“Surrender the Chronology!” doesn’t quite have the same stirring nature as other
well-known battle cries beloved by military historians, but in the re-interpretation of
historic houses, it might be even more important. I’ve been thinking about it ever since a meeting at the
Harriet Beecher Stowe Center a couple weeks ago, as we continue our work in
rethinking the interpretation of Stowe’s house. This meeting brought together historians, staff, and
me. And a very distinguished group
of historians they were, with two Pulitzer-prize winners among them.
As we thought about Stowe’s story, about the mix of her own
personal story and that of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, her story that helped change our
view of the world we found ourselves struggling with so many ideas about how to
tell those connected stories, in a house where she lived at the end of her
life, not when she was writing the book.
So there’s no shrine of room with pens and paper (I well remember the room in the Berkshires
where Melville penned much of Moby Dick), there’s no great battlefield outside
the door; and in fact, there’s a next-door-neighbor with a grand house and a
pretty big story of his own (Hi Mark Twain!)
At one point in the process, historian Lois Brown said, “Surrender the
chronology! What would happen if
every room were not a planned sequence, but each room was its own tempest in a
teapot?” We started
thinking.
- What if we surrender the chronology of Stowe’s life, but what if we also surrendered the chronology (perhaps the tyranny) of a sequenced tour?
- Could you start a tour anywhere?
- End anywhere?
- Could we create small tempests in each room?
- What’s the balance between comfort and disruption on a tour?
- What would our visitors think?
- What will make people return? The chance of a new disruption?How could we best create these situations? Are the skills needed for guides not those of historians, but those of actors, facilitators, disruptors?
- Do we need not a single best answer, but a whole palette of choices and how can we build that into the re-interpreted experience both physically and conceptually?
In this and following conversations, we talked about drawing
our inspiration from other models—not just historic houses. Movies and novels both have
flashbacks. What if the house were
a series of short stories, rather than a single narrative? Is it like a version
of a Choose Your Own Adventure game?
What role can imagination—our own and our visitors—play in the
experience?
We've identified our key idea (thanks to earlier visitor conversations)--it's the idea of courage, about how Stowe found the courage within herself to write this book--and how all of us might find the courage to seek change and social justice as well. We'll continue to talk to visitors and non-visitors about exciting ways to present this idea--but it's very clear that we've now been challenged by historians and by audiences to think deeper about how we present ideas to visitors. We want to have the courage to shape a historic house experience unlike any other, helping to meet these important parts of the Stowe Center's mission, "promote vibrant
discussion of her life and work, and inspire commitment to social
justice and positive change." We expect that we'll experiment, we'll fail, and we'll keep trying, failing, and experimenting, learning along the way. In our professional lives, we hope that we inspire other historic houses to take risks as well. Surrender the chronology!
Center Image:
Participants included Joan Hedrick, Pulitzer Prize winning biographer of Harriet Beecher Stowe; Debby Applegate, Pulitzer
Prize winning biographer of Henry Ward Beecher; Susan Campbell, author
of the forthcoming biography of Isabella Beecher Hooker; Lois Brown,
Wesleyan professor of African American Studies and English along with
museum consultant Linda Norris and Stowe staff. Courtesy of Stowe Center.
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