Reminders of Our Failures

Finally, back to posting about our session earlier this month at the TICCIH conference. I was privileged to be on a panel with Moulshri Joshi, a member of the architectural team who won the competition award for plans for a memorial at the site of the Union Carbide gas tragedy in Bhopal, India.

In her passionate presentation, she raised some provocative questions:

• Can our understanding of heritage be extended to include reminders of our failures as well as tokens of our past glories?
• Is the attempt to eradicate symbols of failure and suffering effectively a selective overwriting of history, in order to construct a more appropriate collection identity?
• How inclusive are our notions of the collective identity which we seek to preserve and how far such an identity would represent narratives of the marginalized?

The challenges at Bhopal are many. The site is still contaminated and the city is rapidly encroaching. There are competing ideas about how the site should be used: should funds be used to improve the lives of those affected by the tragedy still living in poverty? What should the memorial be like? A park? a monument? And it will probably be years before any scheme is completed. But I found much in common between Bhopal and Chernobyl.

My own talk was framed around the ways in which the disaster at the Chernobyl is interpreted and presented both at Chernobyl itself, at the Chernobyl museum in Kyiv, and at the information center in Slavutich and online at Pripyat.com, a website operated by former residents of Pripyat, the abandoned city near Chernobyl. All of these sites are different, telling different stories. At Chernobyl and in Pripyat itself, it's left to the visitor to make sense of the story. It is a place of highly individualistic meaning-making. At the Chernobyl Museum in Kyiv, it seems to me to be primarily a memorial story; in Slavutich, the city built to replace Pripyat, the story is one of the plant and those who worked there--and a memorial to them as well.



In thinking about my presentation, I drew on the work of the International Coalition of Historic Sites of Conscience, to consider the ways in which these sites of tragedy--of failure, as Moulshri notes--could provide a place for discussion and conversation about not just the past, but the future. These sites are everything but easy. The Coalition's work addresses questions such as:

• How can sites like these both acknowledge private experiences and encourage public participation?
• What reactions do sites like these engender: memory, horror, voyeurism, fear, action?
• Can museums or sites that encourage discussion be state-run or must they be independent?
• How, and should, multiple perspectives be shown at these sites?
• How will these memorials involve new generations who have no memory of the event?

When I worked with photographer Michael Forster Rothbart on his Chernobyl exhibit in Kyiv Kyiv last spring, we conducted visitor evaluations. Some results from our (admittedly unscientific) survey (and special thanks to Natasha and all the volunteers for all their work on collecting and translating these). One question--before you visited this exhibit, what thoughts came to mind? Some of the answers:

• Radiation
• Sad, frightening and hopeful
• Danger
• The place of lost technologies
• Nothing good, ecological catastrophe
• I was there, nothing good
• Suffering of the whole world
• Ukraine is not Chernobyl

Think of the challenges of developing a museum, exhibit or memorial around visitor reactions like that. It's very unusual in Ukraine for audiences to be asked what they would like to see in an exhibit. When we asked about what other information viewers would like presented in an exhibit (particularly to foreigners), here's some of the answers:

• That it might affect people right now
• To remind us of what we already know all the time.
• We know enough [visitor from Italy]
• More truthful information, all the information available
• Show foreigners that Ukraine is not the country of freaks
• The info is shown from one side, but there was a lot of horror as well
• Information about people who died protecting others. Foreigners should know the truth
• Everything, the more the better

That last comment, "the more the better," is the take-away for me from this conference session and my talented colleagues. The more we share, talk, discuss, and debate both our successes and failures, whether it's industrial history or any other kind of history, the greater the chances are for understanding and change. Museums and historic sites have unique opportunities to be this kind of space. A space where transparency matters.



Top: Union Carbide plant, Bhopal, from jphangoo on Flickr.
Center and bottom: Pripyat, Ukraine

Inside Chernobyl: Life Goes On

The title of this post is the title of the exhibition of photographs by Michael Forster Rothbart, supplemented by some important additions by Chernobyl staff member Alexander Kupny, that opened yesterday in Schvencko Park in Kyiv. For my Ukrainian readers--it will be up in the park for the next two weeks, so please stop by to see it.

For me, some take-away lessons and reminders from this project:



People Matter
Many Ukrainian museums present history in the abstract. This exhibition takes a different, more direct and personal approach. Michael and his colleagues focused on five families who work at Chernobyl today. So the exhibit tells the story of Slavutich, the community where they live, and the Chernobyl plant, through sharing a bit of their lives. Life does go on at Chernobyl, to the great surprise of many here in Ukraine and throughout the world. Today, more than 3800 people still work at the plant. It was wonderful that several of the families were able to make it to Kiev for the opening and to watch them take a look at themselves on the panels in the park. Very pleased, I think.



People Matter Part 2
Any exhibit project is never done by a single person. With financial support from the US Embassy and the Chernobyl Shelter project--and of course the Fulbright Program that made it possible for both Mike and I to be here--Michael worked with a loosely formed collective that ranged from Oleh, a graphic designer in Kharkhiv; to Vasily, whose attention to detail --and those many small nuances--made the production of banners and stands a success; to volunteers Irina, who undertook complicated and sometimes endless seeming negotiations for the site and a million other issues and Natasha, who coordinated the publicity and put together a great group of other young volunteers to help out; Anna, who worked on complex translations, and many others, including staff from the US Embassy, who provided critical assistance. And of course, a fruitful day of brainstorming by my students at Kyiv-Mohyla helped jump start our thinking in new directions. In any project, I always learn lessons about working with people--this was no exception. (My apologies for first names only--I need to check last name spelling, the bane of my existence here, of all the team.)



People Matter Part 3
This project was a great example of why I love doing exhibit projects. It's not for me, or for the museum--but for the audience. Even before we put all the panels up, passersby were stopping by to read--really read--the text and look at the images. People stopped and talked to us about the exhibit and talked to each other. Watching people engage with the stories of Slavutich residents (Slavutichians?) was wonderful--exactly what I hoped for, when, back on a dark January day, I said, "Michael, wouldn't it be fun to have it outdoors?" It is fun.



People Matter Part 4
It's rare for museums here to do any sort of exhibit evaluation. We really wanted to know what people think about this project, so volunteers are conducting survey interviews over the next two weeks. I'll post more about the results when I get some of the feedback and I'll have some of the information for my Idea Lounge session next week at AAM (Friday, 8:00 AM).

And, People Matter Part 5
It's always important to take time to be proud of finishing an exhibit--it's the time when all those bumps along the way begin to recede. We were very pleased that the US Ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, the mayor of Slavutich, and other dignitaries joined us to celebrate the exhibit's opening.



Top to Bottom:
Viewing the exhibit panel about Slavutich
Michael thanking Irina Leonenko
Crowd views the exhibit
Surveyors at work
Michael and dignitaries

Idea Lounge at AAM: Chernobyl

Interested to learn more about Chernobyl? My fellow Fulbrighter Michael Forster Rothbart's exhibition on today's workers at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant will open here in Kyiv on April 23 and be up for the anniversary of the accident on April 26th.

But you don't have to come to Kyiv to learn more. At the American Association of Museums Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, on Friday, May 1, at 8 AM, I'll be leading an Idea Lounge session discussing environmental issues and exhibitions framed about what I've learned here.

Here's a bit of what we will discuss:

• How can affected communities actively participate in the development of environmental exhibitions?
• Should exhibits be developed that explore both humanitarian and scientific issues?
• How do issues of geography, politics and place influence our interest and engagement with these issues?
• Can museum exhibits bring about changes in social or environmental behaviors?

Big questions for only an hour, but I look forward to a lively discussion. In addition, if you're attending AAM and just want to learn more about Ukraine in general, or my time as a Fulbright Scholar, I'd be happy to meet with you. Just get in contact with me via email.

My Day as a Disaster Tourist: Visiting the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

Voyeur, witness to history, curiousity-seeker, tourist, intruder, and guest: I felt like I was some part of all these when I visited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone last weekend. It's a visitor experience like no other I can remember, to a historic site that is like no other. It's interesting--I live close to New York City, but have never visited the site of the Twin Towers since 9/11. But I did take the opportunity to visit the site of the world's worst nuclear accident.



The trip was organized by Pripyat.com, an international NGO founded by a group who had lived in Pripyat as children. What's Pripyat? It's the city that was built to house the workers at the Chernobyl plant--both the plant and the city were built in the 1970s. Just 2 km from the plant, the city housed 50,000 people and was designed as an exemplary town by the Soviets. But then the accident at the Chernobyl plant happened, spewing radiation into the air across Europe and of course contaminating nearby Pripyat. The Soviet government's decision: without telling the residents full details of the accident, they were evacuated within a 24 hour period shortly after the accident--and the city was abandoned, most residents leaving with only what they could carry of their lives. The initial goal of Pripyat.com was to provide a place for former residents of the town to connect with neighbors and share information--it's now grown to be a major center for information about Chernobyl and the region.

What did we visit?



Leaving Kyiv early in the morning, a bus full of mostly young people, almost all Ukrainians and Russians, headed towards Chernobyl, stopping at check points at the 30 km border of the Zone and then the 10 km border. We then stopped at Chernobyl town, a town that existed before the nuclear plant and is now half-abandoned, half still lived in by workers at the plant. After a brief orientation, the bus headed off through scrub forest and, as we rounded a curve, the curved cooling tower came into view, followed by the never -completed reactors 5 and 6, with their construction cranes still in the air, unmoving for almost 25 years. Next is the site of the accident itself: Block 4, where the explosion and fire happened. This block is now covered by a sarcophagus, that is about to undergo a multi-billion dollar replacement process. In effect, the sarcophagus is the right name-- just was a way to bury the problem.



It's a very strange thing to stop, get out, and be with other tourists taking pictures of the plant, posed in front of the memorial. I found it particularly unusual that people wanted to take pictures of their friends posing in front of the plant. Why would you want that picture? To demonstrate that you were there? But I did, admit, take pictures as well. As I looked at the plant, though, tears did come to my eyes. It just represented, not the safety or danger of nuclear power, but a real sense of folly, and a sense of how little the Soviet Union cared for its own people. In addition to those living near the plant, more than 800,000 clean-up workers called liquidators were ordered to help clean up the disaster and their health problems remain a critical concern.



From there we went to Pripyat--and got out of the bus to spend 3 hours on foot exploring a totally abandoned city. Somehow the work I do has led me to many abandoned places from factories to resorts, but this was different. First, it was just the scale of it--50,o00 is alot of people and even though this Soviet city had less of some things than Western cities of the same size, there are still living spaces for 50,000, stores, post office, a sports palace and a house of culture, schools, and more. And every space, just abandoned. Some places are full of objects--the kindergarten building, for instance, but in others, looters have removed much of what is there over the last several decades.



I was struck by the resilience of nature. It is slowly taking over--trees and shrubs growing up, and we were told that wolves had been spotted. There's considerable debate about the effects of the accident on the natural world here--some people advocate that removing humans was good for the environment, others are continuing to study the effects of radiation on species of all kinds.



And it was quiet--imagine being in a place where there are no sounds: no traffic, no people, no sort of any of the sounds that now make up our daily lives, almost wherever we live. Just the wind. You expect to be in the country with these sounds, not surrounded by high-rise apartment buildings.



In talking about historic sites with my colleagues, we've often spoken about places that have a feel of the former residents. In ways that are hard to determine, the spirit of a house's residents often linger. Sometimes it's the objects that remain, but somehow it seems less definable than just that. And here in Pripyat, the spirit did linger. You could imagine swimming at the pool, living in your little Soviet apartment with the padded entry door (as I do now), walking the streets with your child. It is now a place of only memories, and for former residents, the memories are not solely those of the accident, but of a place and a time that they called home.



Pripyat.com is working on getting the site declared a national park (that's not quite the term here, but the concept is the same) and to convert the site to a museum. I don't quite know how that would work-- I think many people should see it, but at the same time many people seeing it would unalterably change the power of the experience.



The decades of Soviet rule here in Ukraine has meant that information is still, in many ways, carefully guarded. Scholars are reluctant to share their work; museums worry about digitizing collections online, and the idea of opening up museums to other voices and other perspectives is a new approach. And at Chernobyl, it was a two full weeks after the accident that the government even admitted something more significant than a fire had happened at the site. For me, the trip reinforced my conviction that we are all best served by an open society and a free press. Some argue that the accident and the aftermath hastened the end of the Soviet Union.



So although the visual memories of the site will long stay with me, I'm particularly impressed by Pripyat.com's desire and commitment to create a place on the web that connects people and invites a full sharing of memories and information. Their work can serve as a collaborative model for sharing other aspects of Ukraine's history.

And yes, when you leave the zone you go through two different radiation checks. In general, the radiation you receive is less than you get on a flight to London from here.

Inside Chernobyl

Just an update to my last post. I struggled to convey my thoughts as I merely looked at images of the accident. Imagine what it must be like to be inside the damaged areas of the plant itself. My friend and colleague Michael Forster Rothbart, the photographer working on documenting Chernobyl affected communities has just written a thoughtful and compelling post (with pictures) about his visit inside the power plant and the trip inside the now-abandoned Control Room 4. Read the entire post on his blog.

Understanding Chernobyl

I remember much talk at one point in among American museums about collecting the 20th century: Barbie dolls, Tupperware, and more. Those objects--and those conversations-- seem simple in comparison with my experience today. I visited a place that's charged with interpreting an incredibly complex event of the 20th century---the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The interpreting is done by the Information Center of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Slavutich, about 150 miles outside of Kiev--I suppose, a sort of industrial history museum, operated by the power plant itself. There's a Chernobyl Museum here in Kiev, which I haven't visited yet, but Slavutich is the new town, constructed after the accident, to house people from the contaminated city of Priypat, now totally abandoned. 3800 Slavutich residents still work at the Chernobyl plant. So the history here is not a theoretical one, but one that affected every single resident of Slavutich and continues to affect them in many ways.

The exhibit starts as many industrial history exhibits do, with the construction of the plant which opened in 1971; after several years of exceptional performance, they were awarded a special certificate--a sort of naming of the plant connected to Lenin. But then, literally, time stops as the accident occurs--something represented by a large stopped clock and date at the end of the room--on April 26, 1926, at 1:23 AM, during a safety test, a power surge overheated reactor 4 which then exploded, sending massive amounts of radiation into the air, crossing international borders. It's hard to imagine, in these days of twitter, cell phone photos and the Internet, how much the Soviets controlled information. The residents of Priypat, the nearest town, where radiation was incredibly high, were only informed that there had been an accident, mostly contained.

We were shown around the museum by Sergei Kasyanchuk, director of the museum, who has made it his life's work to document and collect material about the plant, the accident and the aftermath. Along with first photo taken of the burned out reactor after the explosion, taken from the air, there are photos of workers in hardly any protective clothing, funerals, and a guest book from the small museum in Pripyat, the last entry from the day before the accident.



Three sections of the exhibition will stay with me a long time--one is that large image of the burned out reactor with the stopped clock. The second is the memorial room, a red circular space featuring images of the men and women who were workers at the plant the night of the accident and died immediately or soon thereafter. Many died in Moscow, where they had been evacuated to for treatment, and are buried there as well, quietly, with no ceremony, in lead coffins. Without any text other than names, the space invites contemplation.



The last was perhaps the most surprising. The rest of the plant, 3 other reactors, was not shut down until December 2000, by Leonid Kuchma, then president of a newly independent Ukraine. A panel in the exhibit shows the ceremonies of the plant workers. At a place where many were frightened, others killed, and whose very name has become a synonym for disaster, these workers commemorated the final charted records and placed carnations on top of the reactor, the place that had been their work home for years.

Sergei continues to work and collect information about the accident. The end of the Soviet Union (hastened, some say, by Chernobyl and the aftermath), has made his research easier, but his dedication helped to remind me how important the work of museums can be in commemorating, sharing and documenting difficult stories.

Top to bottom:
Sergei Kasyanchuk at the large mural
Memorial Room
Plant closing Panel

Conceptualizing Exhibits Part 2

Yesterday, Michael Forster Rothbart, Sergii Mirnyi and Irina Leonenko joined my class to discuss how to conceptualize an exhibit of Michael and Sergii's work documenting communities affected by Chernobyl. Sergii gave an overview of the disaster within the context of other disasters; Michael then shared photos of his work. We gave the students, working in small groups, the tasks of developing a big idea for the exhibit (and now I noticed my students, when speaking in Russian or Ukrainian, use the English phrase, Big Idea--perhaps my contribution equivalent to Internet or mobile phone). They also had to edit a group of about 50 photos into a the big idea, think of 2-3 subthemes, and develop one interactive for their theme. We then discussed the exhibits using a simplified form of the Excellent Judges exhibit framework.

They did an amazing job! Four different, thoughtful ideas all surfaced.

My Last Day at ChAes (the Chernobyl plant): Oksana. Alexander, Nadya
This group chose a group of photos to personify a worker on his last day working at the plant. They used a set of photos to take him through the day, with the soundtrack by Kraftwerk, "Radio Activity," which one student managed to download on their cell and play during their presentation. Most interestingly, they ended the exhibition with a computer station linked to the most popular job-hunting website here, and a poster with tear-offs with the "hero" of our story looking for a job. Unemployment is a critical issue here, and they effectively tied the story of one man's time at Chernobyl to a broader contemporary issue.



Chernobyl: A Wave to Life: Anna, Katia, Anna, Maria and Katerina
This presentation used different levels of layering. On one level, it used a time line to explore the effects of radiation and the accident--from an older person with cancer to a young person just beginning her life now. At the same time, they layered it in concentric circles, as radiation spread out from the site itself. And a wave to life? A nod to waves of radiation, and to hopefulness. One class member questioned the time line within the context of Michael's photos--because they are all taken within the last year, rather from the last twenty-plus years. But others felt the photos were appropriate because they showed the consequences and the future within the time span.



Chernobyl: Not What You Think: Anna, Miriam, and Katerina
This group, who also had a sound track (which I can't remember the name of) took a compare and contrast approach. Beginning with a photo of Michael's showing tourists posing on an excursion to Chernobyl, the first section was Tourists' View, with photos and words saying radiation, threat, tragedy, forgotton cities, abandoned homes. For the Residents' View, they used the photos that showed village life; the everyday life of people who live and work in the Chernobyl region. Interestingly, they used markers to embellish these photos, in a way, using highly simplified versions of motifs found in Ukrainian folk arts.



Dead Zone Alive: Yana, Julia, Irina, Alyona
This team also used the concentric circle (which Sergii had drawn on the board for his presentation) but started with a foggy picture of a house at the center--which they described as far, at at the same time, near. Theirs was not necessarily a circle of radiation, but rather a way to show that those affected by Chernobyl were tied together, but at the same time spread out. They used the first person for their presentation, making labels for the photos that included, "We want to move on," "We laugh and love," "We care about our health," "We can be happy," and "We have annoying guests," (those tourists again). The interactive idea: tour guides in the exhibit dressed and presenting as actual villagers.

What were the take-aways for our exhibit team from my students' great work? One, that the story works best when it is personally compelling, rather than just a broad narrative. We all can connect to human stories of both tragedy and everyday life.

Second, that there is a difference between the way Ukrainians view Chernobyl and the way outsiders do, and that exhibits here and in the US might be very different. Michael had one photo of a Holomodor observance and asked the class if they thought it should be included. Holomodor, for those like me, who had never heard of it before beginning to learn about Ukraine, is the Great Hunger of 1932-33. A famine, but not just any famine, but a famine created and enforced by Stalin, intentionally starving millions of Ukrainians. One student thought it should not be included, but another strongly felt that it should, because both Chernobyl and Holomodor represent two tragedies caused by the Soviets. In the US, that's alot of explaining to do (there have been Holomodor exhibits at at least one Ukrainian museum in the US in the past year but I still think it is unfamiliar to most).

And third, that a big idea is always a tough thing to write and that it's work best done in a group process, using the skills and ideas of many. Special thanks to all my students for their creative, passionate, enthusiastic work in a process new to them.

Class photos by Irina Leonenko

Chernobyl Today

I find I haven't yet written about the project here in Ukraine that I've spent perhaps the most time thinking and talking about--two exhibits about Chernobyl. My involvement in the project has come through the happy circumstance of my living situation here in Ukraine. As I began to look for a place to live last fall, fellow Fulbrighter and photographer Michael Forster Rothbart emailed me to say he was looking for a roommate--so luckily for both of us, we now share an apartment and a great deal of conversation about his project--which is documenting, in photographs and interviews, contemporary life in the Chernobyl area today.

Most of the world knows Chernobyl as the world's worst nuclear accident, but most don't know much else about it--I certainly didn't, and I won't attempt to explain it in detail here. Enough to say that the sheer numbers of people affected is staggering: 2393 Ukrainian villages were contaminatd by radiation and 116,000 people were relocated from their homes around Chernobyl. Chernobyl is an event with massive environmental and public health consequences but it is also an event that, for all those many thousands of people, meant an irretrievable disruption of life as they had known it.



Michael's work examines the questions about what having a nuclear accident in your backyard means almost 25 years after the fact: how has it affected families and communities? what are the prospects for change? what is it like to be one of the 4000 people who still work at the plant? How do communities survive through a crisis like this and how are new communities created? What is the role of memory and tradition? Why should we, as Americans or Ukrainian, care about these villages and the people who live there? What relevance does it have to our lives?



We're working on plans for two exhibits: one, in partnership with Sasha, a photographer currently working at the Chernobyl plant, will be limited in scope and will focus in life at the plant itself and the community of Slavutich, where most of the plant workers live. We hope to have it here in Kyiv on the anniversary of Chernobyl and then at the small museum in Slavutich. Our goal is to have it in an outdoor setting so as many people as possible can see it.

The second, larger project is a longer term plan for an exhibition both at the Chernobyl Museum here in Kyiv, in the villages, and at museums in the United States. Plans are just beginning to develop, but we've talked about a whole variety of approaches. My informal role in all this is to be an advocate for audiences, to think about ways to expand and deepen the experience and to provide some help in how museums work in thinking about traveling exhibitions. If you're interested in learning more, or feel that it might be something of interest to your museum audience, please let me know. This coming week, my students will be working with Michael and his colleague Sergii Mirnyi to brainstorm ideas from their own perspectives about the exhibition--I look forward to many minds at work!



Top to bottom:
Chernobyl liquidator Leonid Budkovsky
Chernobyl cancer survivors Lydia and Viktor Gaidak
An inactive information panel in Control Room 1 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant showed the status of all the fuel rods in the reactor pool.
An elderly woman prays during a service at the small Ukrainian church in Novo Ladizhichi village. "New Ladizhichi" was built in 1987 to house evacuees from the original village of Ladizhichi following the 1986 Chernobyl accident.
All images copyright Michael Forster Rothbart