Where's Your 21st Century Community?

If you're a local or regional history museum,  what are you documenting about your local community today?  You might be collecting flyers,  or hand-made quilts, or signs from downtown stores.  But this summer, my husband, Drew Harty, has embarked on a project that's made me both think deeply about our communities today and wonder about their future.  And what, we as museums, might be doing about this.

Drew's spending three months looking at and photographing those places that we see almost every day, but we really almost never look at--those retail landscapes at the edge of your town--at the edge of really almost every town and city, large and small.   He's undertaken this project because he wonders,

What have we lost as towns across the country look increasingly the same? Are Retail Landscapes changing our standards for what is unique and beautiful in our communities? Are these places that are so familiar to all of us changing our expectations of what a community should be?

What could a history museum do to further this conversation?  I think we need to go deeper than just exhibits highlighting once thriving Main Streets.   Perhaps we could engage in conversations about beauty,  or projects that encourage a thoughtful exploration of placemaking.   Could an exhibit highlight the places all of the goods in our community come from?  How can we encourage young people to think beyond the shiny newness of strip malls and big boxes?  How can we force ourselves to go beyond a simple, class-related dismissal of these places ("oh, I never shop at Wal-Mart") to creating our museums as an alternative, as a place where everyone in our community feels as welcome as they do at Wal-Mart?

Drew's speculated at what viewers one hundred years from now will think about these images.  Will they be as quaint and outdated as those horse and buggy main streets?  Or will they be so, so, so familiar that shots of fields, farm and neighborhoods are the true exotics?

So, museum folks, what say you?  And, by the way, you have until midnight, this Wednesday, June 19,  to help Drew's project along the way by supporting him at the crowd funding site USA Projects and you can see regular updates on his Tumblr feed.

How About Some Delicious History? Our Annotated Dinner

I've been thinking about food and museums quite a bit lately.  An article on what museums can learn from the Pickle Project is forthcoming in Museums and Social Issues and I've just been accepted as a participant in the National Council on Public History's Working Group Public History and the Local Food Movement at the 2013 conference in Ottawa, where Cathy Stanton of Tufts University and Michelle Moon of the Peabody Essex Museum have put together a great group to explore ways in which those of us who work in public history can forge stronger connections and deepen conversations with local food producers and those who promote local and regional food.

But this past week I had a tremendous opportunity to see food history, the local food movement, and interpretation all wrapped up into one delicious package at an annotated dinner with the Context Travel staff in London.  Art historian and food scholar Janine Catalano worked with St. John,  one of the premier restaurants in London and a pioneer in reintroducing regional British cooking,  to produce a dinner that helped us understand the history of food in London, in a physical sense (St. John is right by Smithfield Market, a livestock or meat market for 800 years), an intellectual sense, a historical sense and a sense of what's new.

"But what is an annotated dinner?"  you may be thinking.  Exactly what it sounds like.  With each course (and there were many)  Janine (above)  artfully guided us through history, using historic images passed around,  brief readings from primary sources, while also helping us learn about the current state of the local food movement in Britain.

What did we eat? All delicious...

• Radishes and carrots
• Oysters and crabs--wrote Samuel Pepys in 1661, "I entertained them with talk and oysters until one o'clock and then we sat down to dinner." 
• Roast bone marrow and parsley salad
• Pigs head and potato pie--definitely the thing on the menu that sounds the strangest--but absolutely delicious! 
• Roast beef accompanied both by a reproduction of William Hogarth's 1748 painting The Gate of Calais or O, the Roast Beef of Old England and horseradish.
• Brussels sprouts greens and potatos 
• Eccles Cakes and Lancashire Cheese
• Poached Quince and Brioche

 

It struck me that this kind of interpretive effort, in a restaurant, is something that many of us who work in museums could undertake.  I think sometimes we're too often stuck in our own places,  worried about our own lack of kitchens, or what will happen in our historic house.  We were in the simplest of rooms,  with white butcher paper on the table,  so no worries about precious artifacts,  but the history--and current issues--came alive. 

In my conversations with Context docents we've been talking about using all of our senses, not just sight,  to convey the meaning and texture of a physical place.  The salty briny taste of oysters;  the slightly unctuous feel of the pig head and potato pie,  and the crispy sound of a radish bite, all made the heritage of British food come alive.

And what could be better than learning new things while gathered around a table with a group of friends?

A Bear Skull, a Witches Charm and Me: Connecting Story, Place and Objects in London

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As a part of my work for Context Travel, I’m currently in London with their staff and yesterday, we took a walk along the south side of the Thames;  and today at the British Museum I saw Shakespeare Staging the World, a special exhibition devoted to exploring how Shakespeare’s plays reflected the time when London was emerging as  a world city;  and the ways he shaped a sense of national identity (and, in no small measure, how his sense of the world continues to matter to us today).

It’s meaningful to be in a place and then see objects related to it—even ones that seem small.  Yesterday, our great, enthusiastic guide Carolyn stopped us at Bear Lane and talked about bear-baiting as a spectator sport, even quoting from Samuel Pepys diary entry.  Today in the exhibition I encountered a bear skull, with its teeth filed down, excavated from the site of the new Globe Theater, a handwritten poster for bear baiting, along with a quote from Shakespeare on the same topic.  The place, the object, the document and the literary source, all connected.

On the walk along the Thames, the river served as the ongoing central focus;  from Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind and the docks to the survival of St. Paul’s during World War II despite German bombers ability to follow the reflection of the river during bombing runs. And in the exhibit, Shakespeare's historical plays, Italian plays and more  made me remember what we had seen the day before and provided me with an even deeper context.

It’s the bringing it up today that made it meaningful to me, and I suspect it does to many other people as well.  The Shakespeare exhibition showcased a array of objects,  both glittering, gruesome and everyday, from a shield associated with the funeral of Henry V to a calf's heart stuck with pins used by witches,  from embroidered tapestries to paintings of queens.  But the exhibit felt not just historical but also modern. Video projections or screens feature actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company, simply dressed, performing works from Shakespeare.  I watched Paterson Joseph  perform Brutus' speech from Julius Caeser twice, literally compelled to pay attention by his voice and presence--a reminder that Shakespeare's language still matters.

The conclusion of the exhibit brings us to where we—we as visitors, and where we as Britons (not me,  but the audience) are today. The Tempest, the imagined new world of Shakespeare, reveals his interest in those questions of who we are in a changing world.  The exhibit encourages us to ponder, but doesn't answer (nor do I think needs to) why his work continues to have meaning for so many.

The final object is the exhibition is the Robbens Island Bible;  a copy of Shakespeare's works, it was owned by South African prisoner Sonny Venkatrathnam and explained to his guards as a Bible.  He shared it with other prisoners and asked them to sign their names next to passages that were particularly meaningful to them.  Here’s the verses Nelson Mandela found particular meaning in this passage from Julius Caeser:

Cowards die many times before their deaths / The valiant never taste of death but once. / Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, / It seems to me most strange that men should fear, / Seeing that death, a necessary end, / Will come when it will come.

In our conversations here we’ve been talking about making walks transformative and what that really means.  Can we change lives through exhibitions or walks?  Maybe or maybe not.  Can we change the way we might look at the world?  Most assuredly.

Can We Get 45 Minutes of Fame?

Last week, I wrote about AAM's work in crowd-sourcing sessions for the 2013 conference.  This week, Rainey Tisdale and I, who are are working on a book about museums and creative practice (more news on that very soon) jumped into another association's crowd-sourcing idea. The New England Museum Association is running a 45 Minutes of Fame Contest for a speaking slot at their annual conference coming up this fall in Burlington,Vermont. Our entry is above, sharing some of the places and things that inspire us to think about museums in different ways. So please, watch the video, feel inspired, and like us on YouTube. If you've got a great creative inspiration to share--please comment away!

Miners and More Miners

As part of the Pickle Project's grand tour of Ukraine this month, Caleb Zigas of La Cocina and I spent a couple days in Donetsk, in far eastern Ukraine.  Donetsk is the center of the Donbass region,  where coal mining and metallurgy are the most important industries.  On my last visit to Donetsk, I wrote about the idea of superfans, based on an outdoor exhibit created by the Shakhtar football team.  This time,  I was impressed by the idea that Donetsk has chosen to highlight the things that make it different than any other tourist place, not the same.  The city is not a place much visited for tourism by either Ukrainians or westerners (in fact, we got more than one raised eyebrow when we said we were going there).  But,  it's one site of the upcoming Euro 2012 football (soccer for US readers) championship.  Donetsk is about mining. Two exhibits, both about miners, both different, both compelling.

 At Izolyatsia, a new cultural center located in a complex of industrial buildings outside of the city center, the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang worked with the organization's staff, miners, and volunteers to create an installation featuring large-scale portraits of miners installed in a huge space, filled with both salt and coal.   The artist actually went down into the coal miners, to experience what the men do in this dirty, hard, business.  Local realist artists were then asked to create portraits of workers as they came up out of the mines, dirty and tired at the end of the shift.  With the help of volunteers, and with audiences watching, Cai Guo-Qiang then converted those sketches into large-scale stencils,  blown into black and white portraits by the controlled explosion of gunpowder.   These large portraits were then mounted in a manner similar to that used to carry portraits of leaders in Soviet times, and installed upon huge heaps of salt and coal.

It was a really cold rainy day when we went--on a day when it was not officially open (thanks izolyatsia and Eko Art for the arrangements.)  It's hard to describe what it's like to scurry inside from the wind and rain, underneath the slag heaps,  to see these gigantic portraits of everyday people.   They are not the abstracted portraits seen in Soviet propaganda, but really people, tired, perhaps worried about their families and their jobs.  They made Donetsk seem really to me--the part that most people never see.  Standing there looking at the portraits brought both tears and respect to my eyes.  And I think it's tremendously important that this organization has chosen to focus on the ways in which contemporary art can illuminate and inform the history of a place.  I can't wait to see what they do next.

Very different is the Shakhtar Museum at the new, enormous stadium built by Donetsk billionare Rinat Akhemetov,  where the soccer team Shakhtar (the miners) plays.  This isn't a place where you go to learn the history of Soviet sport, or to fully understand the global, commercial nature of today's worldwide soccer.  It's a fan's place--but within that context, they also do an interesting job of engaging visitors.  On the one hand, it's a straightforward narrative of team history, but several elements make it fun, and certainly different than your average Ukrainian museum. 

There's a movie of past team highlights projected on fog;  and then you're invited to walk through the fog and see the future of Shakhtar--sort of a neat visual trick.  Players' feet (and goalies' hands) are presented as cast metal molds--a nod to the team's industrial heritage.  A projected football field and ball that you could kick meant that immediately, people who didn't know each other could participate--all of a sudden I looked up, and Caleb was kicking the ball back and forth with a total stranger.   And, by the way, an enormous giftshop with everything from soccer gear to Shakhtar air-fresheners.

At various points in my career I've gone to heritage tourism meetings where it seems like the conversation about how to make  a place special are just like the ways that every other community.  We have old buildings!  There were settlers!  Some of those things that make communities different are challenging to acknowledge because they represent a difficult past.  There's no question that Donetsk's mining life is a hard story to tell, and these projects certainly don't tell a comprehensive story, but both of them help visitors understand a bit about what Donetsk is, and how it came to be. 

"Is John Your Brother?" or Why Stories Matter

The title of this post is a question I got at the end of a presentation to a board of directors about a new long-term exhibit.  It's not quite as strange as it seems, because this was at the historical society where I began my museum career at age 14, in the community where I grew up.  The staff and I had proposed an exhibit that really encouraged and sought out community memories framed around a 20th century topic.   The board and I laughed about some shared memories of high school traditions--and then we focused on who local history museums are for.

I realized how strongly I feel that local history museums are for locals.  I think many organizations (and communities) went on an unsuccesful hunt for tourists for a number of years.  But think about it.  Do tourists become members at local history museums?  Do they donate artifacts?  Do they bequeath endowments?  Do they volunteer?  Those are the crass reasons to focus on involving your local community. 

But there's other reasons that are more important.  Real stories really matter.   They allow us to put our lives in perspective;  to understand people different from us, but from the same place;  and when carefully sought out and engagingly told, they provide a place where everyone in your community can belong.  And a focus on community means those local stories can be the core of your work--and you might be surprised how local stories, compelling told, can connect with other people.

My family has all moved away from the place I grew up but today reminded me that those connections are life-long ones.  And yes, John is my brother and I heard a couple funny stories about him today!

From Cotton to Culture: Changing the Face and Future of European Cities

Guest Blog Post by Irina-Leonenko-Wels

My friend and colleague Irina Leonenko-Wels has been living in Prague for just over a year.  From her perch there, she has explored a wide variety of museums throughout Europe.   I'm very pleased she's agreed to share some impressions of industrial history museums there, a particular interest of hers because of her home region in Ukraine.   Irina and her husband are moving to Moscow early next year--so I'm hoping The Uncataloged Museum will have reports--including great photos like those here-- from there!

Coming from a very industrial (and quite economically depressed) region in Ukraine called Donbass, I have always been fascinated with industrial cities looked like in other European countries, especially in the West, in Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, and France. They looked different to me first of all because they were not sad and scary to drive through, to stop in or even to live in. In fact, on the contrary, they have now become popular places for living, for having office space in, and what’s more important they have become attractive for tourist and cultural events. In Europe there are many success stories of industrial cities’ revitalization.  For instance, some examples from my travels:

• RUHR.2010– a whole industrial region in Germany, this year’s European Cultural Capital -
• Zollverein - the old mining complex in Essen is now the most prominent example of revitalization in the whole region.
• The Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei – from “Cotton to Culture”, in the 20^th century the largest spinning mill on the continent, with 240,000 spindles and 208 combing machines, now a cultural cluster with contemporary art centers, galleries, design shops and publishing houses.

European cities are very active and united when it comes to sharing experience about development and promotion of their industrial heritage. Several special networks have been created for this purpose, as, for example, ERIH, the European Route of Industrial Heritage. Currently it presents more than 850 industrial sites in 32 European countries.

Last month I flew from Prague to Barcelona to take part in the ERIH network’s annual conference. The event was held in co-operation with the TICCIH Tourism Section ( and at the invitation of the Catalan Museum of Science and Technology in Terrassa. The main theme of the conference was Industrial Heritage Tourism. Speakers from 12 European countries highlighted their successes but also difficulties they faced in their work of industrial heritage preservation and promotion. You can find some of the presentations here. I particularly liked the Cromford cotton spinning mills in Derbyshire, England which showed how a plan,  focusing on  improved interpretation and special events helped to reach new markets and audiences.   Another example was from Frankfurt in Germany, where Open Days of Industrial Culture Rhein-Main are held. The idea of Open Days is to change people’s perception of industrial heritage in the region, to offer audiences unique leisure and entertainment facilities, to help them experience region with all of the senses and understand how how industry functions. Open Days attract more than 11,000 visitors around 180 events at 104 locations.  Every year Open Days have a special theme. As next year,  2011, the UN has proclaimed the International Year of Chemistry, Open Days’ team plans to concentrate its activities around chemical industries in their region and show its benefits to the public.

Industrial heritage in Spain

Going to Barcelona, city usually associated with sun and beaches, I couldn’t have imagined how rich the industrial heritage of the region was. Old mines, textile mills, industrial colonies, warehouses, old factories, cellars have now been converted into museums. And the information is easily findable--here's a downloadable tourism brochure showing all the industrial museums in the region. /en/turismeindustrial

As part of the conference we visited many industrial sites in the region.  However, one I will never forget – is a visit to CERC Mining Museum high up in the Pyrenees mountains. The mines in that area were long the source of the coal that moved the steam engines and drove the whole Catalan industry. The Museum of CERC mine was small but had all the ‘ingredients’ for a great experience exploring 150 years of industrial history: cinema hall with films about the mine, a mining train that takes visitors inside the galleries of Sant Roma, open-air exhibition of mining machinery, nice museum shop, real miner’s house, audio guides in several languages plus 2 small hotels at the premises, big event hall and a great restaurant with traditional Catalan dishes (which we really enjoyed at the end of our tour).

During our visit to CERC Mine I never stopped wondering when visitors and citizens of my region in Ukraine would get to experience something like that. With more than 200 coal mines in our region (more than anywhere in Europe) Donbass is drastically lacking places that would interpret our region’s industrial history and allow people to have some fun.

If you wish to see more photos from the conference on Industrial Heritage Tourism you are welcome to visit my Picasa page.

What Do You Like Best?

In Ukraine, I found asking the question, "What's your favorite...?"  or "What do you like best?" often generated a surprised look, a shake of the head, and a shy answer.   And upon reflection, it struck me as a major difference between the way Americans think about museums (and about life in general) and the way Ukrainians do.  In the Soviet system,  individual thought was never encouraged.  You did not have favorites, you were taught to believe that the "approved" writer or artist or building or object was the only one to like;  that experts had determined it was the best.   Americans are considerably more comfortable with holding--and voicing--their own opinions about almost everything.

As my time in Ukraine continued, I asked these questions more and more.   One reason is because I was genuinely curious about what people liked but I was also curious about people's reactions.  I liked their initial look of surprise, and then the careful consideration some gave to their answers.   It felt a small honor to have someone share an opinion with me.

And it also deepened my experience in museums.  In Opishne, I visited  a newly opened memorial museum--it had been the home of a local man who went on to become an artist, scientist, and collector of pottery from this community of potters.  The house was interesting and I enjoyed the visit--but as we reached the last room, I asked the guide if she had a favorite piece of pottery in the house.   She looked surprised, but led us back through two rooms and pointed to a jug on top of a cabinet--something I had absolutely missed before.   "This is my favorite,"  she said,  "It was made by my grandfather."

All of a sudden this museum--and this town--was not just a memorial-- it became a living place, a place where the traditions of pottery, despite the collectivization of the Soviets,  continued to hold a place of importance and honor to the people who live there.

Top to bottom:  Pottery at the new memorial museum;  guide showing me her favorite piece, and at another memorial museum in Opishne, a small tribute to a woman potter.

Are Local Museums the Best Social Museums?

There's lots of discussion right now about how museums can be social places, places to gather, to come together, to enjoy each other's company.  And amidst all the talk,  I'd forgotten how nice an event that just brings people together can be--and this weekend, I got a beautiful reminder in the town of Opishne, in the Poltava region of Ukraine.   It's a bit unusual for a museum with national status to be located in a town the size of Opishne,  but the National Museum of Ceramics, run by an energetic director, Oles Poshyvailo, is.   So it's a national museum, but with a distinctly local flare and connection to this town, the traditional home of many potters.  For the past two weeks, there's been a ceramics festival, culminating in Saturday's National Potters' Day.

So what happened during these two weeks?  A unique combination of events:

• A scholarly symposium about Ukrainian traditional ceramics
• A two week artists' residency where 12 contemporary ceramic artists from 5 countries came to live and work, producing three works each for a juried show--and as side results, many new connections and ideas for collaborations among them
• The juried show, a juried show of traditional ceramics and a juried show of photos about ceramics
• The presentation of a new publication on Opishne ceramics in a Moscow museum
• Special exhibits in the museum's several buildings
• Master classes and demonstrations

and finally on Friday and Saturday, a fair held in the center of town--and that's the event that reminded me that museums, particularly local museums, can be these community centers.  It's particularly compelling here, where the event was held on the grounds of the former House of Culture, built by the Soviets to replace the traditional gathering places in communities.  But here, the event had the feel of a small-town event anywhere.  Local dignitaries (and not so local, including me) made opening speeches, traditional musicians performed,  young and old alike got to get their hands dirty trying a potter's wheel, slip decoration and straw braiding.  Hayrides, the sale of traditional pottery and a benefit auction and nicely out back, away from the main event,  a bouncy castle and the junk food I associate with a county fair.

And who attended this event?  Lots of people from the town--arriving by foot, bikes, scooter and car. The contemporary artists, jurors and scholars,  people from the larger community of Poltava.  Young people, old people, in between people.

The ceramics museum is, I suspect, the major employer in town and its employees worked incredibly hard during the two weeks to make the event a success.  Their success resonates beyond the museum however as it also served as a bit of an economic generator.  Artists and others were put up in local homes,  a restaurant served lunch every day,  I bought ceramics from local potters:  all those things make a difference in the local economy, no matter where you are.

I've planned fairs and festivals myself, and I know how much work they are (and how lucky one is to get a beautiful day like Saturday) and sometimes I groaned at keeping them fresh and new.  But in fact, the opportunity to see friends and neighbors, to enjoy music, to enjoy the work of potters and other craftspeople--and perhaps bring a piece home.  These things are the things that can  make local museums important social places.

Ukrainian museums lean towards the scientific--it often seems as if it is not acceptable to have fun in a museum setting.  In Opishne,  I found wonderful proof that the two can be combined.

Returning

The past couple weeks I've learned about several different situations that involve return:  return to a homeland, return of collections, return or reclaiming of identity.  I'm currently in Crimea and will write more soon about the Crimean Tatars,  but wanted to share a bit about the Lobkowicz Collection in Prague, a quite amazing and complicated story about nationalism, pride, and return.   The Lobkowicz family were one of the richest and most powerful families in Bohemia, and by extension, in Central Europe for more than 300 hundred years.  They were art collectors (Brueghel and Canaletto, to name just two artists), and patrons of music (Beethoven and Hayden, to name just two composers).   Hereditary titles were abolished in 1918, with the founding of the Czech Republic,  so there were no more Prince Lobkowiczs.  However,  the last prince was active in the Czech national movement and served as an ambassador to Great Britain for the Czech government in exile during World War II.  The Nazis confiscated the family's vast collections and many castles, including the palace at Prague Castle.   After the war, the buildings and palaces were returned, but all too soon,  the family fled to American with nothing after the Communist take-over of Czechoslovakia in 1948.

But the 20th century wasn't quite done dealing the Lobkowicz family surprises.  The Velvet Revolution of 1989 included legislation to return assets taken more than 40 years before.  So, finally, the family, now fully settled in the United States, receives back more than a dozen castles and vast archival and object collections of immeasurable value. One reason for the return was (very interesting to me as I see Ukraine) rapid re-investment and revitalization of the country.   Those more than a dozen castles were too many to restore, so most were sold and the family has concentrated their efforts in the Palace at Prague Castle and at Nelahozeves,  a chateau in the country, both of which I had a chance to visit.  In addition, David Krol, Deputy Director of Visitor Services was good enough to spend time over coffee chatting with me about the projects underway.

The audio tour at the Palace is narrated by family members, including William, now living in Prague full time with his family and running what is not an NGO, but a private enterprise (but the objects were returned under an agreement with the Czech government that forbids their sale).   The audio tour, available in multiple languages, is free with your admission.   I loved hearing the family story--but absolutely the most touching part to me,  is the sole room of narration by  the family member (sorry, my notes fail me here) who remembers the palace depicted in the paintings as a child and talks about how he, now in his 80s,  never could have imagined that he would ever return, ever be able to walk those halls again.   In some ways, it's hard to imagine being the family who commissions Beethoven sonatas and purchases Canalettos,  but that one voice made the entire family seem human;  made it a story not only about Princely Collections, but a touching one about place, family, loss, and return.

Nelahozeves (above)  is different--the Palace at Prague Castle is installed as galleries;  but Nelahozeves is a series of period rooms.  I'm not a huge decorative arts fan, and we took the tour with a Czech speaking guide and an English handout,  but I loved visiting.   I'm unclear about the process used to recreate the period rooms, but they seemed lively in a way rooms often do not,  due both to the great collections, but also to a creative curatorial hand.  In Prague, you met the family through their art and patronage,  at Nelahozeves you met the family through their more domestic lives--their library, a true cabinet of curiousities,  a small family chapel, and a quite amazing gun room and hallway.

Needless to say,  all this work is an expensive undertaking.  There's a beautiful gift shop, a lively cafe, spaces are rented for events,  a daily concert outsourced to others, a small but growing membership program, a US based non-profit, and of course admissions to help support the project.  Interesting to me though, is the fact that this is a family enterprise.  In one way,  it makes me wonder about the future--what if the next generation of Lobkowiczs doesn't have the same commitment to the nation, and the collections?  But at the same time, a committed, passionate ownership, supplemented by a very small staff, gives the museums considerably more flexibility and agility than many museums, including those non-profit ones and particularly, the governmental ones that I see here in Ukraine.

This, and several other museums in Prague made me wonder about the future of the often hide-bound and stiflingly bureaucratic museums in post-Soviet nations.  Will those government museums become less and less important as they are unable to change, to respond to change, and reach out to audiences?  Will private museums (also springing up here)  become the places that visitors go to and funders support?  Does that lead to a downward spiral for museums that can't adapt and survive?   What kinds of legislation would help governmental museums compete with private museums?  In a society where corruption remains a significant issue, like Ukraine, would private museums be more or less liable to corruption?  What questions does it raise for you?

So although part of the Lobkowicz story is about the past;  the return of what once was, it is equally about the story about the future, of both the family and the Czech Republic.  It strikes me that looking forward, in a democratic society, might make the very aristocratic Max Lobkowicz (below via the museum's website),  the last prince and Czech patriot, very proud.

What a Difference A Decade (or Two) Makes

Last week, I went to Prague, a city I had last visited in 1992,  when it was still emerging from decades of Communist rule.  Now, I found a city greatly changed.  Our last visit was in December, so it was cold and gray--virtually no hotels (we rented a room in someone's apartment),  not much English anywhere,  but beautifully,  it seemed as if we heard classical music streaming forth from many windows as we walked along.

Prague today is a thoroughly European city and you can see evidence of the vast influx of European funds into the city--which combined with the efforts of the Czechs themselves, have created  a city that is friendly and easy for visitors.  And there are many, many, visitors.  I remember wandering Prague Castle almost alone, just the three of us.  And on Friday, in the pouring rain, hordes of tourists from around the world were on tour there.   

New museums have opened with private funds:  Lobkowicz Palace, the Kafka Museum, and the Kampe Museum--all new (more posts to come).  Exhibit panels and labels are done in Czech and English, at a minimum, but also often available in German, Russian, French, Japanese and Spanish, reflecting the city's lure to visitors from all over.  But of course, you walk two steps off the main tourist areas and you can immediately be on a beautiful, quiet street,  a place to think about Prague, not about souvenirs or pizza (or the great cheap beer!)

What does this mean for cultural tourism in Ukraine?  There are several important lessons, I believe.

Government involvement does matter.  For instance, the Lobkowicz Collection was returned to its owners through an agreement with Vaclev Havel's first government.  Clearly the government continues to invest in culture and tourism, and encourages others to invest.

If government-run museums do not become forward thinking and active,  private museums (whether NGOs or not) will spring up and make those government museums irrelevant to both visitors and the community.  The result will also be declining financial support, both governmental and from the private sector.

Making materials available in multiple languages is a key way to make visitors welcome--and perhaps on some level, the least expensive to create.  At one castle we visited,  the English speaking guide was not available,  but an English language handout was.  And at the tiny, tiny,  Antonin Dvorak Museum in a village,  they had a simply typed English language brochure and had added number keys to the exhibits and panels.  Otherwise, I would have never appreciated the pen that he wrote with!   I often feel badly when I tell people that materials should be in English, rather than other languages, but many, if not most, western European travelers speak English well--so it's not just for native English speakers.

Collaboration makes a difference.  Whether you're partnering with the city government to produce a river extravaganza or with another gallery or museum to mount a joint show,  these collaborative efforts draw more attention and make resources go further.

Outdoor contemporary art installations become attractions in themselves.  All over Prague, contemporary art makes you look, sometimes makes you laugh, but creates a lively, active sense of the city.  Such efforts, I assume, require extensive collaborations between artist, funder and the city.

Care for the beautiful place you live.  The center of Prague felt like a place people cared about.  Architecture is preserved, and the spaces are made for people (although there is a huge amount of graffiti that tempers this statement a bit)  Here in Kyiv, now, cars rule.  They park on the sidewalk;  you walk underground while they travel unimpeded.  In Prague, it felt like a walker's city.   I'll assume also that this has to do with less corruption in terms of land deals as well as other policies.

Just as I was telling Irina about my memory of music,  we walked by a conservatory, and sure enough, a young singer's voice sprang forth from an upper floor--a brief snatch of song, followed by an instructor's comments, and the singer began again.   For me, a memory of a long ago visit made real again.  Despite the many tourists,  Prague still remains a beautiful place particularly when, like last week,  all the chestnuts were in bloom.

I Miss History

I realized the other day that I miss history--which seems a very funny thing to happen when I'm living in a place like Kyiv (above, in 1918)  with such a long and complex history.  So I decided to think about why that is, and what I might do about it.

There's several different reasons why I miss history here.

The language barrier
My Ukrainian continues to be very limited, and even to read and sound out Cyrillic letters takes me a while (for instance, the other day, I was trying to read the list of stops on a mashrutka--a bus--and it took me so long that the bus had pulled up, loaded and unloaded passengers and pulled away before I realized that yes, that was the bus I wanted!).  So where there is information to be gained, such as the many plaques denoting who lived or worked somewhere, I'm not easily able to gain that information.  Living here has immensely increased my understanding of the challenges that new immigrants to the US (or anywhere) face in terms of language--negotiating everyday life is a challenge.  Imagine what then going to a museum is like.

What to say about history?
The decades of Soviet rule, with its singular approach to history have left a vacuum here.  I think Ukraine as a nation has not yet come to terms with its complex 20th century history, and hence, does not know quite what to say about it--in museums, in memorials, in outdoor signage.   There is still no considered value in the idea of multiple perspectives and voices.

How do I connect the architecture to history?
Architectural forms here are different, not surprisingly, than those in the United States and Western Europe.  So any knowledge I might have about building eras, or construction, or design, are not as useful here.  I can pick out those ugly new buildings, for sure, but am just beginning to understand the differences between Stalin-era and Kruschchev era buildings.

Where are those everyday people?
As far as I can tell, the presentation of history and folklife here still operates in a generic way.  Poets, writers, and artists get their individual due (and political leaders never do) but the kind of everyday story that is a regular part of my museum work in the States is not in evidence here.   I like that in my life at home I meet the railroad workers of Sayre, PA,  Lucy Rosen and her theremin,  and the Wckyoff family of Brooklyn.    (Above, a house where the poet Anna Akmetova lived for a time.)

Local history in the US uses the particular, the stories of individual people, to explore broader stories.  Here, I rarely meet those individual people--those many stories--in museum settings.   Have their stories been lost?  been suppressed?  not considered important by scholars?  As one museum colleague said to me the other day,  "We do not want to remember here."

Not Easy to Access Archives
I wouldn't start by going to an archives by looking at history, but I would certainly look at popular publications based on archival materials.  Archives here are still considered to be only the province of scholars and the enthusiastic avocational historians do not exist;  and hence archival material is rarely shared with the public.

What can I do?
First, I went out and found a guidebook of walks around Kyiv,  The Streets of Kyiv:  Five Walks in the Center by Galina Savchuk.   Although published more than a decade ago,  it provides a great deal of help in beginning to understand the center city and its changes over time--and led me to the most eccentric house.  Below, is the House of Chimeras,  built by Vladislav Gorodestky in 1902  to demonstrate the wonderful possibilities of concrete!

Second,  I think I need to ask more questions of people I meet.   Tell me about your family,  about where you live, about what you remember about the changes in Kyiv.   Those stories will begin to at least flesh out my small mental map of the city I live in right now.

And finally,  I'd love to encourage museums or other organizations here to undertake new ways of sharing these individual stories of their city.  As inspiration:  Place Matters, a project of City Lore and the Municipal Art Society that invites New York City residents to share their stories;  and to blow my own horn a bit, a project I worked on, Montgomery Connections in Montgomery County, Maryland, which uses banners, bus stop and print ads, a website, and cell phone audio to introduce, in three languages, the county's residents to its rich history (below photo courtesy the Montgomery County Historical Society).