What's Next?

Despite their volubility about their research historians are often inarticulate about why their discipline matters as a whole.  It seems to me, at least, that historians are rarely able to put forth a convincing case for why history matters that has more than personal relevance.  Indeed, graduate training in history often seems to consist in (blindly) grasping towards a personally satisfying answer to that question, in addition to whatever smaller historiographical questions we may be trying to resolve.  As the end of this semester draws near, and I seek to renew my historical faith in the face of a hefty workload, this week’s readings on the prospects of public history are particularly enlightening, as well as unsettling.  First up, we have James Chung et. al. with “Coming Soon: The Future: The Shape of Museums to Come,” which provides a vision of the possible future of museums in light of on-going structural changes in American society.  Second, we have Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service, a recent study on the practice of history in National Parks, prepared by the NPS and the Organization of American Historians.

           

In “Coming Soon: The Future,” Chung et. al. try to envision the future of museums in a country that is projected to become older, more racially and culturally diverse, and increasingly unequal with regard to income and wealth in the coming decades.  As is so often the case with cultural institutions, the future, as forecast by Chung et. al., will depend on money, whence it comes and where it goes.  As energy costs increase, making transportation more difficult, museums away from public transportation may suffer.  As wealth becomes more concentrated museums may become even more beholden to large donors than they already are.  As “digital natives” mature and leisure time more scarce museums will have to adjust their content to meet new expectations for accessibility and flexibility.  Everything about museums will have to change it seems except the place of museums as both respites from the outside world and sites of dialogue about, and for, the outside world.  The Chung projections seem built around a large intuitional model of museums, a model which discounts other, more informal, types of exhibition (such as those studied by Tammy Gordon in Private History in Public), yet they provide useful food for thought about the relationship between structural change and cultural institutions.

           

Imperiled Promise, compiled in 2011 for the NPS and OAH by Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Marla Miller, Gary Nash, and David Thelen, is a report on where history stands in the NPS based on an electronic survey of NPS employees in history-related fields (its method and rationale is not unlike that of Thelen’s earlier study The Presence of the Past, conducted with Roy Rosenzweig).  According to the report, history in the NPS is a mess.  Few NPS employees in historical positions have graduate-level training in history.  The few credentialed historians the NPS possesses are often segregated in cultural resource management, rather than in positions that involve interpretation and interaction with the public.  History is too often presented to the park-going public as a fixed, objective set of facts about the past rather than an ongoing, dynamic process, the interpretations of which change in light of developments in the present.  In short, history in the NPS too often resembles history in an old textbook or a cheap television show.  Whisnant and company would like history in the NPS to more closely resemble, and maintain a closer relationship with, history in the academy.  Doubtless there is much that could be gained from this, but in making their recommendations Whisnant, Miller, Nash, and Thelen have a tendency to romanticize professional history (most evident on p. 17-9).  These four historians (it must be admitted) occupy privileged positions in the profession that, while undoubtedly well deserved, may insulate them from seeing how the forces that have pulled apart history in the NPS have their parallels within an increasingly entrepreneurial and bottom-line focused academy.  NPS historians are not the only ones isolated from professional networks and opportunities for professional development: graduate students and adjunct faculty frequently are too.  Fixing history in the NPS appears to be a small part of a much larger necessity: fixing history.

           

That said, there are glimmers of hope, particularly here in Philadelphia.  The 2012 report of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance on the economic impact of cultural ventures in the region (http://www.philaculture.org/research/reports/arts-culture-economic-prosperity-greater-philadelphia-2012) presents evidence of the growing economic footprint of cultural work.  The figures speak for themselves, but suffice it to say that even if the NPS and the historical guild can’t come through we historians may yet have opportunities in the coming years.

Until Next Time,

J