Road Trips through History

Road Trips Through History was a collection of thoughts, opinions, and memories by preservationist Dwight Young. Through personal essays, Young takes the reader into the heart of what preservation is as a discipline and reflects on often surprising topics that I personally never thought of as related to historic preservation. Rather than portraying preservation in an abstract, academic way, Young seeks to make it relevant to all by encouraging people to see history and meaning in the world around us, not just in historic buildings and places.

Reading these collections, I was struck by how personable and open Young sounded. I felt as if I was reading his diary rather than essays he intentionally meant to be published. I saw this as a definite plus because I was able to gather his voice from the writing. With the pithy blurbs in parenthesis and his musings, I saw his own personal voice come through clearly and often in delightful ways. It definitely made me want to meet him and spend time traveling with him taking advantage of the pleasure for detail he possessed in places like New Orleans and Russia.

In addition to his written personal touches, I truly enjoyed his overall message of the collection. This message is that historic preservation should not be about just preserving physical buildings but about preserving history as a collective whole. It should be about preserving that which excites and interests us (in his case, Ocean Liner ephermera...who knew?). His discussion about the starry night sky seemed odd to me at first but once I finished reading the essay I understood what Young was trying to get at. He defines preservation as protecting that which is meaningful to us and to our history. For him, the night sky he saw as a little boy in Texas was the same night sky that Indians and our forefathers saw centuries ago. Certainly that makes it worthy of protection against “light trespass.”

In his essay “Seeing it, saving it,’ Young also maintains that historic preservation is so enduring because it provides people with tactile encounters with history. Homes in which people have lived for centuries, putting their mark in small indelible ways, fascinates most people because it makes the home less a historic artifact and more real, as Young put it. I can certainly relate to his love of books that have been previously owned and I too am always interested in notes, pictures, and markings made by people who I have never met before. Having those personal touches makes it more special to me and allows me to embark on that person’s history. Historic preservation works in much the same way in which houses are preserved not because of their physical structure, but because of the people who lived in it and the mark they made upon the physical structure.

Displays of Power review

In Steven C. Dubin's book, Displays of Power: Controversy in the American Museum from the Enola Gay to Sensation, museums are shown to be powerful institutions in which controversy is more likely to occur than agreement. Using examples such as the Enola Gay or the Gaelic Gotham exhibits, Dubin presents examples of how delicate museum exhibits can be to plan and how hard museum officials must work in order to achieve a success.

Like in Linenthal's book, many of Dubin's examples show the balancing act between the general public and the museum officials. The Gaelic Gotham exhibit was set to be the monument to Irish struggles in America. Instead, it became a breeding ground for misunderstanding and controversy. Most shocking to me about this exhibit was curator Robert McDonald's statement that “Gaelic Gotham is not for the Irish but about the Irish.” (103) This statement implies to me, that Irish input was not welcome by the museum even though the exhibit was expressly about the Irish experience in New York City. Although I can understand that listening to the general public that you are trying to serve can be trying and difficult at times, I do believe that it is necessary to do. The masses are going to be the people coming to see the exhibit, not professional historians and therefore should be allowed some input. Despite this, I did actually like McDonald's work strategy as presented through Dubin. This strategy stated that community input would be welcomed in the “preliminary, fact-finding stages” (239) and would have to proceed without this input during the “exhibition-building stages” (239). This would allow the museum room to design and arrange the exhibit as they saw fit. Unfortunately I don't believe McDonald followed his own advice when it came to Gaelic Gotham.

Although the individual chapters were somewhat interesting, I was critical of the fact that all were negative views on controversy in the American Museum. I do wonder if there are instances in which controversy actually improved the relationship between museum professionals and the public rather than break it down. Also, each chapter was a little too repetitive for my tastes, representing the same controversies and rifts between the museum world and the public. The last thing I did not like about this book was the afterword. Throughout the rest of the book, Dubin is careful to remain, for the most part, neutral about which side he identifies with. He presents both views on the controversy in clarity and with many examples to back it up. In the afterword however, the gloves come off. Suddenly it becomes essentially a Giuliani and Donahue bashing free-for-all. Now this is not my confession that I agree with these two men in any capacity, but this chapter just did not make any sense from a literary standpoint to me. While the rest of the book was carefully neutral, this last chapter was fiery and opinionated, upsetting the balance of the book. I think Dubin should have either toned down his opinion in the last chapter or had included it more often in the middle chapters.

Chapter 4 and Conclusion of Preserving Memory

After finishing Preserving Memory, I now know the hard work and frustration that goes into building and creating a museum. Not only is there the physical building to contend with, but also the historical and social aspects that often comes under conflict with one another. This last chapter and conclusion of the book deals mostly with what memory of the Holocaust should be presented to the public and the efforts for and against expanding this memory. Arguments over how the museum should begin and end, along with the eternal argument, what should be in the permanent exhibition, provides readers with an important look into how complicated building a museum from scratch can be.

While reading, I was reminded of a discussion we had in class last week. We talked about the institutionalization of history that occurs when a museum is built and what that meant exactly. It was said that this allowed the historical event to become legitimized in the eyes of the public and deemed “worthy” of commemoration. While I do believe this is so, I also believe Linenthal's book shows the downside that can come from institutionalizing history. When memory is placed within a realm of a museum, the full story is no longer allowed to come forth. Things must be left out, stored away, or avoided in order to make the museum cohesive and not take days to go through. Things or events that may be important to groups may then be left out because they are not seen as essential to the “center” of the museum, as Linenthal puts it. This was shown to me by his discussion of the Armenian and Romani victims. Both groups were seeking (and still are) a voice among the Holocaust museum that was often denied or influenced by political issues. Linenthal mentions several times the influence the Turkish government had in keeping the Armenian genocide out of the museum even though many saw this event as a precursor to the Holocaust. Because the Romani were not Jewish, they were relegated to being “others” who, while still victims, could not compare to Jewish suffering. For me, the institutionalization of the Holocaust caused many layers of understanding and history to be weeded out in a effort to find a sense of cohesiveness that the Jewish community wanted.

Linenthal's conclusion was a very interesting look at the memory of the Holocaust. Rather than merely pointing out what good the museum has done or the reactions once it opened, he broadens its impact onto the American stage and seems to suggest that America was found wanting. Actions going on in Bosnia at the time of its openings provided what many thought a way through which America could show it had learned its lesson on indifference in the face of genocide. Instead, America took much the same course and, to survivors, exhibited that they had learned very little in the face of Holocaust memory. Linenthal does show improvement though on the individual level as shown through Billings, Montana in which a whole community, Jewish and non-Jewish, banded together as a way to show Nazi-followers what they had personally learned from the horror that was the Holocaust.

Preserving Memory, Pages 1-166 Review

Before I get into the nitty gritty review, may I just say that this book may possible be the best non-fiction book that I have read in a very long time. Maybe it's just me, but I thought it was (and still is) a total page turner with suspense, insults, history, and Elie Wiesel all thrown in together.

In Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum, Linenthal attempts to outline the trials and tribulations that occurred during the conception, planning, and building of the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Linenthal moves through the arguments and events leading up to the April 22, 1993 dedication as an omnipresent narrator allowing leading characters the chance to explain their decisions and tell their side of the story through their own words. Linenthal also explores the rejected proposals for the museum throughout its development, allowing the reader to envision on their own terms, what the museum would have turned out had other methods been adopted.

If last week's readings provided the theory and broad definition of public history, this book provides us with its application (both its triumphs and its difficulties) within a real-world setting. The Holocaust Museum, from the beginning, could not just have been another museum. It had to possess practical functionality while at the same time deal accurately with the “sacred memory” of The Holocaust. This reminded me of my comment on Katie's blog last week in which I said public historians have the unenviable task of bridging the gap between academia and the general public. Historians working on this project had to make the museum become a reality but at the same time, remain true to those who were telling the stories, be it survivors or victims. To make it even more difficult for public historians, museum planners also had keep a balance between making this a Holocaust museum, a European event, and an American monument to injustice.

After reading the first 166 pages, I am blown away (and a little frightened) by the amount of work that goes into building a museum from scratch. Linenthal does a great job of describing the somewhat tedious work of designing the building and the planning that goes into it, both historically and physically. He also goes into great detail when describing the arguments surrounding the heart of the museum; its message to the public. With such conviction on both sides, it is no wonder why this museum was 15 years in the making.

Of this book, I have only a small annoyance rather than criticism that I noticed while reading. This would be that often I found myself having to flip back in order to remember who various people were and what their jobs had been. Obviously this is not Linenthal's fault as he was merely reporting an accurate history of the museum, which seems by nature to be rather fickle. While reading, I did wonder what Linenthal's opinions are on the main impedance to the museum planning (inclusion vs. exclusion of non-Jews in the museum) were. On the surface I would have to say he is quite unbiased in his presentation but the more I read, the more I wondered what his personal thoughts are on the matter and whether or not it can be determined by “reading through the lines” of his writing. I certainly find myself liking particular people over others and thinking some arguments made more sense as opposed to others.

Presence of the Past Review

Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen's book, entitled The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life was born from a need to build a bridge between professional historians and the general public. In order to do this, historians needed to figure out how exactly it was that Americans understood their past and furthermore, what this “past” contained. Before this survey, it was thought that Americans were suffering from a historical amnesia in which the public was unaware and largely ignorant of history both popular and academic.

Instead, what Rosenzweig and Thelen found was that Americans are intimately engaged in and comfortable with history, albeit on a more personal level. Activities I had not even previously thought of as involved in history, such as photography, are practiced by nearly all the respondents interviewed. The interviewers found that the history of the respondent's families are much more likely to be researched than the history of a national event or era. In The Presence of the Past, it is seen many times over that the respondents often feel no connection with national events unless it is related on a personal level. Families with soldiers in WWII, grandmothers who survived the holocaust, or fathers who fought in the civil rights movement, are much more likely to investigate these portions of history because of their personal connection rather than pure academic interest.

While reading the NCPH's “What is Public History?,” I was struck by Greg Smoak's personal definition of public history and how it fit into society. He states that “history is not just for students in a classroom or written for other historians, but for the people!” To me, this strengthened Rosenzweig and Thelen's findings that there is a big divide between the historical classroom and the general audience. This, for me, all returns back to the lack of a personal connection. I agree with Thelen's suggestions of how to build a participatory historical culture although I believe that it will take much time and effort on the part of historians in order to build such a culture. As Thelen says, historians must learn to listen to who or what Americans remember and talk about and find ways in which to integrate it into the larger picture of history. Suggestions such as reading autobiographies in the classroom would allow students to really enter the minds of history-makers. History would no longer be about learning what year great people were born or died, but rather their thoughts and justifications (or lack thereof) that were behind actions and events that occurred. Overall, I believe that Rosenzweig and Thelen show convincing proof that Americans need to feel as if they can place themselves in the moment or the situation in order to truly understand the collective and personal past. This they achieved by merely letting Americans speak for themselves and tell what they wanted and expected from history.