If you look closely, you can see the support planks, etc. I just thought it would be neat to see an international preservationist effort.

Road Trips Through History

Road Trips Through History is an intriguing look at some of America’s buildings, historic districts, and other pieces of history through the eyes of a preservationist. This collection of Dwight Young’s essays brings together a witty and often personal approach to exploring America through its main streets, its monuments, its starry skies, and the successful and unsuccessful preservationist movements surrounding them. These essays offer a unique perspective into the various elements of society that are disappearing for the sake of progress. At times, the essays seem to carry a similar message that progress often means deleting the past, and Young describes just how dangerous that thought can be to one’s history. Young’s Road Trip Through History even takes us to the island of Kizhi, Russia to see the preservation of wooden cathedrals. This compilation of essays appeals to the reader on a personal level, and draws us in by illustrating areas of our culture that many people can relate to, such as the feelings tied to places.
Often times while reading through these essays, I found my memory drifting to similar places: drive-in movies that I frequented as a child that were torn down, main streets that had been preserved in my hometown in PA, or the courthouse in Punta Gorda, FL that has taken years to restore since Hurricane Charley. The essay on Kizhi, Russia’s wooden cathedrals reminded me of one of my awe-inspiring museum moments that I had recently in Suzhdal, Russia. At an outdoor museum, stood an Orthodox Cathedral created entirely out of wood; it was breathtaking. Every angle, every inch of it was captivating and inspiring, and it was being restored. It was almost humorous to look at this building that was quite clearly 17th-18th century architecture being redone in today’s Russia. What that building must have meant to the people of that small town who had lived through so much of their own dramatic history, one can only guess. That feeling of a building making you smile, a front porch feeling like home, a monument remembering something important is universal, just as the need for preservation.
Young’s essays are successful because he covers a wide scope of topics and he does so from a personal perspective. Through explaining how destruction and reconstruction touched not only him, but was visible in others such as in the case of the two women at the Whitelaw, Young brings his arguments home. He does not always go to the most obvious examples, but small town examples which resonate within the individual. He shows the struggles and the triumphs of preservationists; even including one on preservation of the starry sky in New Mexico.
This collection of essays explains the preservation history through personal appeals, witty words, and hometown examples. The author does a wonderful job of exploring preservationist work through several different avenues and this book is a must read for anyone, because it not only reminds us of how important places and history are for us today, but also of how important it is that we continue this work for future generations.

Displays of Power

Steven C. Dubin’s Displays of Power details the struggles and conflicts that emerge for museums in the creation of exhibits. One section describes the remainder of the book and Dubin’s reason for writing. He states that it would be easier if there was a clear cut hero and villain, yet he cites the difficulties with representing anything to completely please everyone. Basically, his purpose for writing is not to show the difficulties of creating an exhibit but examples of issues that arise once an exhibit is completed. Throughout this book, one also gets the view of the changes that occurred in museums such as the Met and others during these time periods and how they changed into forums for discussion, protest, and individual opinions from previous positions as temples.
Dubin describes through each chapter the controversies that arose in connection to exhibits such as Harlem on my Mind, the Gaelic Gotham, the Freud exhibit, The West as America, and the Enola Gay. He shows how shared inquiry and the forum set up can lead to controversies over everything from the name of the exhibit, to accusations of racism, to debates over proper representation. It also shows how the media can play a part in the debate and the furthering of controversy. Dubin succeeds in portraying his argument and his thesis through several examples of exhibits that faced controversy in the 1990s. He centralizes his argument around the emergence of exhibits that directly led to controversy through American cultural and historical subjects.
While not always discussing the entirety of the historical aspect of the exhibition, he does show the different sides that surrounded each event to show how there really is no easy way to pinpoint a hero or a villain in a story, because portraying one side of a story positively can negatively represent others, such as in Harlem on my Mind when they tried to show how within Harlem at this time the Jewish population controlled many upper level job positions. This portrayed the Jewish population in a negative light, which sent the Jewish community into a choir of protests. He shows how arguments can surround a subject from all sides.
The basic sense that emerges from Dubin’s work was that sometimes even the best of intentions can have the worst outcomes. These exhibits, each in their own way, attempted to show a new aspect of American society. The response to each of these was not the most positive, but it does show a truth behind the process that in today’s world, everyone feels they should have and deserve shared authority for representations of history through museums and their displays. Dubin attempts to show the debates in a circular fashion, by looking at not only the time but the issues from all sides. The book shows another side of the museum process, it was not as strong of writing as the Linenthal book, but he does show how not only the creation can be controversial but the result also.

Linenthal Part 2

The end of Linenthal’s book continues the theme of the balancing act that the National Holocaust Memorial Museum underwent in its creation. At times the entire museum planning and creation process appears to be similar to a tight rope walker. It is a continual balance between different sides and between historical details as well. With a subject such as the Holocaust it especially shows the dangers associated with not only planning but executing a museum. Linenthal shows how much research he put into discovering just how the process underwent throughout the years from beginning to end by showing all of the struggles involved.
One aspect of the difficulties that personally stuck out was the dilemma over the use of pictures and using the photos as a means to prove the disbelievers wrong. The first battle was over proving the authenticity of the photos by using the gritty, stained originals rather than fixing them so that those conspiracy theorists in the world could not make the argument that the pictures had been doctored at all. From class, we saw that museums are the most trusted source of historical reference, and to know that a museum dealing with such a large atrocity would be fighting over authenticity over pictures seemed astounding. As well, the importance of showing the photos of the Jewish history that was completely destroyed in the town of Eishishok. This use of these photos portrayed the need for the museum to show the living prior to the beginning of their victimization. This was an interesting approach to the museums creation, because even this caused issues; what pictures would be used, where would they be, how would they be arranged?
Linenthal’s book is a great resource for those who intend to enter the field of museum creation or work in any way shape or form. Through the museum, he shows the arguments, the stresses, the successes and the realities of this work. Before reading this book, it never occurred to me how many different aspects occurred behind the scenes before the doors even opened. The formation of a building that was sufficient for the message, the piecing together of a permanent exhibit that satisfied the people and the victims, the use of artifacts appropriately, and so many more factors all display just how much it all really takes. It breaks the fantasy of it being simple or purely a creative undertaking and shows the reality of it all as a messy, difficult process with a satisfying end (hopefully). This book has forever changed the way I will view the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. and subsequently the way I will most likely view future museums. The attempt to take the memorial beyond its purpose and to make it a teaching tool, a historical piece, and an accurate piece of work to memorialize the millions who died and perished in the Holocaust.

Preserving Memory 1-166

Preserving Memory by Edward Linenthal explores the enormous undertaking of building a memorial to a catastrophic event in world history. He describes the nuts and bolts that accompany the creation of such a memorial and does so through exploring primary accounts from those involved and by researching the process that began in the 1980s. Through his work, he shows how bureaucratic and how difficult creating history for the public can be through the event of the Holocaust. Last week’s readings on sharing authority set the stage for this book quite nicely, yet Linenthal portrays the truth of the process and the trials and tribulations that accompany such an undertaking.
This book and its author successfully illustrate the immense difficulties that occurred within this enormous process and how each side dealt with the weight of the issue. He gives equal notice to the Jewish and non-Jewish sides of the debates. He uses direct quotes from council members, victims, government officials and documents, and many other primary sources to illustrate just how tedious the process was at this time. Through his research, he shows the successes, the trials, and the arguments surrounding this time period. While at times the process of the book becomes repetitive, it was successful in showing the trials of public history and the strain that the process can have on historic events. It illuminates the high and the low points of public history through the eyes of the Holocaust Memorial’s creation in Washington D.C.
Linenthal describes the sensitive issue involved and the many road blocks the council, the government, and those surrounding the event faced. He repetitively covers the time from the beginning of idea conception to the first ground breaking for the memorial. Representing an event of this magnitude, that also happens to be controversial, is an excellent example of the strain a historian can have in representing the facts without trivializing those involved or disrespecting the event in any way, shape, or form. Those involved on the Jewish side of the debate commented regularly on the issue of not allowing the Holocaust to be swept into a political bureaucracy or by being misrepresented. Those on the other side created arguments that all victims should be involved in a memorial and that perhaps America was not an appropriate place for such a memorial.
Linenthal’s book places last week’s readings and understanding of sharing authority into a real life context. The National Holocaust Museum was constantly dealing with the effects of not only being respectful and appropriately honoring those who had died because of the Holocaust but also with the U.S. government and with the public as a whole. The issues between Elie Wiesel, the U.S. bureaucracy, the American public, the Polish-American community, the Jewish-American community and many others showed the issues that arise through shared authority and through public history. Linenthal’s ability to show this reality of public history and of memorializing an event is a historical success and an asset to the field.

Week 2 Readings

Corbett and Miller, What is Public History?, and Presence of the Past address a similar subject of collaboration and engagement between historians and the public. They show the importance of not only portraying the truth of history but also including the public in the equation. All of the readings from this week explore the ultimate importance of the historian and the public working together. They show the importance of the public’s personal engagement with the topic, with the history, and with the historians. The collaborative process, the sharing of authority and inquiry, and the engagement of the public are all explored through these works. The week’s theme of the intertwining of the process of public history through the public and the historical process shows how important it is when working within public history to engage not just colleagues within the field, but also to make it relatable personally and academically to those who hold the history in their own background and in their own everyday lives.
Presence of the Past addresses the topic of Public History by exploring it through the research path of oral history. This is accomplished through interviews with over one thousand individual Americans; including interviewees randomly selected, and over six hundred African Americans, American Indians, and Mexican Americans. Within the context of these interviews, the participants were asked several questions regarding the “past”. The surveyors purposely strayed from the usage of the term “history” because it was shown to have a negative connotation attached with it; including the negative response that the authors show comes from high school history. Therefore the results follow accordingly to this pattern, and people interpreted the past to relate more often to their familial lines and ways of preserving that past. The authors appeared to have picked the results for their book that fit the best with each other while only slightly noting the variations that occurred. These results showed that people felt no connection to a cohesive history through high school history, and the book actually tends to focus much more on how people relate to their own personal history, not necessarily the history of museums or of the United States. The authors stated that their argument was that that people pursue the past actively and that it is in fact a part of their everyday lives. Throughout Presence of the Past, Rosenzweig and Thelen argue this point through their research and findings through their interviews. However, the book does not drastically alter the field of history, it does attempt to alter the criticism that a lot of academics hold to be true, that Americans are just not interested or knowledgeable with history. The main issue with this book is that it does not directly address the exact criticism but instead shows what Americans are historically interested and active in, which is most often topics that directly affect the individual’s lives. The book succeeds in showing how Americans are involved in history, and it shows history at the basic level, the individual.