Dioramas and Cabinets of Curiosities in Milwaukee and Montreal

Plaque at the entrance of the Frontier Airlines Convention Center from the Hilton Hotel Skywalk, April 21, 2012

What "Good History" Milwaukee has to offer was certainly augmented by the influx of hundreds of historians who attended the 2012 joint conference of the National Council on Public History and the Organization of American Historians this past weekend, April 18-22. I for one was quite intoxicated by the intellectual and social environment of the conference and the city that hosted it. I invite you to read more on the Public History Commons, and I may have more to say about specific sessions once I've had a chance to let my impressions synthesize, but for now, I'd like to share some comparative observations of the Milwaukee Public Museum and the little Redpath Museum in Montreal, visited within days of each other.

Diorama at the Milwaukee Public Museum, Photo by Drew Saunders

After a minor scheduling hitch that involved a rapid walk through a blustery Milwaukee afternoon, I made it to a special behind-the-scenes tour of the Milwaukee Public Museum, a large institution dedicated to comprehensive natural history and ethnographic coverage on a world-scale. From our enthusiastic guides, the museum's chief registrar and an exhibition curator in charge of the museum studies certificate program at U-W Milwaukee, I learned about the institution's signature "Milwaukee Style" dioramas, the intellectual offspring of Carl Akeley.  As a former New-Yorker, I had fallen into a common provincial trap, believing that the three-dimensional "still lifes" with taxidermy, natural fibers, and perspective backgrounds had originated at Manhattan's own "indoor zoo," the American Museum of Natural History. In fact, Carl Akeley first realized his artistic vision of a style of taxidermy where animals were placed in realistic positions, surrounded by their natural habitat, at the Milwaukee Public Museum.  He later went on to propagate the style at the Field Museum in Chicago and then at the American Museum of Natural History where he worked from 1909 until his death in 1926.

At the Milwaukee Public Museum, Akeley's style extends to the cultural displays that offer visitors an Epcot-style world tour from the Americas to Africa and Asia.  Even Europe is represented, albeit in a more modern context beside an exhibit meant to transport visitors back in time to "The Streets of Old Milwaukee."  Although I was impressed by the attention to detail, color, and loving maintenance in all of the Museum's exhibits, I couldn't help but feel slightly uneasy amidst the juxtapositions of disparate times and places. Crafted like stage-sets, the museum's exhibits have a kind of spacial narrative without explicit transitions. As a part of the special behind-the-scenes tour, I had the opportunity to learn about the components of the exhibits built in the late 19th century, augmented by the WPA in the 1930s and then installed in the museum's permanent home in the 1960s.  However, none of these chronological mash-ups are illuminated in the museum's exhibit captions.  I know I'm not alone in my desire for this kind of meta-text, especially in narrative museum exhibits (a kind of historiography), but this is rarely granted to the visitor, even in contemporary credit panels which more frequently credit donors than curators.

 

Photo on http://www.mcgill.ca/redpath/about

I find that I am less bothered by a lack of  chronological grounding in the non-linear, more old fashioned "cabinet of curiosities" style of exhibitry. At the Public Museum, this style is proudly showcased in the Sense of Wonder exhibit on the Museum's first floor. As I discussed in a previous post, the Redpath Museum on the campus of McGill University, also showcases the turn-of-the-20th-century style of exhibitry throughout its gorgeous 1882 building. Interestingly, both the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Redpath resist alteration due to strong architectural imperatives.  I am left pondering the value of versatility and flexibility in a museum. Does a museum that is frozen within its own historical context become an artifact on display? Should institutions embrace this state of affairs when faced with physical plants resistant to change?  Does the virtual world then become the best avenue for expansion and contemporary curation for institutions such as these? If an old exhibition is truly a gem, then this doesn't seem like too bad a turn of affairs.

National Museum of American Jewish History Part Two

In my last post, I went on about how the NMAJH did such a great job of telling specific, authentic stories. Yet, I wouldn't do my visit justice without highlighting two wonderful exhibition features from the first section of the core exhibit, the section focused on the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

The first great feature is a children's space on the theme of western migration. The space features letters and diaries from a real family that traveled the Oregon trail in a covered wagon. The exhibit is fun and engaging, with period costumes, cooking pots over a dung-fueled fire, barrels of crackers from a trading post, and a life-sized covered wagon, laden with luggage, and animated by the sound of a team of oxen and the creaking of great big wagon wheels. Part of what makes the exhibit so great is its minimal use of technology. There are no buttons to push, nor screens to stare at. Children and adults alike are pulled into a world of pretend recognizable to any generation likely to cross the museum's threshold. Even in a group without children, we spent a good 20 minutes imagining we were pioneers.

On the other side of the technogical spectrum is a giant map chronicling the economic, demographic and political shifts that led to intensified westward expansion in the mid-to-late 19th century. The map fills the center of a large room whose periphery pinpoints the experiences of Jewish immigrants in cities all over the U.S. Poered by a modest touchscreen, the map lets you layer various factors, such as population density, the discovery of veins of gold, and the acquisition of new territories in a way that emphasizes the interaction among these factors, presenting them simply and beautifully. I found myself wishing I had a map like this in my own living room. Incidentally, the map was pointed out to us by a knowledgable museum volunteer. She seemed excited to share the museum's treasures with some visitors who were eager to learn. Yet another way in which this museum should provide a model to aspiring history museums around the country.

Jewish History on Independence Mall

In 2010, the National Museum of American Jewish History opened its brand-new five-storey building to the public.  A little belatedly, I visited for the first time two weeks ago.  I was rife with anticipation, having heard good things about the museum's lay-out, artifacts, and exhibitions.  I was not disappointed.

The NMAJH effectively accomplishes what the best "ethnic" or "sub-group" narrative museums are able to do better than most history museums that attempt to embrace the entirety of the public. (See my review of MOCA for an example a way in which this does not work perfectly.)  It presents American history, from the Colonial era through the present, through the lens of a single population, quite diverse in truth, but viewed as a unit by those outside its confines. The stories it tells are specific, tied to artifacts and personal memoir, and then knitted together by statistics, geographical trends, and outside events that affect everyone.  Immigration, westward migration, capitalism, civil rights and other social movements, suburbanization, and identity politics all get their due in a way that manages to simultaneously embrace debate and celebrate the spirit of self-definition within a narrative where everyone is motivated by the ideal of freedom.  This is rather patriotic stuff bolstered by the truth that can only come from lived human experience.

In essence, the narrative arc of the NMAJH reminds me of a Ken Burns documentary, thick with anecdotes and embroidered with inspirational profiles.  The skeptical public historian in me always asks if this is a critical cop-out.  How is it that we can be endlessly inspired by the beauty of disagreement within  a larger framework of democratic striving?  The Constitution Center, just a block away, attempts to to do the same thing, and, through perhaps too much showy-ness and generalization, sometimes misses the mark (although I'll be the first to admit that its celebratory multimedia show makes me teary).  But I contend that the NMAJH succeeds because it portrays real history.  And history, because it is story above all else, succeeds in motivating us to question our reactions and appreciate our humanity as we anticipate the future.