I enjoyed all the articles and I am glad that our reading began with the Monroe and Echo-Hawk article. This article set a good tone for the following articles, and the ideas within them. Monroe and Echo-Hawk state valid points that pertain to how museums conduct themselves and how they have conducted business in the past. The average visitor to a historical or natural history museum probably has never heard of the Antiquities Act, or knows what it entails. Like the innovative work done by Fred Wilson in his “Mining the Museum” exhibit, I think part of museum interpretation should include (in a creative interpretation like Wilson’s or in straightforward text), how the object was obtained and its varied contexts. Therefore, museums could be even more progressive by addressing the context of the objects ascension, for example mentioning the Antiquities Act of 1906, as well as, that Native Americans were not recognized as a person under the law until 1879, and not granted citizenship until 1924.
Adding these concepts and historical facts to museum interpretation allows for the polysemic classification that Cameron discusses in her article. According to Cameron, “An object’s meaning and its classification, is not self-evident or singular, but is imposed on the object depending on the position and aims of the museum.” (227) I believe this is the most important concept brought up by the readings, and is a concept that ties all of this week’s readings together. As Corrin points out in her article, colonial history is not addressed in historical displays, which begs the question of, what is the true position and aim of a historical museum when it ceases to encompass a complete cultural and historical context in displaying their objects?
April,
I also found the point you bring up about “polysemic meanings” very intriguing. But I did think that the idea somewhat contradicts what Cameron stated later in the article regarding “significance statements.” I find it difficult to acknowledge that an object might have many meanings, yet its significant as determined by museum curators as singular.
Recognized meanings tend to be clouded by subjectivity, and this is a difficult thing for all historians to grapple with, including museums curators. There is no singular meaning, but there can be singular actions; what museum curators present and the context they present it in is can be axiomatically singular, (a cup is a cup), however artifacts can not escape polysemic meanings that exist outside of the museum and outside of the curators own intentions. That’s all I’m sayin…