Is the Pen Mightier? Can Words Reshape a Historic House?

I've just begun working with the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, CT and spent two days there last week talking with staff about the re-interpretation of Stowe House.  I've known of the organization for a long time and had been impressed with their powerful mission and the wide array of programs they do around a range of social justice issues--expanding out from Stowe's fame as the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin.   So I'm thrilled to be undertaking this project.  On the first day,  we tried to put some of Rainey Tisdale and my brainstorming research into play as about 15 or so of us spent a day puzzling out the connections between audiences and Stowe.  We did audience profiles, thought about multiple intelligences and John Falk's classification of identities in museum visitors.    One element we tried was putting some inspirational quotes by Stowe up on the walls to encourage our own creative thinking.

"The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today."

"There is more done with pens than swords” 

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you until it seems that you cannot hold on for a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time when the tide will turn."

But what's interesting is that, despite Stowe's fame as a writer,  an initial impulse was to continue focusing more the objects in the house and a domestic story that, in fact, could be told anywhere.  But we kept working--and on the second day, a smaller group took the multitude of ideas generated on the first day and went into each room of the house.  We sat on the floor and talked, we wondered about making spaces more accessible and doing away with some period rooms.  We imagined visitors seeing challenging objects and making themselves at home in the parlor.  We talked about different kinds of tours and different kinds of learners.  But we kept coming back to one idea--that this is a site with a story that is about the power of words--that in fact,  Harriet Beecher Stowe's words changed the world and yours could too.

It brought back to mind the Mikhail Bulgakov Museum in Kyiv, Ukraine, where a thoughtful and interpretive effort combines his life story and his novel, The White Guard, into a single tour.   It remains one of the most surprising historic house experiences I've ever had.  And all too few houses create a

How can we create a historic house experience where words are the thing--where we do more with pens than with swords?  And we don't mean a tour that's just talking--but somehow a place where ideas, expressed in words, emerge, swirl, confront,  confuse, clarify, and most importantly, empower visitors to leave the house and do something to make a difference.  Ways to do this are busily emerging and I'll be spending some time this summer in Hartford testing out some of those ideas with both visitors and community members who don't yet connect with the Stowe Center.   In our increasing visual culture--can we make words matter?   Suggestions welcomed!

Experiment in Progress!

What do you think?  About this? or this?  Do you agree?  Do you wonder about?  In developing exhibitions I'm continually challenging museums to get out there to talk to their communities (more to come on a couple projects I'm working on).  And this week in St. John's, Newfoundland,  I saw a great example of the process at the Rooms,  Newfoundland's provincial museum (and art gallery, and archives, all in one place, with a commanding spot atop a hill overlooking the harbor in this small city).

All museum professionals seem to agree that this big overview history exhibits of a place, whatever that place is, are really challenging to develop.   Some people want timelines;  others want lots of text, others want objects that really matter to them, or to see the place where they grew up.  Newfoundland and Labrador (all one province for those of you not from here) is a huge place with a great many stories, so the challenge is a big one.

At the Rooms,  there's a temporary exhibit called Working on History.  It's a bare bones design to share current interpretive thinking on the topic,  put forth already collected visitor feedback,  and along the way, explain a bit about what museums do when we do exhibits and interpret history.   There was something for virtually every kind of learner to respond to in a way they enjoyed.  So here's some of what I saw (and by the way,  thanks The Rooms for letting me take pictures here!)

First, the introductory label sets forth clear expectations in a really brief text.  Exhibit, opening, two key questions, we need your help and feedback. And the informality makes it clear it's not the usual set-in-stone experience. Done!

Six key stories already identified to explore further.  But the text asks for your "words, feelings and ideas,"  not just the open-ended, "what do you think?"   Here's some of the six stories and responses.

Don't like to write?  Here's another alternative:

The middle image is a great reminder to any of us who might be tempted to romanticize childhood stories;  the bottom image depicts St. John's houses, instantly recognizable to residents and visitors.
Don't like to write or draw, but like to have things organized?  How about a timeline?

But those key topics haven't disappeared.  Here's another way of looking at them (words, no images), based on what previous audience work revealed.

But what about those visitors who like the sound of things?  Not an audio installation,  but a chance to share your thoughts, via a paper quiz that you could submit,  testing your knowledge of distinctly Newfoundland words (for instance, one I learned this week, "scrunchions.")

Objects were installed around the outside of the room grouped by the big topic sections.  So visitors got a chance to share feedback there too.  I think the labels do a nice job of modeling possible response, so visitors aren't just facing a blank page.

The museum is experimenting with digital labels so there was a digital label to experiment with--I'll be really interested to see what visitors make of this and how it's eventually used in the exhibit.  It was funny how much less lively this seemed than the rest of the space.

In addition to all the feedback mechanisms,  there were also labels and sections where the museum explained a bit about the process.  A conservation lab was set up and a staff member (not a conservator the day I was there) was on hand to answer questions and a visitor had engaged him in a very lively discussion about fishing issues.  Additional labels talked about storytelling and about using artifacts.  I'd love to see a next steps in this where they talked about and asked visitor feedback on design as well as content.

A colleague and I had an interesting discussion about the limits of visitor feedback in this exhibition that raised more questions than it answered.  What happens to posts that are visitor-generated but fall outside of accepted historical narrative or are more complex politically than a governmental organization is willing to take on?  In crowd-sourcing,  does the crowd produce the most interesting ideas?  How can those outlying but sometimes important ideas be incorporated into the final exhibition?  And how can that final exhibition be lively in the same way as this temporary version?

Much to consider, and a number of ideas I'll be putting to work elsewhere.

Welcome!

Last week, at a workshop with twenty five Connecticut organizations who are part of the StEPs CT program, I began the day by asking participants to share a time they felt really welcome at an museum or historic site--and the group shared a wide range of answers that really expressed the many ways in which visitors want to interact with us  (and, by the way,  it was a great way to shift the day's dynamic from museum worker to museum visitor).

Here's some ways visitors felt welcomed:

• Getting a special peek behind the scenes.
• A tour guide or docent who really engaged and spent time with them.
• A tour guide or staff who really left the visitor alone to explore.
• Knowledgeable docents.
• Front desk people who looked happy to see you,  who looked up when you came in.
• Staff who worked to find out your knowledge and interests.
• Labels that worked at many different levels (although in general, welcoming museums are characterized by people, not labels).
• Labels and lighting big enough and bright enough

But there was one story that I'll paraphrase here that really struck me as important.  One of the participants, a board member at a volunteer organization,  choose to describe a long-ago museum visit.   She remembers walking home from the swimming pool one day when she was a kid, with a few friends, in their swim suits, carrying their towels and for some reason, which she can't now remember, they decided they wanted to visit the historic house they passed on the way.  Marching up to the door,  they rang the door bell.  She doesn't remember paying any admission and thinks the woman working there just let them in for free,  in their swimsuits.   She still remembers what she saw that day, and how exciting it was when the guide took a foot warmer down, opened it up, and let them look inside.  She had a great smile on her face decades on as she shared the story.

Over a great dinner in Minneapolis,  Susie Wilkening and I had a long conversation about engagement with objects and about whether objects really matter.  This story, with the simplest of objects and the most welcoming of museum workers, reinforced for me the power of both people and objects.  It's the combination together that makes museums compelling, unique places.  What's your welcoming story?

Love Those Minnesotan Labels!

Can labels be creative?  Not what's said in them,  but what they look like?  When I say the word "label"  what comes into your head?  A white piece of mat-board with text, mounted on the wall?  At the Minnesota History Center and Mill City Museum (both part of the Minnesota Historical Society)  I saw more inventive, ingenious label installations than I'd ever seen before in a single place.  Over and over again,  text was displayed in surprising ways,  that encouraged me to read more,  to explore, and to appreciate the sense of humor and playfulness that the exhibit teams brought to projects.

Here's just a few examples from several different exhibits.  Above, visitors could hand-crank reproduction sausage through a grinder,  reading a memory of sausage-making as the links spooled along.  Below left,  census information is printed on a (I'm sure) reproduction piece of clothing.  Below right, a silhouette and a informational pillow represent one of the house's earliest residents.

 

Everyone seemed to love this installation in the Greatest Generation exhibit.  Oral histories and photos were printed on paper dry-cleaner bags, and visitors could move the rack around to read. Below, more food story labels, on bread and cans.

And a few more food-related ones--a dining table with signs on the back of chairs,  text on plates, and the simplest of fake food--hand-sewn potatos and wooden carrots.  You could open the oven--and there's the turkey, basted with oral histories.

I watched several families gingerly sit, below, on a bed,  and listen and laugh as their weight triggers an audio segment.

And finally, this one from Mill City.  Because as clever as these labels are,  if they didn't help us towards a "so what?" understanding, then they would just be design tricks.  Instead, each one made the museum feel friendly--like they wanted to sit down and share a compelling story with you or encourage you to consider something new.  After my few days in Minneapolis,  the labels seem to embody Minnesotans--very Minnesota-friendly!   For more information about the Minnesota Historical Society's work on the Open House: If These Walls Could Talk exhibit, where many of these images come from,  be sure and check out Letting Go?: Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World, edited by Bill Adair, Benjamin Filene and Laura Koloski.

Whose Story?

I've been working on my presentation for a session on narrative at the upcoming AAM conference.  Ken Yellis, Deborah Trout-Smith, Susie Wilkening and I will be coming at the topic from different perspectives.  I'm working on thinking about how narrative worked in Soviet museums,  how post-Soviet museums in Ukraine have maintained, adapted or jettisoned that structure, and what thinking about how a different place and culture view narrative might mean for my own work.    Big thoughts all, and not yet in a cohesive place (if you're at AAM,  please join us at our session, Imagining the Past Remembering the Future: The Role of Narrative in Museums on Sunday, May 22 from 4:15-5:30 for some thoughtful conversation around the topic.)

But narrative...I thought of it today as I went through the focus group notes for a local history museum I'm working with.  It happens to be a community I know well,  and I was struck by how many narratives had emerged.  Participants shared hints of compelling narratives about first jobs and first dates;  about teen tragedies and loss;  about the things you did that your parents wouldn't have approved of;  about the influence of well-loved teachers and coaches;  and about how bicycles opened the world to you when you were a kid.  

But fascinatingly,  the narratives from high school students were very different--more circumscribed in some ways.  They felt that there was not much ethnicity in the community (despite the fact that the census tells me residents claim more than two dozen ethnicities in their heritage).   One student  thought immigrants, to his definition, were only from Latin America;  and another thought immigrants just weren't relevant!  Narratives about ethnicity seemed absent from the students' mindsets,  but narratives about economic status seemed much more front and center; and some ideas about race were couched in those economic terms. Of course, it may just be that teenagers don't see very far beyond their own immediate concerns.  In a diverse adult focus group,  participants were much more willing to share their own narratives about race, discrimination, economic status and change.    One of the participants commented about residents who lived in a different part of the city, "You hated them...because they had everything and I had nothing.  I didn't even know them but I didn't like them."  

So how does all this connect to my thinking about post-Soviet narratives?  This local history museum's soon-to-be-redone and outdated permanent exhibit tells a single, straightforward narrative, from settlement forward.   The Soviet system mandated the single narrative approach;  many American museums arrived at single narrative without any dictate from a ministry of culture.   But this museum, like so many others, now has a tremendous opportunity to reach out into the community;  to listen to those stories, to find those narratives, and to, as one participant said, "Open the front door and be bold!" 

That's an opportunity no matter where you are.

Images:  FSA/OWI Collection, Library of Congress.  From a single small farming community, top to bottom:  Mr.and Mrs. Ben Harris, Mr. Miller, Mr. D'Annunzio, Mr. Mirki.

#gallery fsa2000022964/PP