CHAPTER 5

Interpreting and
Exhibiting History

KEY TERMS

witnessing objects material culture

thesis lineage objects
big idea place-based storytelling
exhibition title stakeholders
master label Standards for Museum Exhibits Dealing
section topic label with Historical Subjects
case or group label evaluation
object identification front-end evaluation
descriptive caption focus groups
interpretive labels formative evaluation
funder list remedial evaluation
credit panel summative evaluation
orientation label

I
NTERPRETING AND EXHIBITING HISTORY can take place anywhere. Exhibitions
can be permanent and formal, as is the case with displays at museums, or temporary
and deliberately informal, as in a pop-up installation. People exhibit history online, in
the streets, at historic sites, in museums, and in airports. Interpretations can be extremely
serious, for topics such as the Holocaust, or deliberately playful, even bordering on the
absurd. Consider the London Bridge Experience that begins with a history of London and
the bridge, but ends with actors covered in fake blood chasing tourists through darkened,
narrow passageways with chainsaws.1
Exhibitions can be text-based, as in a typical museum display; 100 percent visual, as
in a banner exhibition; or completely audio, as in a podcast. Even though this chapter

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discusses interpreting and exhibiting history in museum exhibitions, the range of options
for approaching the topic are immense. The chapters that follow will address a broader
range of possibilities, but in this chapter we begin with basic principles, using the museum
as a starting point. To introduce you to the kinds of interpretation and exhibition choices
we will explore in this chapter, we begin with a walkthrough of the Museum of Memory
and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile, a site that faced a challenge of interpreting a pain-
ful and controversial period in Chile’s recent past.
Chile celebrated its bicentennial in 2010 along with other countries throughout Latin
America. The country’s proud history of democratic rule and civility had been broken in
1973 when the military violently deposed democratically elected socialist President Sal-
vador Allende. The military dictatorial regime, led by General Augusto Pinochet, inflicted
human rights abuses, including the arrest and torture of at least 31,000 Chileans; thousands
were murdered and disappeared. Usually, on a significant anniversary, a nation would be ex-
pected to celebrate the high points of its past to promote its future. But Chilean President
Michelle Bachalet knew her country’s recent history would not allow that type of com-
memoration; she herself had been tortured under the dictatorship, so it was fitting when she
inaugurated the bicentennial year by dedicating a museum designed to preserve the memory
of human rights atrocities committed under the dictatorship that ruled the country from
1973 through 1990.2
The Museum of Memory and Human Rights, or Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos
Humanos, opened January 10, 2010. Designed by Brazilian architect Mario Figueroa, the
museum stands three stories tall over a recessed courtyard, flanked by a reflecting pond and
surrounded by a thin screen of oxidized copper. The use of copper is deliberate, as it is the
most important natural resource of Chile. The block-like geometric shape of the building
hovers over the path that visitors use to enter the museum one story below the street level.
Along the main ramp that descends under the museum, the entire text of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights hangs from the wall in bronze lettering.
When visitors enter the museum, they encounter a collage arranged in the shape of
a map of the world. The individual pictures depict human rights abuses from around the
globe. Below the map stand thirty plaques, representing truth commissions from Latin
America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, including two that investigated the abuses under Pino-
chet in Chile.3 If there is one message that is clear to all who enter the museum, it is that
Chile is not alone. Other countries have not only suffered terrible human rights tragedies,
but they have also faced their pasts. The museum’s story may not be unique in the world,
but it is a story that is shared by Chileans throughout the country. On the floor next to
the truth commission exhibit lies a map of Chile showing the location and description of
160 memorials that preserve the memory of human rights abuses under Pinochet. Another
map of Chile in the museum lobby shows the other places where the history of the military
dictatorship is interpreted and/or memorialized through art installations or memorials to
specific individuals, specific groups, or sites of imprisonment or torture.
The permanent exhibition, based on the reports of the National Commission on Truth
and Reconciliation and the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture,
begins on the second floor. Visitors initially encounter evidence of the coup from Septem-

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Photograph 5.1. Exterior of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago, Chile, Au-
gust 2010. Photo by Cherstin M. Lyon.

ber 11, 1973. News reports flash on screens; a short documentary plays, showing scenes of
the presidential palace being bombed from the air. Cubes across the floor encase computer
terminals where visitors can choose the sources they want to consult in order to learn more
about the coup as it unfolded and was reported on around the world.
Turning the corner, the exhibition shows how a junta formed immediately, suspended
freedom of speech, and repressed dissidents. The portions of the exhibition that are based
on the attempts to crush freedom of speech and the international outcry against the brutal
dictatorial repression line the perimeter of the main exhibition, where light streams into the
museum through the entirely glass walls, filtered by the skin of copper that envelops the
outside of the building.
The light that illuminates the outer edge of the exhibition contrasts sharply with the
darkness of the interior. The exhibits in this darker area show how more than 31,000 Chil-
eans and foreign nationals were detained, often in secret locations, tortured, and in some in-
stances killed; much to the horror of family members, some were disappeared in clandestine
graves or disposed of in other nefarious ways. The walls of the interior section are painted
black, the lighting is low, and visitors get a sense of the secrecy and shame that shrouds this
portion of the national story. Only one large artifact makes the torture tangible. One metal
bed frame with a large cell battery and electrical cords are a visible reminder of the barbaric
torture techniques ostensibly used to gather information from the military’s victims.

INTERPRETING AND EXHIBITING HISTORY ▲ 85

Photographs 5.2 and 5.3. World maps and truth commissions from around the world with
closeup of individual pictures that compose the world map collage. Photos by Cherstin M. Lyon.
Photograph 5.4. Map of Chile showing other memorial sites. Photo by Cherstin M. Lyon.

Throughout the museum, visitors can linger at flat panel interactive computer screens
to investigate a subject further, examine artifacts and documents, or leaf through binders of
documents that reveal how widespread the torture centers were throughout the country. It
would be difficult for any single visitor to exhaust the research possibilities in the permanent
exhibition alone.
There are two portions of the exhibition that stand out and are designed to be more
affective or reflective in nature. On the second floor, after visitors have learned of the coup,
the repressive regime, the torture and disappearance of civilians, and global efforts to break
the silence and end the human rights atrocities, visitors come to a glass cube that extends
like an observation deck overlooking the main floor. It is positioned directly across from the
wall of more than a thousand pictures of individuals who were imprisoned, tortured, and
then disappeared. The small room is surrounded by lights made to look like candles. Enter-
ing into the room for a moment of silent reflection is a powerful experience. The faces on
the wall remind visitors of the unfinished nature of the story. Outside the museum, below
the courtyard is an art installation by Alfredo Jaar, La geometria de la conciencia (The Geometry
of Conscience), in which visitors enter a single room where silhouettes of generic faces stare
back; the reflection of the visitors and the silhouettes are extended into infinity with the
aid of mirrored sidewalls. The experience lasts three minutes, beginning with one minute of
light in which visitors can see the silhouettes and themselves reflected together, one minute
of absolute darkness, and a final minute like the first in light. The symbolic use of light and
dark used in the museum carries over into this affective experience.

INTERPRETING AND EXHIBITING HISTORY ▲ 87

Photographs 5.5 and 5.6. Light pours into the museum through the clear glass exterior
walls, filtered through the thin copper sheath that surrounds the exterior of the building
to illuminate the portions of the exhibition that interpret efforts to end the human rights
atrocities committed by the military. The interior uses the darkness of black walls to ac-
centuate the secrecy in which the military carried out the disappearances and torture of
Chilean citizens. Photos by Cherstin M. Lyon.
Photograph 5.7. Standing in this small room, visitors can reflect on the victims who were disap-
peared and spend a few minutes looking at the wall of photographs. Photo by Cherstin M. Lyon.

Exhibiting History
Every element of the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memory
and Human Rights) is the result of deliberate and thoughtful choices made by a diverse
team of professionals who designed it to convey specific messages to visitors. The use of
light and darkness is particularly profound. The human rights atrocities are interpreted in
areas set aside and marked by darkness, but even here, visitors encounter elements of hu-
man resiliency, such as dolls or other relics prisoners created with found objects while held
in captivity. The light reveals efforts of Chileans and the international community to resist
rules restricting access to information and efforts to bring evidence of human rights abuses
to the public and to end the violence. The exhibition uses spatial organization, lighting, flow,
color, video, and auditory elements to provoke a multisensory intellectual and emotional
response. Interpreting and exhibiting history—like collecting—can reveal attitudes, beliefs,
and ways of understanding our relationship with history.
The survey respondents in The Presence of the Past reported a strong draw to the collec-
tions of material culture in museums and at historic sites as a way to experience and under-
stand the past. As Thelen and Rosenzweig reported, “the people who talked with us trusted
history museums and historic sites because they transported visitors straight back to the
times when people had used the artifacts on display or occupied the places where ‘history’

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had been made.” These visitors wanted to interact with witnessing objects: those objects
that were there during the events and the times that the exhibition explains. Thelen and
Rosenzweig found that by “approaching artifacts and sites on their own terms, visitors could
cut through all the intervening stories, step around all the agendas that had been advanced
in the meantime, and feel that they were experiencing a moment from the past almost as
it had been originally experienced.” The survey respondents rated museums as the most
trustworthy of the places where they encountered history. This attitude toward witnessing
objects underlines the responsibility of public historians—and all professionals who develop
exhibits—to maintain this trust and to provide opportunities for the unmediated interaction
between visitor and historical artifacts.4
Since most exhibitions have a specific educational goal, exhibits will provide more than
these unmediated experiences. Principles for sound informal education should apply as mu-
seums develop their educational goals and plans for an exhibit. Adults and children should
be invited to think through the interpretive process and to engage in a problem-posing
model for education. As they plan exhibits and engagement strategies, public historians
should focus on the involvement of the public: visitors of all ages and levels of ability should
have the opportunity to engage with the display and interpretation at their own pace, fol-
lowing their own levels of interest. Despite the vast changes in the ways public historians
have approached exhibits over time, both structurally and thematically, there are certain
principles that apply to almost any well-constructed exhibition. Artifacts and images consti-
tute the core components of most exhibits, and interpretive panels provide written context
and meaning for them.

The “Big Idea”

Developing the content of an exhibition shares many elements with the core work of the
historian described in chapter 2. In a public history setting, the institution may provide
the public historian with a topic: “urban slavery in antebellum Columbia, South Caro-
lina” or “the history of food production and consumption in post-1950 America.” With
that topic in mind, the public historian begins to do history: she reads the secondary
literature and develops a research question. In a large institution, the historian is most
likely working in collaboration with other staff members of the museum even at this early
stage, while in a smaller setting he may be working alone. The analysis of primary sources
enables the historian to develop a thesis, the main argument that will shape the narrative
and that answers the research question. For example, in an exhibit about the development
of factories in nineteenth-century America, the research question might have been, “Why
were so many workers injured in late nineteenth-century American factories?” The thesis
might be that “factories were not well regulated during this period, which put workers
at significant risk.” In academic research and writing, historians always seek to develop a
new and innovative thesis; publishing journal articles and books usually requires an orig-
inal contribution to the field. In exhibit development, however, historians do not always
develop an original thesis—they may use the original work of other scholars to build a

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narrative with the unique set of documents and artifacts housed by their institution. This
debt to the work of other historians is another way in which public historians work more
collaboratively than traditional historians.
In exhibit design, the thesis you have developed—the argument you are making about
the topic of the exhibit—is often referred to as the big idea, a written statement of what
the exhibit will be about. While historians develop the thesis on their own, the exhibit team
collaborates to develop the big idea. As Beverly Serrell has described it, the big idea is “one
complete noncompound, active sentence that identifies a subject, an action (the verb), and
a consequence (‘so what?’). . . . A big idea is big because it has fundamental meaningfulness
that is important to human nature. It is not trivial.”5

What Does a Big Idea Look Like?

From Beverly Serrell’s Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach
Examples of big ideas that contain a clear subject, an active verb, and a “so what?” follow.
As you read each one, what picture do you get in your mind of what you will see, do, and
find out about in an exhibition with this big idea?

• Most of what we know about the universe comes from messages we read in light.
• A healthy swamp—an example of a threatened ecosystem—provides many surpris-
ing benefits to humans.
• Forensic scientists look for evidence of crimes against wildlife in order to enforce
wildlife laws.
• The conditions for life on Earth in extreme environments help define the ways we
search for life on other planets.
• Art depicting the California gold rush promoted a skewed romanticized vision of
one of the nineteenth century’s most important events.

As you can see in the examples above, the subject can be stated in one word (swamps,
scientists) with adjectives (healthy, forensic), or more than one word (most of what we know
about the universe, the conditions for life on Earth, art depicting the California gold rush).
The next three examples do not conform to the Serrell rigors of a big idea statement
(subject-verb-so what?) but they do function just like a big idea in that they define or de-
scribe the content of the exhibition. By reading the title or the statement, you know what
the exhibition will be about.

• Manufacturing a Miracle: Brooklyn and the Story of Penicillin

• Sharks are not what you think.
• What is it about dogs that strongly connects them to humans?

All of the examples above show the difference between a topic and a big idea. Topics—such
as sharks, penicillin, forensic scientists, or Western art—are incomplete thoughts, whereas
a big idea tells you what about sharks, what about forensic scientists, or what kinds of art.
Some people confuse topics, outputs, or objectives with big ideas. Topics and objec-
tives will not help keep the exhibition focused.

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 These examples are not big ideas:

• This exhibit is about the settlement of the western United States.

• This exhibit will present the complex historical and scientific information sur-
rounding the questionable authenticity of sculpture.
• Visitors will learn about molecular structure, chemical reactions, and the scientific
process of analyzing unknown substances.
• Visitors will develop a sense of wonder about nature by exploring the secret world
of animals.

The above are not big ideas because they don’t say what the subject of the exhibition is
or tell you what is going on. If “visitors” or “the exhibit” is the subject, you haven’t got a
big idea yet. If the visitors are doing something, it’s probably an objective. If the exhibit is
doing something, it’s probably an output.6

Developing the “big idea” is not a simple process, but it is critical to exhibition development.
The exhibition team should meet and seek to develop the big idea—have lots of butcher
block paper or whiteboard space available—and they should not expect to accomplish this
easily in one hour or even in one meeting. Including everyone on the team in developing
the big idea makes the process more complex initially as many voices and agendas seek
agreement, but involving all the stakeholders will translate into significant commitment to
the project from everyone. Once established, the big idea should guide the work of the entire
team throughout the rest of the process.
After analyzing the sources of the artifacts and documents, making sense of the
content, and developing the “big idea,” the exhibit team must determine the goals of the
exhibition. Should the exhibit recover lost voices? Reclaim a past that has been lost to
historical amnesia? Correct a wrong? Interpret a historical space? Celebrate an anniver-
sary? An exhibit cannot simply present a collection of stories, as cabinets of curiosities
once did; it must be laid out and interpreted in a way that honors historical thinking. It
should not fall into the category that some would place all history, complaining that it is
“just one damned thing after another,” without a clear sense of why any of it matters in the
first place. Here, the framework Nikki Mandell and Bobbie Malone developed, discussed
in chapter 2, can be invaluable. Their categories of historical analysis—Cause and Effect,
Change and Continuity, Turning Points, Using the Past, and Through Their Eyes—can be
effectively deployed in exhibit development.
An exhibition team may choose to focus on only one of the categories for historical
thinking as the primary goal, but using more than one category can help you build a
powerful exhibition, too, as long as you remember that it cannot do everything. For ex-
ample, let’s go back to that exhibition about nineteenth-century American factories. Or-
ganizers might focus only on the category of cause and effect to help visitors understand
the lack of regulation during this period, but the team could also choose to intersperse
text panels and objects that help visitors see the factory “through the eyes” of its workers
and their experiences. A final panel could consider lessons from this period that continue
to be relevant in the political and economic sectors of our society today as Americans
continue to “use the past” in shaping the present day. These categories of historical anal-

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ysis make visible for the historian and the exhibition team the different ways they are
engaging with the information; when clearly explained and understood, they can go a
long way toward unifying the work of the entire team. As the exhibition develops, the
public historian must choose artifacts, not for their aesthetic appeal or sentimental value,
but because they contribute to the “big idea” and to an understanding of the historical
categories of inquiry being used.

Developing the Big Idea at the Voices of Lombard Street Exhibit

In the Voices of Lombard Street, exhibit organizers at the Jewish Museum of Maryland de-
veloped their big idea by asking a cause-and-effect question: “What happened to Lombard
Street?” A closer examination of their process shows how their institution developed an
exhibit so complex and comprehensive that it has become part of their permanent exhi-
bition. East Lombard had been central to Baltimore’s Jewish community during most of
the twentieth century. Baltimoreans remembered the fresh produce stands spilling onto
bustling sidewalks, chickens hanging in kosher butcher shops, and families walking along it
to nearby synagogues. They also remembered fires and looting that took place on the street
during the urban disturbances that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today many visitors see the vacant lots and the one remaining Jewish deli along the
street and often jump to the conclusion of cause and effect: most of the area must have

Photograph 5.8. Vacant lots line Baltimore’s Lombard Street in 2016. Photo by Elizabeth Nix.

INTERPRETING AND EXHIBITING HISTORY ▲ 93

been burned down during the violence of 1968. However, historian Deborah Weiner pulled
together primary documents—photographs, oral histories, and newspaper clippings—to
prove a different thesis. Although one business on the street burned to the ground during
the unrest, the other businesses survived, taking out ads in the Baltimore Sun reminding
customers that “We are open and ready to serve you.”7 A newspaper article a year after the
disturbances called Lombard Street, “a tiny unchanged island, noisy and odorous, of ancient,
old world foods, customs and conversations . . . a milling, pushing gaggle of shoppers talking
to storekeepers in half a dozen languages over the noise of blaring automobile horns and
squawking chickens.”8 Weiner used secondary sources like Thomas Sugrue’s Origin of the
Urban Crisis to place the experience of this particular shopping district into the context
of American retail trends in the 1970s. She learned that a number of Jewish businesses
closed after the 1960s because the parents had run the business to pay for schooling for
their children. Their educated children did not want to take over a small business, so when
the parents reached retirement age, they simply closed up shop. This generational change
marked a turning point in Jewish history.
After reviewing the secondary literature, Weiner went back to the primary sources and
discovered a street repair project that dealt the most lasting blow to the community. The
City of Baltimore shut down Lombard Street in 1976 for resurfacing. Photographs show

Photograph 5.9. Roadwork shut down Lombard Street in 1976. Photo Courtesy University of
Maryland Libraries.

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the road was impassable. Customers could not park for months, and the sidewalks were
barely walkable. Government records indicate the project took longer than expected. An
oral history underlines the impact of the project: “The way the city’s busted up the street
here, it looks like there’s been a war and we’ve been bombed out.”9 City directories provide
proof that by the end of 1978, twelve of twenty-eight stores had closed, and by 2015, only
Attman’s Delicatessen remained. Using primary and secondary sources, exhibit organizers
developed the big idea of cause and effect: The 1968 unrest did not cause the demise of
Lombard Street. Then they used artifacts and exhibit organization to walk their visitors
through their evidence. Along the way, visitors learned about change and continuity in the
shopping practices of Baltimore’s Jewish community and experienced the history of the
street through the eyes of past residents.

Writing Interpretive Text

After the secondary literature has been read, the primary sources analyzed, the goals of the
exhibition are clear, the main historical category determined, and the big idea developed,
the writing phase begins in earnest. Although we delimit them here for ease of explanation,
these phases can and should overlap; historians are often in the writing phase from the
very beginning of a project, keeping notes and ideas along the way, as well as developing
potential big ideas to test against the secondary and primary sources very early on. Writing
the interpretive content is a time-consuming but rewarding experience. You must take the
complex and often intricate findings you developed in doing the primary and secondary
source research for the project and create compelling and brief presentations of those ideas
that provide context to artifacts, images, and documents.10
Developing the written content that will go into an exhibition means deciding on the
information that will be presented at every level—from the title down to the captions
that accompany individual artifacts. Exhibitions should include both an exhibition title
panel and a master label. The exhibition title panel contains the title of the exhibition and
should clearly state its topic and scope. For example, a popular exhibit at the Smithsonian’s
National Museum of American History is entitled, Food: Transforming the American Table,
1950–2000. The master label, which is the first thing that visitors will view as they enter the
exhibit, should make it clear what the exhibit will cover. The master label often includes the
exhibit’s big idea, either exactly as the exhibit team developed it or in a form made more
readable and understandable by visitors. Master labels should be 125 words or fewer. For ex-
ample, that same Smithsonian exhibition’s master label reads in part, “Between 1950–2000,
new technologies and cultural changes transformed how and what we eat.”
Within the exhibition, artifacts and images are grouped into sections. Visitors to the
Food exhibit encounter sections that discuss “Shortcuts for Home Cooks,” and “Snack
Time,” each with introductory text called the section topic label. These labels, which should
run between seventy-five to one hundred words, introduce the visitor to the information
presented within the section. An even smaller selection of objects can be grouped together
in a case or group label of fifty to seventy-five words. The case or group label may be the
only descriptive identification that these objects receive. In other words, there may not be

INTERPRETING AND EXHIBITING HISTORY ▲ 95

labels interpreting each individual object, only the necessary information to identify the ar-
tifact, called the object identification. The object identification should include information
that will explain to a visitor what the object is, who made it, and what it is made out of, as
well as the object’s accession number, which locates it within the museum’s collection. If one
object is of particular interest or adds an essential component to the big idea, it merits a de-
scriptive caption, of twenty-five to fifty words each, in addition to the object identification.
The interpretive labels described above are not the only kind of information that
should be made available to visitors to an exhibition. There should be several other types of
text panels: funder list, credit panel, and orientation label. The funder list identifies and
provides an opportunity for the institution to thank the organizations and individuals who
provided financial support. It also assists visitors in evaluating the perspective offered by the
exhibition. An exhibition on the historical significance of oil in the United States would
likely look quite different if funded by an oil company versus an environmental activist
group. The credit panel is also key to helping visitors understand the broader context of an
exhibition. It has not been standard practice to include a credit panel at history museums.
This may be in part because of the collaborative nature of exhibition development, but as
historians embrace the idea that historical writing is an interpretation that is always filtered
through the perspective of the historian, it should become more common for visitors to be
able to see who the members of the exhibition team were and in what ways each person
contributed to the exhibition’s development. The orientation panel will help visitors under-
stand the layout of the exhibition and give them the opportunity to focus in on certain areas
that most interest them. In a large exhibition, this material can be helpfully repeated in a
handout or smartphone app.
Writing the words for an exhibition represents a major accomplishment, but displaying
those words is not as simple as selecting “print” from your computer. Designing interpretive
panels requires careful attention to font, font size, and the color of both the letters and the
background in order to increase the likelihood that visitors will actually read the interpretive
labels. Certain practices make type easier for the eye to see, focus in on, and read. There may
be times when you wish to break out of these guidelines, but do so sparingly, and only after
considering whether it is worth the reduced readability of the labels.
It is preferable to use dark typeface on a light background. Capitalization should appear
as it would in standard writing. Mixed capital and lowercase letter sentences are easier to
read than sentences in all caps or all lowercase. Each line of an interpretive panel should aim
for sixty or fewer characters (and characters means each element that occupies space in the
line—letters, punctuations, and spaces), with ragged right margins. Finally, serif fonts—serifs
are the projections that embellish letters in certain fonts, including this one—are preferred
for readability over those fonts without serifs (called sans serif fonts). Compare, for example,
the Times New Roman font (serif ) with the Arial (sans serif ) on your own computer.
Sarah Bartlett, senior exhibit developer for Split Rock Studios, reminds her clients when
they hire her to design their exhibitions that there are some practical things she keeps in
mind when writing interpretive text. It is important to remember that the rules for good
interpretive text writing are different from the rules for writing a paper in your college
courses. The audience reading the text will likely be standing up, distracted by other visitors,
and experiencing a variety of visual and auditory stimuli. Visitors are not seated in a com-

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fortable chair in a quiet room as they might be while reading a book. Visitors are also not
compelled to read. This is an informal setting, and if one of the goals of the exhibition is to
educate the audience, the visitor will need to want to engage in reading the text. Visitors will
make the decision to read or not read the text of the exhibition within a matter of seconds.
If you want to keep your visitor’s attention, and engage your visitor in reading the text that
you and your team have so carefully prepared, you will have to keep the interpretive text
brief and engaging. Many exhibition designers have started using questions as titles to draw
the reader in closer, and to encourage them to read on past the headlines. Alternatively, if
a visitor prefers a quicker experience, the panel titles or headlines should provide enough
information so that a visitor can still grasp the big idea. Having the big idea accessible right
away, and an interesting and visually stimulating array of objects and artifacts, should gen-
erate enough interest that the visitor will slow down and read further. Finally, it is better to
provide too little information with tips for those who are interested to learn more than to
overwhelm your visitors with too much detail. Visitor studies at all types of museums have
shown that the more overwhelming the text of an exhibition is, the more likely visitors are
to refuse to read any of it at all.
The audio guide presents one solution for multiple problems: visitors not wanting to
read the exhibition text, having both children and adults of different reading levels, and
guests who speak diverse languages. The audio guide can offer guests the flexibility of
listening to the interpretation at their own pace, in their own language, in a style geared
toward adult interests or an approach suited for children. Audio guides also offer the
visitor the ability to get detailed information about any part of the exhibition whether
they can get up close or not. An especially popular site or exhibition may draw crowds,
making reading difficult. Even in audio form, though, the principles of good exhibition
writing should apply. Audio guides are first written scripts after all. Visitors will still reach
a saturation point if too much detail is included, or if the audio guide asks them to stand
in one place for too long.
An audio guide is an effort to make exhibits accessible to a wide range of visitors. This
additional sensory experience might enhance the visit for a sighted person but would be
essential to people who are blind. Audio guides also provide a logical plan that allows people
who may not be able to use a map on a brochure to successfully navigate the exhibit. As
you plan an exhibit, build in opportunities for your visitors to engage all the senses. Some
museums implant motion-sensors in the walls that trigger speakers, allowing visitors to hear
actors reading primary documents, shipboard sounds, or street noises as they walk through
an exhibit. Other museums commission three-dimensional models of maps or artwork, so
people with low vision can engage with what is otherwise an incomprehensible two-dimen-
sional object. As you plan your wall labels and exhibit cases, consider people who use wheel-
chairs. Make sure they can see the text you have worked so hard to create. The Smithsonian
has developed a comprehensive guide for accessible exhibit design that is available online.11
As you design exhibits, remember that compliance with the Americans with Disabilities
Act is not only the law, but accessible features often make the museum experience more
appealing to all visitors. A ramp may help a father pushing a stroller, as well as a person
with limited mobility. When we accommodate all ranges of abilities, public historians build
multiple levels of content and a variety of experiences into exhibitions.

INTERPRETING AND EXHIBITING HISTORY ▲ 97

 Whether one is interpreting a display textually, in an audio guide, or with live interpre-
tation, it is important to provide layers and choices to visitors. Everyone should be able to
grasp the big idea and understand the purpose of the exhibition regardless of how much
detail they desire or how much time they have allowed to spend with the exhibition. Visitors
are humans with other things going on in their lives. They may tire quickly due to physical
limitations, or they may be enjoying a holiday with family or friends and your exhibition
may not be the first or the last thing they will see in one day. Going back to our grounding
in the theories of informal education and the liberating effects of engaging the public in
problem-posing education, one of the goals that differentiates academic history from public
history is that we want to inspire visitors and the public more broadly to learn more on their
own: to be curious even after they leave the exhibition, to ask questions, and to engage in
the historical process.

Interpreting Material Culture

At the core of many public history exhibits is material culture. These objects from specific
times and places are some of the most powerful tools that museums and historic sites pos-
sess to communicate stories about the past. At the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space
Museum in Washington, DC, visitors crane their necks upward to see Charles Lindbergh’s
plane, Spirit of St. Louis, and the Apollo 11 command module, Columbia, among many
others famous pieces of aviation history. Standing in the den of the much more modest
Frances Willard House in Evanston, Illinois, visitors can picture the suffragist and tem-
perance activist hard at work at the desk, surrounded by her extensive collection of books.
These things—from an extraordinary spacecraft to an unremarkable desk and chair—make
up what we call a society’s material culture.
The material culture associated with famous events and people in American history are
often compelling objects of interest to current-day museum goers. This interest is fueled by
material culture’s role as lineage objects that connect us to famous people from the nation’s
past or as witnesses to past events, called witnessing objects. Lineage objects are items of
material culture that bring visitors closer to the famous men and women whose lives interest
them. Frances Willard’s desk, for example—or even more intimately, a pair of her earrings
on display at the house—connect visitors to her daily life and routines.
When an object is collected because it was present at an important event, it becomes
a tangible link to an important moment in American history. Being in the presence of
witnessing objects enables modern day Americans to feel connected to these highpoints
in the historical timeline. Henry Ford, the automaker whose product forever changed the
American landscape, assembled in Dearborn, Michigan, an unusual collection of authentic
preindustrial buildings and replicas of landmarks of American history, like Independence
Hall. Most controversially, he acquired actual buildings that had played a role in Ameri-
ca’s business history like Thomas Edison’s laboratory and the Wright brothers’ shop. Ford
removed these buildings from their original sites and assembled a collection in Greenfield
Village, which opened in 1933. Over the course of the twentieth century, the museum
continued to use Ford’s criteria as they expanded their collection, acquiring large objects

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Photograph 5.10. Material culture as “witness”: President Barack Obama on the bus Rosa
Parks rode that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, on exhibit in With Liberty and Justice For
All, at the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza,
April 18, 2012.

that played significant roles in American history. In April 2012, when President Obama
visited the Henry Ford Museum, he took the opportunity to sit on the bus where Rosa
Parks refused to give up her seat, the event that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott of
1955–1956. Seated on the bus, peering out one of its windows, President Obama physically
occupied the space and could imagine seeing through the eyes of leaders and participants in
America’s civil rights movement.
For several generations, a gap existed between museum collections and professional
historians. Early historians concentrated largely on politics, war, and economics, using
written primary sources, mostly created by elites who had the time and resources to create
this documentary record. With the rise of social history in the 1960s, historians began
to uncover the stories of women and non-elites whose lives had to be explored by other
means because they did not usually leave as rich a documentary record as the wealthy
men did. Material culture began to play a much more significant role in the work of later
generations of scholars. Historians who study material culture undertake creative and
interdisciplinary work as they engage with historic archaeologists, curators and museum
collections, and written sources that help us understand material culture (including pro-
bate records, store accounts, and catalogs).12
The ability of material culture to connect visitors to the lives of those who left little
evidence in the written record has led museums to seek out new kinds of objects. Col-
lections of everyday items can serve as valuable repositories of information about the

INTERPRETING AND EXHIBITING HISTORY ▲ 99

lives of the ordinary men, women, and children who inhabited the past. In advance of
the opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and
Culture, Lonnie Bunch, the museum’s director, sought out material evidence from the
middle passage—that horrific journey across the Atlantic that brought more than 12.5
million captive Africans to North and South America.13 What he ultimately found was
the wreck of the São José Paquete de Africa, headed to Brazil, which had sunk in Decem-
ber 1794 off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. The men, women, and children who
perished when the São José sank, estimated to be more than 200 lives lost in this single
tragedy, had been forgotten until the ship’s discovery in 2010. Despite the thousands of
slave ship voyages, this wreckage was the first ever recovered from a ship that sank while
carrying captive Africans to the Americas. What this find brings together is a material
remnant frozen in time at a moment when it was a tool of the slave trade. The museum
will display the iron ballasts that weighed down the ship for its voyage because human
cargo was lighter than other material goods ships like these carried. This ship stands as a
witness to that particular moment—to this particular piece of history. As such, as Lonnie
Bunch tells it, the exhibition of the material remains of the São José will be displayed in a
reverential “memorial space.”14
But to stop there—to let objects only speak for themselves as witnesses to important
moments in the American past or as lineage objects—greatly limits the interpretive potential
of material culture. Even the objects most associated with famous events and people often
began life as unremarkable material things. Of the objects we have already considered, we
can also ask: Who made them? What kind of employment practices did these laborers work
under? What does, for example, the Willard desk, placed in her home, tell us about notions
of privacy or the gendered nature of work during her lifetime? What did these objects mean
to the people who owned and used them? In what ways did these objects shape individual
and collective identity? Material culture objects are embedded in multiple contexts—their
production, their use, and their “afterlife” as objects of display—from which we can learn a
great deal more than simply knowing about their association with past events and people.15
To more completely understand material culture, you must study the object itself, as well
as interrogate a wide variety of other sources. These additional sources—documents, oral
histories, other material goods—allow us to develop a more complete picture of the many
meanings of material culture. Without these other avenues of information and understand-
ing, the complex past meanings of the material world would remain largely obscured.
Historical archaeologist Paul Mullins has studied historically African American
neighborhoods in Indianapolis, Indiana, where a frequently recovered item is the foil milk
cap, an item used to close glass milk bottles in the early decades of the twentieth century.
At first, researchers had set these aside because they appeared to reveal little more than
the fact that the occupants of these homes drank milk. But as Mullins recounts, an elder
of Indianapolis’ African American community later told them how the city’s Riverside
Amusement Park, open only to whites, allowed African Americans admission one day
each year. These foil milk caps were the required admission token, and African Americans
in the city called it “Milk Cap Day.” In the context of this oral testimony, these almost
ephemeral pieces of material culture took on new layers of meaning for the residents in

100 ▲ C H A P T E R 5
Photograph 5.11. Early Twentieth Century Polk’s Dairy Milk Caps (Indianapolis, Indiana).
Photo courtesy of Paul Mullins.

whose yards they were recovered archaeologically and provided new interpretive possibil-
ities in a museum exhibit today.16
The example of the Indianapolis foil milk caps shows how objects of the material world
reflect the larger historical processes in which they are embedded, in this case racism and seg-
regation in the mid-twentieth-century United States. Many scholars who study material cul-
ture argue that material culture objects do more than simply reflect these historical processes;
they can also shape them. The home of a late nineteenth-century elite white American family,
with its lavish material culture, for example, not only showcased their status, but it also helped
to create it. That same family could not have claimed the same level of elite status had they
lived in a small, plain cottage. Current-day museum goers can be challenged to think about
how material culture reflected and shaped human identity in the past and at the same time be
given opportunities to make connections to their own relationships with the material world.

Interpreting and Exhibiting History in the Digital Age

The digital revolution has had an impact on exhibit design. Many museums and historic
sites offer companion websites where visitors can review exhibit materials and often dig
deeper into certain elements. Some museums have added Quick Response (QR) codes to

INTERPRETING AND EXHIBITING HISTORY ▲ 101

artifact displays that visitors can scan with their phones for more in-depth information. The
Museum of disABILITY History has a brick and mortar presence in Buffalo, New York,
but thousands of people also visit its virtual museum. This online exhibition allows users
to explore artifacts in the museum’s holdings from any computer and makes the museum
experience accessible to people of all levels of ability.17 Public history institutions can use a
robust social media presence to provide information and engage in dialogue with visitors.
Digital technologies—especially smartphones—also enable displays to move outside
the walls of a museum or the landscape of a historic site and can add a layer of interpretive
content to a community, a city, or an entire state. There are many tools available for public
historians who wish to engage in this kind of work. Historypin is a free, web-based tool
that allows members to create map-based historical collections.18 The collections include
photographs, video, and audio clips, as well as text. Each piece of visual or audio material is
called a “pin” and is pinned to the map. One Historypin project is “Mapping Emotions in
Victorian London,” which used crowdsourcing—in which volunteers contribute informa-
tion to a project—to map the emotions described in works of fiction at specific locations
throughout London.
Another such project, developed by public historians at the Center for Digital + Pub-
lic History at Cleveland State University, is Curatescape, a mobile publishing platform
for iOS and Android that enables projects to build branded, place-specific historical and
cultural tours. Curatescape is built using the Omeka content management system.19 Cu-
ratescape interprets places using geo-located tours comprised of a combination of archival
and present-day images and film, text, oral history, and expert testimony. Cultural and his-
torical organizations, as well as academic programs, license Curatescape for their projects.
Curatescape provides the structure for the app and website and then each organization or
program that licenses Curatescape “fills” the structure with information, photographs, vid-
eos, and audio files. One of the most compelling advantages of telling historical stories on a
platform like Curatescape is the ease with which information can not only be entered and
made available but also changed in light of new information or in response to user feedback.
This represents a significant difference to physical exhibit displays, which often cannot be
updated for many years because of institutional budget constraints.
Curatescape’s name combines the words “curate” and “landscape,” which are both key
features of the product. Curation brings users good historical scholarship, written in com-
pelling, user-friendly text, and engages them with audio and visual data as well. When a
user selects a particular story at one of the Curatescape projects, what he or she encounters
is a well-told narrative about a specific place rather than the all-too familiar, and often
overwhelming, “data dump” of information that the internet commonly returns when one
does a search on a specific historical actor, place, or event. Equally important is the project’s
emphasis on the landscape. Curatescape presents information structured around “tours” and
“stories.” Every Curatescape project offers users several tours to choose from, usually devel-
oped around a specific theme (e.g., music history and venues, sports, and arts and culture
are some examples from Cleveland Historical) or a specific geographic area (e.g., Cuyahoga
Valley and Coventry Village, also on Cleveland Historical). Each tour is comprised of indi-
vidual stories that are linked to a specific map coordinate. The geo-location feature means
that when Curatescape is being used on a smartphone, the app makes available on its map

102 ▲ C H A P T E R 5
both the location of all of the sites for which there are stories and also the location of the
user. The app connects to Google maps if the user wants to know how to get from his or
her current location to one of the sites. By connecting every story to a specific geographic
location, Curatescape continually reminds users of the importance of place in telling stories
about the past. Rather than presenting historical information primarily as a set of ideas or
through the biographies of principal actors, place-based storytelling emphasizes the signif-
icance of where the past unfolded and the importance of those places in our remembering
of past events. Because Curatescape projects do not leave any kind of physical mark on the
landscape, they also can provide information about places that are not normally open to the
public, as well as sites that no longer physically exist. Curatescape engages public histori-
ans with new questions as the possibility for locations to interpret expands: What is the
responsibility of public historians to inform and/or ask permission of places not normally
open to the public or of sites that now exist on top of an older site being interpreted before
including them in a Curatescape project? What kind of sites might not want to be adver-
tised in such a way?
Developing technologies present challenges and opportunities for public historians. In-
creasingly visitors want to use their phones to interact with the museum environment or to
discover history in the landscape around them. Public historians should recognize the ways
that technology can build on visitor choice to deliver historical interpretation in real time
to a curious and receptive public.

Collaborations and Stakeholders

Exhibits have a collaborative nature because institutions need to reach out beyond their
walls—beyond their staff—to work with stakeholders in developing exhibitions. Public
historians must identify who the potential stakeholders will be for an exhibit and engage
with these groups from the very beginning. This collaborative work focuses on the process by
which the exhibit is developed and understands that this process can be just as important as
the final product in developing and maintaining meaningful relationships with stakeholders.
Stakeholders are the communities or individuals (or, sometimes, their descendants) being
represented by an exhibit. Other stakeholders might include an exhibit’s funders, board
members of the institution producing the exhibit, or politicians involved in the project.
Disparate groups of stakeholders and museum staff may experience conflict as they work to
develop the exhibit. Here public historians are well served by reflective practice, which will
equip them over the course of their careers to learn from these experiences and to incorpo-
rate what they have learned into future projects.
There are numerous examples available in print (and many more that will never be printed)
of public history professionals experiencing conflicts with their stakeholders.20 Sometimes
these conflicts can be resolved through careful listening, thoughtful negotiations, and a little
give and take. Sometimes the conflicts require higher levels of mediation. Unfortunately, there
are times when it seems the conflicts are irreconcilable. Those that are not handled well before
they grow into major disagreements have killed projects and threatened funding of either
exhibitions or entire institutions. One of the most well-known examples is the controversial,

INTERPRETING AND EXHIBITING HISTORY ▲ 103

planned Enola Gay exhibition at the Smithsonian. World War II veterans challenged the staff
of the Smithsonian and historians about the text that would accompany the refurbished plane
that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, questioning especially the estimated number
of lives that would have been saved by preempting an invasion. The Smithsonian eventually
retreated from presenting an interpretive exhibition at all and in a label simply presented the I
fact that this witnessing artifact had dropped an atomic bomb. But in 2003, historians once d
again protested the exhibit plan, this time for not providing any historical interpretation at p
all.21 They pointed to the Standards for Museum Exhibits Dealing with Historical Subjects it
that had been adopted by an impressive coalition of organizations representing historians p
and public historians: the Society for History in the Federal Government Executive Council;
the National Council on Public History Executive Council; the Organization of American a
Historians’ Executive Council; the American Historical Association Council; and the Medical s
Museums Association. The historic nature of the Enola Gay, they argued, must be interpreted, t
even if it is exhibited in an air and space museum setting. p
Despite the high-profile nature of the Enola Gay controversy, and the fact that most in
museums will not attract the attention of the national press or Congress, every institution
has a set of stakeholders they need to consider when planning their interpretation. Early is
consultation will save endless headaches and costly delays later in the project. This effort u
might include local political leaders if the project or museum receives any type of state or
federal grants, board members if their reputations are public in nature and if they play a o
role in approving budgetary expenses, local community members who will either visit the d
exhibition or who will react badly if their needs are not considered, or individuals whose
lives or the stories of their relatives may be the subject of the exhibition. Each set of stake-
holders will likely have different basic values and priorities as they approach any given topic.
Yet the best public history professionals adeptly address the most pressing concerns of these
complex and sometimes contradictory opinions to produce an end product that will appeal
to multiple, diverse audiences. Rather than thinking of stakeholders as potential roadblocks,
we can embrace their diverse perspectives as an opportunity to make our work more relevant
to a greater number of people.

Reflective Practice through Evaluation

The best way to prevent disasters in relations with stakeholders is to follow a process for
evaluation that involves stakeholder input at every stage of the process. How can you be
sure that you are not blindsided once you are too far into your interpretation and exhibition
planning to effectively respond? Maintain contact with your stakeholders through a strong
N
commitment to frequent and thorough evaluation.
It should be clear now that developing an exhibit requires a great deal of planning and 1
attention to many different kinds of details. Most of the time, this work is done in large part
by museum staff. But consultation with potential audiences is critical. Not only should stake-
holders be involved in shaping an exhibition at the outset, but both stakeholders and the wider
potential audiences should be given the opportunity to assess the strengths and weakness at
several points during its development and deployment. This process is known as evaluation.

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 STANDARDS FOR MUSEUM EXHIBITS DEALING
WITH HISTORICAL SUBJECTS (2001)1

In a democracy, a knowledge of history forms the context in which citizens make informed
decisions. Historical knowledge also provides personal, family, and community links to the
past. Historical understandings of other societies assist individuals in identifying commonal-
ities in the human condition and in negotiating the differences that exist in our increasingly
pluralistic world.
Museum exhibits play an important role in the transmission of historical knowledge. They
are viewed by citizens of diverse ages, interests, and backgrounds, often in family groups. They
sometimes celebrate common events, occasionally memorialize tragedies or injustices, and con-
tain an interpretive element, even if it is not readily apparent. The process of selecting themes,
photographs, objects, documents, and other components to be included in an exhibit implies
interpretive judgments about cause and effect, perspective, significance, and meaning.
Historical exhibits may encourage the informed discussion of their content and the broader
issues of historical significance that they raise. Attempts to suppress exhibits or to impose an
uncritical point of view, however widely shared, are inimical to open and rational discussion.
In aiming to achieve exhibit goals, historians, museum curators, administrators, and members
of museum boards should approach their task mindful of their public trust. To discharge their
duties appropriately, they should observe the following standards:

1. Exhibits should be founded on scholarship, marked by intellectual integrity, and sub-

jected to rigorous peer review. Evidence considered in preparing the exhibit may include
objects, written documentation, oral histories, images, works of art, music, and folklore.
2. At the outset of the exhibit process, museums should identify stakeholders in any
exhibit and may wish to involve their representatives in the planning process.
3. Museums and other institutions funded with public monies should be keenly aware of
the diversity within communities and constituencies that they serve.
4. When an exhibit addresses a controversial subject, it should acknowledge the existence
of competing points of view. The public should be able to see that history is a changing
process of interpretation and reinterpretation, formed through gathering and reviewing
evidence, drawing conclusions, and presenting the conclusions in text or exhibit format.
5. Museum administrators should defend exhibits produced according to these standards.

Note
1. “Standards for Museum Exhibits Dealing with Historical Subjects” (2001), available at: https://
www.historians.org/jobs-and-professional-development/statements-and-standards-of-the-pro
fession/standards-for-museum-exhibits-dealing-with-historical-subjects. Adopted by the Society
for History in the Federal Government Executive Council, January 8, 1997; the National Council
on Public History Executive Council, March 30, 2000; the Organization of American Historians
Executive Council, April 2, 2000; the American Historical Association Council, January 4, 2001;
and the Medical Museums Association, April 19, 2001.
 Front-end evaluation happens before exhibit development is very far along; inviting
comment while the exhibition is still in the planning and conceptualization stage means
that feedback can be used in the design process. Asking for input from stakeholders too
late in the planning process can result in costly setbacks or it can give stakeholders the
impression that the request for input was insincere. By contrast, effective use of front-end
evaluations can promote greater buy-in from community members and stakeholders and an
increased likelihood that the exhibition will be well received.
A front-end evaluation allows community members, stakeholders, and content experts
to provide input early in the exhibition development stage. The front-end evaluation materi-
als should include a brief overview of the project, and an opportunity for evaluators to shape
the exhibition plan. Exhibition organizers can use focus groups, surveys, informal consul-
tations, informal interviews, community workshops, existing or previously conducted visitor
surveys on similar topics or of comparable exhibitions, and literature reviews. Community
workshops are especially valuable if the exhibition team is still looking for interpretive mate-
rials such as photographs or objects for display, or if they need community input for ethical
interpretation of objects or cultural material. Focus groups allow the team to gather input
from specific targeted audiences, such as community members, experts in the content area,
advisory board members, donors, or other stakeholders. When it might not be practical to
gather for face-to-face meetings or if the numbers are too extensive for individual inter-
views, surveys can provide meaningful information about potential audience expectations,
areas of sensitivity, and issues that will require greater context or background information.
No organization can easily absorb the cost of a cancelled exhibition or an angry protest,
particularly if early outreach and deliberate civic engagement throughout the process could
help raise problems when solutions are easier and less expensive to find.22
Formative evaluation happens during exhibition development and provides specific
feedback on individual elements such as text, labels, graphics, or layout design. The team can
present mock-ups of proposed exhibitions to small groups of potential visitors, community
members, or content experts. Groups of fifteen to twenty are optimal for semi-structured
interviews or workshop activities that draw out individual or collective responses to the
planned exhibition. If they repeat questions in this stage similar to those that they used in
the front-end evaluation, exhibition developers can check for improvement through the
various stages of planning.
Remedial evaluation is used immediately after an exhibition or program opens to en-
sure that all parts of the exhibition are working. This form of evaluation allows the team to
make refinements that might not have been visible at any other time. If unforeseen prob-
lems, questions, or errors arise after the public is invited in, there should be a plan to make
changes as quickly as possible. Simple observation of visitor behavior, and feedback through
comment books, forms, or surveys can highlight issues. The staff members on site are often
the informal collectors of information. They might hear unsolicited responses from visitors
or may have to field questions when something is unclear.
Finally, summative evaluation occurs near the conclusion of an exhibition or pro-
gram. It allows the team to evaluate whether the exhibition achieved its goals and to
discover whether or not the public was satisfied with the experience. Summative evalu-
ation can ask who was drawn to the exhibition, how they used it, and what their overall

106 ▲ C H A P T E R 5
impression was. It can provide feedback for future projects or suggest areas in need of
further research. Funders often make summative evaluation a requirement of the grant;
boards of trustees want to see it in the annual report. The team can conduct large-scale
visitor surveys, structured observations of visitor behaviors in the exhibition (where did
they linger, what did they read, which parts did they skip or skim lightly, and what was
their overall demeanor), in-depth interviews, peer reviews, and, once again, focus groups
or community workshops. Data from comment books, surveys, and visitor feedback forms
can also prove useful at this stage.

Notes
1. For more information on the London Bridge Experience, visit: https://www.thelondonbridge
experience.com/experience.
2. Portions of the description and analysis of the Chilean Museum of Memory and Human Rights
were originally published as: Cherstin M. Lyon, “Museo de Memoria y Derechos Humanos and
Parque por la paz Villa Grimaldi.” [Museum of Memory and Human Rights and Peace Park at
Villa Grimaldi] Public Historian 33, no. 2 (2011): 135–144. Reprinted with permission.
3. The two commissions that investigated atrocities under Pinochet were the National Commis-
sion for Truth and Reconciliation, or the “Rettig Commission,” May 1990–February 1991;
and the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture, or the “Valech Com-
mission,” September 2003–June 2005.
4. Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American
Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 105–106.
5. Beverly Serrell, Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Little-
field, 2015), 7.
6. Serrell, Exhibit Labels, 9–10. Reprinted with permission of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
7. Quoted in Elizabeth Nix and Deborah Weiner, “Pivot in Perception: The Impact of the 1968
Riots on Three Business Districts” in Baltimore ’68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City,
eds. Jessica I. Elfenbein, Thomas L. Hollowak, and Elizabeth M. Nix (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2011), 186.
8. Quoted in Nix and Weiner, 186.
9. Quoted in Nix and Weiner, 187.
10. This section draws from the work of Beverly Serrell, Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 31–46, and an unpublished guide developed by
Katherine C. Grier.
11. Janice Majewski, “Smithsonian Guidelines for Accessible Exhibition Design,” http://access
ible.si.edu/pdf/Smithsonian%20Guidelines%20for%20accessible%20design.pdf.
12. Historians may even find themselves trawling eBay, an excellent source of material culture,
especially for those working on twentieth- and twenty-first-century projects. For material cul-
ture analyses using collections built in part from eBay, see Katherine C. Grier, Pets in America:
A History (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006) and Rebecca Shrum,
“Selling Mr. Coffee: Design, Gender, and the Branding of a Kitchen Appliance,” Winterthur
Portfolio 46 no. 4 (Winter 2012): 271–298.
13. David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2010), 15 (Map 9).

INTERPRETING AND EXHIBITING HISTORY ▲ 107

14. Roger Catlin, “Smithsonian to Receive Artifacts from Sunken 18th-Century Slave Ship,”
Smithsonian Magazine, May 31, 2015. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-insti
tution/sunken-18th-century-slave-ship-found-south-africa-180955458/?no-ist.
15. Jennifer L. Anderson, Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2012) is a recent example of work that brings these insights together on
multiple levels.
16. Paul R. Mullins, “Racializing the Commonplace Landscape: An Archaeology of Urban Re-
newal Along the Color Line,” World Archaeology 38, no. 1: 60–71.
17. http://museumofdisability.org/virtual-museum/.
18. Historypin is not available on mobile platforms at the time of this writing.
19. Curatescape was built using Omeka, the standards-based, open-source digital archival tool
that is widely used by cultural and historical institutions. Learn more about Omeka at http://
omeka.org/. Projects nationwide use Curatescape. For a current listing, see: http://curatescape
.org/projects/. The first Curatescape project was Cleveland Historical, and it still serves as
an excellent example of the range of stories and presentation methods Curatescape projects
can deploy. http://clevelandhistorical.org. See also: Mark Tebeau’s white paper, “Strategies for
Mobile Interpretive Projects,” available at http://mobilehistorical.curatescape.org/.
20. Maureen McConnell and Honee Hess, “A Controversy Timeline,” Journal of Museum Educa-
tion 23, no. 3 (1998): 4–6.
21. Debbie Ann Doyle, “Historians Protest New Enola Gay Exhibit,” Perspectives on History,
December 2003, https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-his
tory/december-2003/historians-protest-new-enola-gay-exhibit.
22. The National Parks have developed a series of case studies to show what civic engagement
looks like in diverse contexts. See: https://www.nps.gov/civic/casestudies/index.html. See also
Monica Post, “Fearless Evaluation: Webinar for the National Park Service,” March 6–8, 2012,
https://www.nps.gov/hfc/services/interp/interpPlanning/FearlessEvaluationManual.pdf.

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RESOURCES AND SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES

Interpreting Material Culture Objects

Choose a common object in today’s society to analyze. Material culture scholar Karen Har-
vey has developed a beginner’s approach to this analysis, which includes three steps. The first
step is to develop a physical description of the object. If at all possible, get into the same
room as one of the objects and, if it is small enough, hold it in your hands. Choosing an ob-
ject that you can physically interact with is key for beginners. The description should include
“what the object is made of, how it was made and (of course) when; production methods and
manufacture, materials, size, weight, design, style, decoration and date.” The second step is
to “place the object in historical context, primarily by referring to other evidence. Here we
can explore who owned this (or similar) objects, when, and what they were used for.” In this
step, the focus is on how the object was used and by whom during a particular time period.
In the final step, an even broader view is taken to begin exploring what the object meant in
that time period. Placing the object into its “socio-cultural context” enables a deeper under-
standing of the significance of the object in people’s lives.1 This method could be applied to
the Polk Sanitary milk caps discussed in this chapter: the first step would detail what the
object was and how it was made; the second step would explore how this milk cap sealed
glass bottles and to whom this finished product was distributed; the final step would include
the discussion of how this item became significant for the Indianapolis African American
community living under segregation. A fourth and final step in this exercise would be to
write an interpretive text label for the object, using the guidelines discussed in this chapter.
To begin the process of thinking about material culture, the short video “Twenty Questions
to Ask an Object,” provides a useful starting point: http://www.theasa.net/caucus_material/
item/twenty_years_twenty_questions_to_ask_an_object_the_video/.

Reviewing an Exhibition
Visiting an exhibition with a critical lens is one of the best ways to practice what you have
learned about the history and best practices in exhibition design. Select a museum or his-
torical site that you would like to visit. Make sure you do plenty of research before you go
to ensure that you have a strong grasp of the subject first.
It is important that you understand the intended purpose of the exhibition and the in-
tended audience, as well as the institutional context in which the exhibition was produced.
Is this a large museum with a large staff and an adequate budget to carry out an elaborate
design and extensive research and pre-exhibition planning with many experts carrying out
individual aspects of the planning and installation? Or is this a small museum with a few
staff handling most aspects of the design, research, and installation working within rigid
budget constraints? These two extremes will certainly result in different exhibitions. Contact

INTERPRETING AND EXHIBITING HISTORY ▲ 109

the curator if possible or another high-level employee or director who can answer these
questions. Any review of an exhibition should take these matters into consideration if the
review is to be fair.
When writing your review, you should first offer an overview of the exhibition theme,
subject matter, content, and form, keeping an eye out for factual accuracy, quality of design
and display, tone, and use of space, sounds, lighting, and color. Are there any experimental
techniques used that affect your experience? Does the exhibition contribute to larger schol-
arly conversations on the topic? The Public Historian recommends that reviewers keep in
mind the following questions: What can you do in the exhibit that you cannot do in tradi-
tional history presentations? Is the curator enhancing public knowledge and debate on the
subject area covered? What might other professionals learn from this effort?
Reviews for professional journals are typically between 1,000 and 1,250 words in length,
which is the equivalent of four to five double-spaced pages. Reviews also contain infor-
mation in the heading that will identify the museum, the exhibition title, the name of the
curator and/or historical consultant, the sponsor if there is one, the date of the exhibition,
and any other information that would help identify and give credit to those who were re-
sponsible for the exhibition. Here are some sample headings for your exhibition reviews:

The Museum of American Political Life. University of Hartford. Edmund B. Sullivan, director and
curator; Christine Scriabine, museum historian.
A City Comes of Age: Chicago in the 1890s. Robert Goler, curator; Susan Hirsch, exhibit historian;
Sam Bass Warner Jr., consulting historian. Chicago Historical Society, October 25, 1990–July
15, 1991.

Illustrations should be included whenever possible. It is a good idea to ask the museum/
institution if they have stock photos of the exhibition they would like you to use to accom-
pany your review. If they do not, make sure you ask permission before taking photographs
on your own, and it is usually best practice to take photos without a flash. The Public Histo-
rian and most other history-specific journals use The Chicago Manual of Style for footnotes,
spelling, punctuation, and overall format.

Fort Snelling—Which Stories Are Told?

The Minnesota Historical Society operates Fort Snelling, a site on the river in St. Paul
that they promote as “a great place to learn about military history from before the Civil
War through World War II, fur trade history, slavery in Minnesota, the US-Dakota War of
1862 and much more.”2 A group of public history students at the University of Minnesota
became interested in making the traditionally patriotic site part of the Guantanamo Mem-
ory Project, which seeks to build public awareness of the history of Guantanamo Bay.3 The
students found an effective parallel to Guantanamo in the US government’s use of Fort
Snelling during the US-Dakota War of 1862.4 During this conflict, a number of Dakota
men were accused of killing US civilians. Three hundred and three men were sentenced
to death, but Abraham Lincoln reduced that number to thirty-nine, and one of those was

110 ▲ C H A P T E R 5
released. The remaining thirty-eight prisoners were hanged simultaneously on the day after
Christmas in 1862. Their punishment remains the largest mass execution in US history.
After the hangings, the US government relocated 1,600 Dakota men, women, and chil-
dren who had surrendered to authorities to Fort Snelling, where they spent the winter of
1862–1863. The Dakota reported daily abuse at the hands of the fort soldiers and civilians
alike. When measles entered the area, as many as 300 Dakota died. In May 1863, those who
survived the winter were relocated to Crow Creek Sioux Reservation.
Currently, the site provides information about the Dakota on a tab on their website. If
users click on the tab, they will find no reference to the US-Dakota War. They can find a
description of the war in 1862 if they visit the timeline on the site. Inside the fort, six textual
panels make reference to the Dakota. Public history students annotated the panels with
information about the 1862 conflict, the mass execution, references to the Dakota “concen-
tration camp,” and comments about Guantanamo Bay. Their changes disturbed the visitors
to the point that the site removed them. In response, the students replaced the annotations
with more open-ended questions.5

Questions for Discussion:

1. Is Fort Snelling an appropriate site for the Guantanamo Public Memory Project?
2. How should the site interpret the winter of 1862–1863?
3. Should the site use the term “internment camp” or “concentration camp” in its inter-
pretation of that period?

Notes
1. Karen Harvey, History and Material Culture: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources
(New York: Routledge, 2009), 1–23.
2. http://www.historicfortsnelling.org.
3. http://gitmomemory.org.
4. http://www.historicfortsnelling.org/history/us-dakota-war.
5. Rose Miron, “Sacrificing Comfort for Complexity: Presenting Difficult Narratives in Public
History,” Public History Commons, April 24, 2014, http://publichistorycommons.org/sacrific
ing-comfort-for-complexity.

INTERPRETING AND EXHIBITING HISTORY ▲ 111

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

Ames, Kenneth. Death in the Dining Room & Other Tales of Victorian Culture. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1995.
Bennett, Tony. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London: Routledge, 1995.
Cohen, Daniel J. and Roy Rosenzweig. Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Pre-
senting the Past on the Web. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
Diamond, Judy. Practical Evaluation Guide: Tools for Museums and Other Informal Education Set-
tings. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1999.
Gordon, Tammy. Private History in Public: Exhibitions and the Settings of Everyday Life. Lanham,
MD: AltaMira Press, 2010.
Hayward, J. and R. Loomis. “Looking Back at Front-End Studies.” Visitor Studies: Theory, Research
and Practice 5 (1993): 261–265.
Hood, Adrienne. “Material Culture: The Object.” In History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to
Approaching Alternative Sources. Edited by Sarah Barber and Corinna Peniston Bird. London
and New York: Routledge Press, 2009.
Leon, Warren and Roy Rosenzweig, Eds. History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assess-
ment. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989.
National Park Service. “We Provide Interpretive Media and Services to National Parks,” available
at https://www.nps.gov/hfc/ and “Exhibits and Museums,” available at https://www.nps.gov/
hfc/products/exhibits/.
Screven, C. “Formative Evaluation: Conceptions and Misconceptions.” Visitor Studies: Theory, Re-
search and Practice 1 (1988): 73–82.
Taylor, Samuel, Ed. Try It! Improving Exhibits through Formative Evaluation. Washington, DC:
Association for Science and Technology Centers, 1991.
Wallace, Michael. Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory. Philadelphia: Tem-
ple University Press, 1996.

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