History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment

by Roy Rosenzweig

Book Overview

Every year 100 million visitor's tour historic houses and re-created villages, examine museum artifacts, and walk through battlefields. But what do they learn? What version of the past are history museums offering to the public? And how well do these institutions reflect the latest historical scholarship?
Fifteen scholars and museum staff members here provide the first critical assessment of American history museums, a vital arena for shaping...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252060644
• ISBN13: 9780252060649
• Release Date: June 1989
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Museums in the context of historical scholarship

Nazi Germany in 1934 established the Gestapo museum, to help educate the public about the "Red menace." The museum displayed confiscated weapons from the German Communist Party, and displayed the methods they were concealed. The political motivation for this museum is apparent, to instill fear in the public about the communist threat. This is an extreme example of political influence on museums, but also an example of how museums can be manipulated to present an obscure message. Part I of Warren Leon and Roy Rosenzweig's History Museums in the United States deals with the constraints imposed on museums, and the necessity for them to be evaluated like any historian would judge written work. The structure of Part I is separated by essays that deal with: gallery exhibitions, big-city museums, outside gallery, historical homes, and case studies concerned with the Gettysburg battlefield and EPCOT Center at Disneyland, and are evaluated like a book review. Despite the various methods of presenting and evaluating history, these essays, and their authors, hold a common purpose of critically evaluating museums as the "central means of presenting history to the public" (xiii). The constraints of institution politics, audience, and financing influence museum presentations, and bind these museum critiques (xx). Part I covers different types of museum presentations, which range from gallery exhibitions to Disneyland. One of the fundamental problems of these presentations is the idea of museums as "shrines" (31). Whether the museum is trying to illustrate progress through technology, or promote the "great man" theory through historic houses, these presentations do not deal with the conflict and darker sides of history. To the credit of these presentations their employees are relatively trained and attempt to represent history accurately, but like professional historians can never get to the truth, because history is not about truth but the pursuit of it. The fundamental problem is when corporate ventures become involved as is the case with Gettysburg and more interestingly EPCOT center. Michael Wallace argues, "The past is too important to be left to the private sector. If we wish to restore our social health, we had better get beyond Mickey Mouse history," and is the main argument of his essay, "Mickey Mouse History: Portraying the Past at Disney World," (179). Wallace's essay presents the fundamental problems of presenting history to the public, and a fundamental flaw in reviewing Disneyland as museum. Walt Disney's portrayal of history was utopian in nature; Disney wanted to improve the past not reproduce it; a Disney designer refers to this as "Disney Realism," which is possibly influenced by the Soviet Union's idea of "Socialist Realism," or the idea that art can mold the human soul (161). This is a fundamental problem with Corporate Disney, and their presentations at EPCOT center, which takes audiences from the dim past to a mo

History Museums in the United States : A Critical Assessment

A must have! Being a new student to the museum studies field this book's importance can not be understated. The editors collected 15 essays from the most predominant scholars in the field of museum studies. If you do not know who they are you will after reading this book. The book provides a great indrodution to all the problems, or another way of saying it philosophical thinking ,that goes into developing museums and exhibits. Once you read this book you can concentrate on a specific area, but this book is a great overview.