Museums

"Reasons for visiting museums are often strongly linked to a sense of place, whether one's own community or one that sparks curiosity. The desire to connect to a locale, to understand it, identify with it, or simply enjoy its distinctiveness is a common impulse that close-by museum seves to satisfy."

"Museums are the community's attic, the storage sites for artifacts once created there or brought to that place for one reason or another. We may seldom visit the attic and, when we do, may find it difficult to sort through what has been preserved there, but nevertheless that is where we know to look for tangible evidence of the past... these allow us to connect somehow to a time, place, or phenomenon we desire to revisit in our minds or visit for the first time."

"Local museums often serve to distill the identity of the community with which people identify, and whether they do it well or badly will affect attitudes toward the locale in question"- improve impressions of Homestead”

"Local museums serve as frames for understanding larger visions about America”

(From Defining Memory: Local Museums and the Construction of History in America’s Changing Communities)

The House of the Seven Gables- A House Museum’s Adaptation to Changing Societal Expectations Since 1910- Salem, Massachusetts
-Representative of a New England shipbuilding community
-affiliation with Nathaniel Hawthorne- important historical figure
-the museum must shift its ‘history’ to meet the shifting needs and preferences of society- struggle against the preconception of the visitor of what it should look like
-Wealthy, upper-class east coast Americans- “they considered themselves to be true Americans and felt threatened by the increasing stream of immigrants.”
-Romanticizing of the Salem witchcraft trials
-Museum that embodies that characteristics of New England. Important regional icon that tells many stories of New England’s history from the slave trade to settlement houses, from the lives of common people to that of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
-Evidence of changing views of New England history and New England’s regional identity- evolving content of the tour script
-During this time period, New England history was described in terms of famous, patriotics, or affluent officials
-The attic was refurbished to represent an old Salem garret- “The objective of this tour was to freeze a particular time period for introspection and contemplation. It offered a stable history that individuals could look back upon when faced with the dramatic cultural changes of the 1960s.

Old Cowtown Museum- Wichita Kansas
-Consists of buildings primarily brought in from downtown Wichita or constructed out of new materials.
-Early Wichita developed into an urban environment almost overnight
-”The notion that Cowtown represents Mayberry-like small town values is understandable but incorrect.”
-”Cowtown was the most visible example of a trend hat included motels with neon cowboy signs and Western-wear outfitters.”
- “The Hollywood Western town image is what served as the inspiration for much of Old Cowtown in the 1950s and 1960s.”
-”Old Cowtown began as an attempt to recreate aspects of Wichita’s early history but developed into a place that presented both Wichita’s urban past and Sedgwick county’s rural origins.”
-”The story of Cowtown reveals a mixture of historic preservation, careful reconstruction, create adaptation of later buildings, and complete fabrication based on Hollywood-inspired fantasy, all of which have shaped Wichita’s collective memory into the small town it never was.”of manufacturing activities, products, and production recipes in anticipation or and in reaction to changes in those activities, products, and recipes in competitor regions around the globe.

Louisiana’s Old State Capitol Museum- Castle on the Mississippi- Baton Rouge
-One of two gothic revival statehouses
-The museum, “provides a learning experience in Louisiana history and the democratic process through exhibitions, educational outreach, and the arts.”
-The northern part of the state is conservative and Protestant, while southern Louisiana is liberal and Catholic. No unified history- many stories.
-Decline of French power in the state- the conversion of the Gothic Revival Statehouse to a museum devoted to state politics in 1994 reflects a maturation of political thinking- politics recognized not just as a battlefield, but as a source of knowledge for better understanding who we are.
-Specialized museum, but themes present throughout museums all over the world- “who owns the history? How does this museum contribute to national, regional, and local cultures? How does one appeal to a very diverse group, both within the state and without? How does one tell a complete story in a state with so many divergent groups?
-The story of one individual can illustrate the history of many, and shared experiences can reestablish links between different social groups.

Homestead- From Mill Town to Mall Town- Jim Daniels
"Homestead interests us because of its rich labor history and its contemporary transformation from a dying steel town into a place that now hosts an enormous shopping complex replete with the nation's most popular chain stores....This is a deeply relevant landscape at this time, interesting in its own right, but also emblematic of what is happening to communities across America... What exactly are we losing as we witness the closing of so many small businesses that were at the heart of the 20th century community both on main street and deep within the American psyche? What are we gaining and how might people assert themselves in places that can be seen as threatening to any kind of heterogeneous character?" (pg. 1)

"In the past half century American culture has become every more standardized. Corporate brands, retail frachises, and look-alike shopping malls stretch from coast to coast, homogenizing the consumption of fashion decorative arts, and material goods... Regional differences in dress, diet, and even language fade as patterns of commerce and communication are universalized. One notable exception to this pattern of increasing uniformity has been the preservation of local culture and distinctive identity in America's vast number of small and local museums." (pg. 1)
Thesis relationships in Homestead:
-the issue of race- telling the story of the black steelworker at the museum at the same time telling the white steelworker’s story
-cultural changes as related to a museum- stable history when people face dramatic cultural changes