Living History Museums and the Construction of the Real through Performance

2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Magelssen
Keyword(s):  
Living History ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
Public Display ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Living History Museums ◽  
Historical Sites

The narrative fabric of modern history, writes Roland Barthes, tends to be woven with a certain amount of “useless” details, which, though they are ultimately “filling” (“catalysis”), nonetheless have “indisputable symbolic value.” As a consequence, the past two centuries have seen the “development of techniques, of works and institutions based on the incessant need to authenticate the ‘real.’” These techniques include photography, reportage, exhibitions, and, I would like to emphasize, “the tourism of monuments and historical sites”—the subject of this essay. Indeed, for the tourist, the symbolic value accorded the minutiae on display at historic sites, preserved or re-created for public display, seem to be the very elements that guarantee real history, despite the fact that many of these details are often the most conjectural elements.

Resuscitating the Extinct: The Backbreeding of Historic Animals at U.S. Living History Museums

2003 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 98-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Magelssen
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Living History ◽  
History Museum ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Mad Scientist ◽  
Living History Museums ◽  
Living History Museum

The shift to “living interpretation” in the second half of the 20th century redirected the trajectory of museum work. Living bodies were said to give a more real experience of the past than could historic objects. But what about those pigs, cows, chickens, and sheep found at every major living history museum? Nowadays museums seek rare breeds or they breed contemporary animals to bring them closer to descriptions found in historic documents. What are the ethical and political implications of “backbreeding”? Will museums determine that some backbreeding is legitimate, while others are the stuff of mad-scientist films?

The End of History Museums: What's Plan B??

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Carson
Keyword(s):  
Historic Sites ◽  
The Public ◽  
End Of History ◽  
House Museums ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Plan B ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Way

Abstract Are historic sites and house museums destined to go the way of Oldsmobiles and floppy disks?? Visitation has trended downwards for thirty years. Theories abound, but no one really knows why. To launch a discussion of the problem in the pages of The Public Historian, Cary Carson cautions against the pessimistic view that the past is simply passéé. Instead he offers a ““Plan B”” that takes account of the new way that learners today organize information to make history meaningful.

Doing Grassroots Public History

2018 ◽  
pp. 153-165
Author(s):  
Grey Osterud
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public History ◽  
Labor Union ◽  
Living History ◽  
Family Farming ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Generational Relationships ◽  
Research And Education ◽  
Living History Museums

Grey Osterud completed Putting the Barn before the House: Women and Family Farming in Early Twentieth-Century New York, which was supported by the Prelinger Award, twenty years after her first study of gender and generational relationships in a rural community. This chapter reflects on the constraints and opportunities of being a public historian, as well as the dynamic connections between feminist activism and grassroots-oriented research and education programs. It traces Osterud’s trajectory from Boston’s Bread and Roses through living-history museums and labor union workshops to her current vocation as a freelance editor helping authors in African American and women’s history reach wider audiences.

A Tale of Two Missions

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 10-39
Author(s):  
Debora Ryan ◽  
Emily Stokes-Rees
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Living History ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Public Consumption ◽  
Living History Museums

This paper is an examination of the use of Native content in two contrasting sites, Sainte-Marie among the Hurons in Midland, Ontario, and Skä•noñh–Great Law of Peace Center in Syracuse, New York. These two sites share a common history, not only as early French settlements, but also as living history museums established in the twentieth century to memorialize and celebrate seventeenth-century Jesuit missions. Revisiting them today reveals their transformation into two very different museum models, incorporating very different methods of presenting indigenous knowledge. The authors consider how two distinct narratives have evolved in the twenty-first century, and how public memory continues to shape visitor expectations. The paper adds to the conversation about museums’ continuing incorporation of diverse historical narratives into their interpretation and programming as well as a rethinking of the ways in which we produce history for public consumption.

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