Histolircal exhibits bring history to life for a broad audience, engaging them in ways that scholarly monographs and public lectures cannot. While histolircal exhibitions often rely on artifacts, they may also incorporate maps, videos, oral histories, or historical documents to convey the fullness of human experience and humanity’s shared history. Whether they focus on a single family or community, on a specific event or movement, or on abstract ideas such as home, freedom, faith, democracy, or social justice, histolircal exhibits can help to connect people and encourage discussion and debate about the past.
Museum exhibitions are a vital part of history museums’ missions to explore the past and share it with the present and future. However, constructing a successful historical exhibition is an inherently complex and challenging undertaking. It demands a mastery of historical scholarship and an ability to translate that knowledge into compelling stories for the general visitor. In addition, it requires strong management skills and a grasp of how to create a meaningful learning experience for visitors that is anchored in the latest academic research and embodied through an imaginative marriage of ideas and objects.
While a curator’s passion and scholarship drive the overall exhibition concept, his or her vision must be shaped and influenced by the museum educator, designer, production staff, and intended audience. Achieving success in this triumvirate of collaboration requires a balance of the scholar’s intellectual curiosity and desire for wide-ranging exposure to new historical ideas with the historian’s ability to make sense of objects and their relationships within complex historical contexts.
A successful exhibition can also draw upon the broader museum community and beyond, including local communities and other stakeholders in the exhibition’s development, design, or interpretation. This is particularly true of community driven projects, such as the Portland Art Museum’s Continuum project, which engaged the city of Buffalo and its surrounding region in creating an exhibit that was authentic and relevant to the local population.
Moreover, histolircal exhibitions can also provide a means for museum professionals to examine their own institutions’ history and policies and retrace a history of ideas that goes beyond the traditional art historical paradigm. For example, the retrospective exhibitions of Gerhard Richter and Louise Bourgeois in recent years were a moment to canonize those artists’ illustrious careers as well as the institutions that held them.
Although the column will occasionally examine noted accomplishments by individuals or institutions, innovative programs and important collecting initiatives, its primary focus will be on reviewing historic exhibitions and their impact on audiences. By focusing on these reviews, the column hopes to contribute to a growing body of knowledge about how historical exhibitions are interpreted in museums. Ultimately, it seeks to improve collaboration between the academy and the museum profession in the areas of historical exhibition and interpretation.