Applied History

I grow ever more annoyed with Timothy Luke’s chapter on botanical gardens. I had originally written a post about his treatment of the Holocaust museums, but I decided (after our class discussion) that his thoughts about the gardens particularly bothered me. He argues that “they are historically variable constructs that serve the cultural needs of variously evolving museum institutions and their audiences.” (p.126) This I agree with. Botanical Gardens are variable depending on when they were established and how they were curated over time, and they do serve cultural needs. Where I start to have one of those “eyebrow raising” moments comes when he starts going into the first/second nature arguments, and says “a spectatular image image of nature is fabricated,” and “rare plants can be cast as…an always abundant nature in artifice.” (127)

My problems with these statements come from the fact that it seems that Luke is leaving out something quite important to any cultural institution– the Mission Statement. Any institution with a mission statement is going to be working within it (if it isn’t, there’s other issues that need to be addressed.). He seems to believe that if someone wants to see nature, they should just go into the thick of things and see real nature. That, however, isn’t the mission of these gardens. Some places have a mission that only includes local flora. Other places, like so many Japanese gardens, is to promote well-being and ethnic understanding.

Luke seems to only present one side of the story when it comes to these locations. He doesn’t take into account that the whole goal of many of these cultural places is to transport someone to a different place and/or time, which would be impossible to do without the proper tools. While he seems to enjoy looking at museums, he is severely limited by his exclusion of evidence that doesn’t seem to fit into his highly critical and political scope.

I suppose my problem with Luke’s critique of the Holocaust Museum’s “entertainment” side is that he discredits a form of publication based on the fact that it is also entertaining. In the field I want to be in, documentary filmmaking, it is understood that while history is important, its value is negligible if no one cares. I agree that media can trivialize an event. It happens in the news all the time. But it also has the ability to make it come alive. To many people history is a dead thing. It is something that occurred in the past and is thus of little consequence now. But media allows the historian to bridge this gap. If you can show someone a concentration camp and let them hear the stories of survivors, in their own voices, than maybe you can inspire them to care. And I believe that is the role of the Holocaust Museum. Yes, the Holocaust occurred in Europe. But atrocities, and mass death, are not a solely European thing. It is a human thing, and I think the Holocaust Museum allows us to examine that side of human nature and history is a way that not only provokes thought but also gets people to truly listen.

MOBILE HISTORY PROJECT PLAN

 

Angie Davis

Clete Edmunson

Ellen Matthew

Jena Herriott

 

The River Street Neighborhood: Changes in the Physical and Cultural Landscape 1890-1970

Learning Objectives:

 The area known today as River Street refers to the area north of the Boise River between 9^th /Capitol and 15^th and extends to what is now Myrtle. Between the years 1890 and 1970 the physical landscape has changed dramatically. This fact, in itself, tells a story of economic and cultural change in the City of Boise.

This project will discuss the transition of the neighborhood from its original owners, individuals including Tom and Julia Davis, whose land lies directly across Ninth/Capitol from River Street (for which Julia Davis Park is named), A.G. Miller, and John McLellan, a homesteader who established his home along the north side of the Boise River in 1863. McLellan also established the Ferry to cross the river (I believe this is where the old Ninth Street Bridge is now), and he soon began subdividing his land into the neighborhood which we now refer to as the River Street area.

By tracing these physical transitions we can trace the local cultural, economic, and political transitions as well. This project will help understand how cultural identities are constructed through the physical landscape, how the political environment influences the social structure of a city, and how a review of these relationships can expose the hierarchy of power within a growing city. It is clear that River Street became a designated living space for the working class as the railroad moved into town, leaving River Street physically separated from the city south of the tracks. This “catch-all” phrase, working-class, includes immigrants, ethnic minorities, and any other transient populations hoping to move up the social ladder.

Why was this neighborhood important then and why is its history important?

Inspiration for the Project:

 Inspiration for the project began with an interest in the River Street neighborhood and African Americans living in the community. Some members in the group were familiar with several African American oral histories and had an interest in learning more. Angie also interned at the Idaho Historic Library and transcribed oral histories. Some topics of interest include; community life, segregation, racism, economic opportunities, and push-pull factors of moving in and out of the community. Our group is also focusing on how the River Street neighborhood has changed or evolved from 1890-1970. After several discussions our group decided to expand on our topic and focus on the working class community in the River Street neighborhood, instead of only African Americans.

　

 

The digital component of the project will use Omeka, which will include; photos, sound, oral history interviews, maps, information about River Street, and links to local museums. An advantage of Omeka is that it will be user friendly, accessible, and photos and sound will be high quality. A continuing activity that may also be included is the use of a walking tour of River Street with an app. The app may expand upon some free podcasts that provide audio or visual walking tours. Some websites that provide free access include: podguides.net, podcastalley.com, and itunes.com. These apps would be great for the project because they may include sound to inform a visitor, or display a map to direct visitors to a specific building or area. Liabilities with the use of either Omeka or an app, is that we have to learn to use the technology and how to best implement that technology with our project. An additional liability could be that the technology may be time intensive to learn, and the plan of our project may need to be modified.

 

By delivering this history through a digital medium, we allow users to create their own experience, enriched through a visual, audible, and otherwise interactive platform. The Omeka platform serves this purpose, enabling a pre-packaged experience at the user’s convenience. But it also has the potential to deliver a personally engaging historical tour of a largely ignored section of Boise City. As mobile technology is becoming widely available, Omeka has made a point of utilizing this technology, and in that way we can also deliver a mobile experience as well. This first-person experience will take place as the user, who resides in the present, has the past delivered, in digital form, to their mobile device. We can enrich each of these experiences with photos, maps, and oral histories, making the journey as complete as possible.

Resources Needed to Complete the Project:

A list of 6 individuals/families we want to highlight

Research on political and economic forces causing change

Research for incidental information about neighborhood

Photos

Books about Boise

Dissertation by Pam Demo

Paper by John Bertram

Newspaper articles

Handscanner

Instruction about Omeka

Anticipated Challenges:

The River Street Neighborhood was a place that members of our group knew little about. We decided to do some initial information gathering to determine if we had chosen a good subject for our project. Happily, one challenge became quickly apparent when we met as a group to work on our plan. We discovered a wide range of information covering more than a century of the neighborhood’s history. We not only have to define our focus, we have to keep it and not get distracted by all the other information we would love to include. We have the challenge of keeping the project at a workable size for the time period in which we have to complete it. Our group also hopes learn and use Omeka. This technology is new to everyone in the group and we anticipate extra time needed for learning and implementing Omeka all at once. We decided we would store our initial work in Powerpoint. As with all group work, we will have to decide which parts of the project require meeting together and what we can do individually.

Timeline:

March 13-19- Research and collecting information

Tracking down hand scanner

March 20-26 – Narrative outline writing

March 27-April 2 (Spring Break) Start Powerpoint file

April 3-9 Work on Omeka

April 10-16 Trips to Museums, private collections, interviews

April 17-23 Compile findings and information

April 24-30 Finalize ideas

April 1-7 Edit project

Write paper

　

　

In this week’s reading I found the chapter on the Missouri Botanical Garden (124) particularly interesting because, embarrassingly enough, I have never really thought of botanical gardens as museums. This chapter was very enlightening in that respect. Organizations such as the Missouri Botanical Garden function as you would expect any museum to. They cleverly design exhibits and displays to demonstrate a particular point or idea, in this case with more complicated resources to work with.

If anyone hasn’t checked out the website for the Missouri Botanical Garden, it is worth doing so. They have photos for each section, maps, and some cool videos (including a virtual tour, which is only a YouTube video at the moment). It would be interesting to think about the possibilities for mobile applications for an attraction like this one. Thinking about it briefly, audio would seem to be the best option, as this is a place where your eyes would need to be focused solely on the exhibits.

Link: www.mobot.org

Luke’s institutional critique reminds me of something I read last semester about the World Exposition in 1893. The World Expositions tended to operate within many of the parameters outlined in Luke’s work, as they are physical and symbolic expressions of cultural, social, and economic power-relationships.

Because they house national and/or international “treasures” museums are an expression of a culture’s values, and the public responds by enlisting museums as their cultural keepers. This political struggle within the institutions, outlined by Luke, are evidence of a struggle within society as to what they believe our values should be. Similarly, the struggle for world hegemony can be seen in what the World’s Fairs choose to represent as the apex of cultural achievement. Just by looking at some of the architecture (begins at p. 8), it is clearly, visually, an expression of Greek and Roman heritage.

http://books.google.com/books?id=CWQ_FBHGrW4C&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=white+celebration,+world+exposition&source=bl&ots=_StQtQZA8U&sig=qqZ2IHY1AnksCTzqxfIm9s2GL8c&hl=en&ei=Fod9TdWcDMfkrAGD_fz2BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

In 1893 the white international powers were celebrating industry, and their political and socio-economic dominance in international affairs by making architectural reference to one of the most powerful western empires. Endeavors such as these are not merely thrown together, they are in fact qui intentional. As Luke points out, a lot of vested interests are struggling to represent their own angle. So it is interesting and important to examine the ontological discourses of these “regimes of artistic, historic, or scientific interpretation” in order to examine the source of ‘truth’ and view it within its proper context (Luke, 223).

I guess, altogether, it is no surprise that the museums on The Mall in D.C. are inherently political. Look at the environment. And the museum in Los Angeles has a political lean that adequately represents the political lean of L.A. and its surrounding areas. And the MET in NYC represents the western tradition architecturally, as well as in its exaltation of the western artistic tradition.

I suppose starting with the obvious first-chapter- Holocaust-issue would be, well, obvoious. However…this was a topic in last semester’s public history undergrad course and it still amazes me; this will never be an issue that is able to be settled. There will always and forever be a “this is the truth and it should be shown side,” and a “why the %$#& are you making this entertaining” side? I, for one, am on the side of truth, and sometimes it just so happens that getting certain audiences to understand it takes certain measures, whether they are playing the role of a victim on a card the are given, or are approached by the image of thousands of shoes in a pile representing the dead. Sometimes the extremist experience is the one that effects people more and teaches them the most.
I only have one brief question about chapter 6 and the American Museum of Natural History. Granted, it was skimmed, however, the idea that the museum is an “essentially uncontested site” (p.101), seems to be founded in the statements following, that it focuses on assuring the patrons of the museum that their “life is as it should be,” “the American way of life.” This being the overarching theme of the museum, the attention gets taken away from the fact that half of the artifacts aren’t even from America, or came from before it was America. So does the name of a museum have an effect on the interpretation? It seems to me that it does.
**It is at this point the girl in the ‘quiet study room’ almost got a lesson in what that actually means, and I attempted to stray away from (accidental) manslaughter. Her teeth hurt…how is that relevant to her study group?**
The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is a great compliation of different aspects that bring in all different kinds of crowds. Not only their exhibits, but the different kinds of tours they offer are largely attractive qualities of what would initially seem a not-so-exciting scenario.
As a person who tends to lean more toward the side of a more humanitarian museum, as opposed to the nature preservation, I must admit that I was impressed with Luke’s descriptions and the way he analyzed the nature reserves, as it were. However, it seemed at times that he had an aversion to anything human-related, though it is most likely a dislike of the liberal displays of genocide and the the like. He does have a good opinion for all of it, however, and he does know what he is talking about!