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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!

Are mobile applications entertainmentality? Or are they a tool that will help us to walk the fine line between entertaining and educated the audience? I believe that they will become a helpful tool to resolving, in part, some the museum politics issues that Luke points out. Mobile application should be able to assist with this because applications can be built by an outside source. This may have an issue of credibility for some applications, but I believe it may help to alleviate some of the political norms. For example, you can take a structure, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and develop a variety of helper applications, for example, an application that focused on the “others” affected by the Holocaust homosexuals, gypsies, and handicaps. Furthermore, there could be an application (certainly not museum funded) that educates the museum guest on the current holocausts. While Luke argued the memorial gives a sense of “it won’t happen again” an application could counter this feel and invite the visitor to understand this is not a problem of the past. Could you imagine if an app had been built that that allowed you to hold up your phone and see the Enola Gay exhibit as the curators had originally intended? It certainly would have annoyed the protesters and government officials involved but allowed viewer who wanted to see that side of history to get what they wanted.

**keep in mind, the references to History Wars is off of memory… I didn’t have enough free time to go back and cite the book… it is an EXTREMELY interesting read, though!**

As soon as I read the first few paragraphs of Museum Politics, I knew what I was going to write on. Luckily (for you), Chapter 2 went into the specifics of the case that I had in mind. Thankfully, this results in a shorter blog…

During my ‘Intro to the Study of History’ course with Dr. Walker as an undergrad, our main focus for the semester was a mix between history deniers and the public politics in telling History. One of the assigned books (which I still have in my collection) is History Wars by Linenthal and Engelhardt. This book goes into great detail about the various scripts presented to the Smithsonian on how the Enola Gay should be displayed.

A bit or irony in this, is that there was never a doubt in anyone’s mind as to the significance of the aircraft, however the emotions of both sides actually led to the negligence of the Enola Gay. History Wars describes the condition the aircraft was kept in by the time it had reached Andrews AFB; which from what I recall was outside, adjacent to an aircraft hanger, ridden with graffiti, vandalism, and natural decay. So much for a treasured artifact of American History…

One of the scripts that I sided with (one of our assignments was to pick a script, and defend it in class against others who disagreed) was a fairly simple display that allowed the visitor to immerse themselves in the events of August 6, 1945. This display called for the Enola Gay to be in the center of a room, surrounded by artifacts from the blast site (one of which being Shigeru Orimen’s lunch box), with the walls of the exhibit to be life sized 360 degree views of ground zero. This would be a perfect exhibit in my mind; here is the plane, and this is what it did.

To me, this script avoids the two conflicts which were honoring the veterans vs. showing the atrocities of war. One classmate of mine angered me when he stated “this is the Smithsonian, though. Its job is to make the visitors feel patriotic.”…

Um, no.

The Smithsonian is a museum. It’s job is to tell the story of American History, some of which is not entirely glamorous. Anyone who truly believes that American History is pristine and without any blemishes, is beyond naive. Our country was founded, and has been preserved, by human beings. These humans made some questionable decisions and performed many questionable acts, but in the end, the country’s perseverance was the motivating factor. Some actions are not forgiven if the only excuse is for a pursuit of valor, however in war, these atrocities are almost expected.

If diplomacy was possible, war would not be.

For me, this week’s readings really reinforced the power that historians wield through museums and interpretive signs and displays. The word “interpretive” is incredibly significant. Museums are far from simple presentations of artifacts. The stories told through museum exhibits are not told through the items and information that are present, but are instead told through the items not present, the labeling and interpretation, and even through the positioning of items within exhibits. I do agree with Timothy W. Luke that “cultural realities are defined” in museums.

I found myself laughing as I read his descriptions of the “West as America” exhibition. Not because the exhibit’s subject matter was humorous, but because I kept thinking, “what’s wrong with that?” For someone educated in the manner that I have been, the ideas put forth in “The West as America” do not seem radical at all. I would guess that an exhibition of this nature would not cause as much of an uproar today, and I think this is a reflection of cultural realities being defined through the interpretive work of historians. Exhibitions, especially ones as notable as this one, increase debate, which then works to help our thoughts evolve.

I spent quite a bit of time after reading this week’s chapters digging up more information on the “West as America” exhibition, and I thought I’d link to a couple articles I found the most interesting (the catalog for the exhibit has already been posted, thanks Ellen!)

This is a Time Magazine review of the exhibition from 1991: www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972933,00.html

And a History News Network article from 2002 titled, “The Smithsonian Scandal That Wasn’t.” hnn.us/articles/748.html

Even though Timothy Luke’s ideas were interesting I didn’t find him particularly easy to read. I found myself going to the computer to look up more information and get images of what he was discussing in his writing. I found the catalog for “The West as America”http://people.virginia.edu/~mmw3v/west/home.htm and the websites for the Autry Museum, the Heard Museum, the Fred Harvey Company, and the Pima Air and Space Museum. I also looked through other articles about the Enola Gay exhibit controversy. Even though I couldn’t go to a museum and see the actual paintings in the exhibit “The West as America”, the internet allowed me to still see these paintings grouped together and the texts that accompanied the exhibit 20 years later. I love to go to museums, but if controversy is going to hinder my ability to view something there are ways around that now with digital technology. I even use the internet to look at non-controversial exhibits in places I wouldn’t be able to go. Anymore, I don’t think people are dependent on museums and what they contain is actually more accessible to more people.

When I lived in New York City I was able to go and see the Robert Maplethorpe photos that were so controversial. Now all one has to do is enter his name on Google and voila! The photos appear.

By coincidence this morning I was finishing reading David Sedaris’ book When You are Engulfed in Flames. He describes when he and his partner are in Japan and they visit the Hiroshima Memorial Museum. “Just when you’d think that it couldn’t get any sadder, you’d come upon another display case, one in particular with a tag reading, ‘Nails and skin left by a twelve-year-old boy.’ This boy, we learned, was burned in the blast, and subsequently grew so thirsty that he tried to drink the pus from his infected fingers. He died, and his mother kept his nails and the surrounding skin to show to her husband, who’d gone off to work that day the bomb was dropped but never came home.” I started thinking about how the Japanese or tourists to Japan could go and see this side of “event” that was not acceptable to some in the “Crossroads” exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum. Then I stopped and went again to Google and found the website and virtual museum.

I don’t doubt that debates will continue to go on about what is politically correct for the public to view in museums, but if attempts at censoring continue there will be much more involved than just cancelling an exhibit.