Each year, hundreds of history exhibits are produced throughout the United States. These exhibitions reaffirm the value of scholarship and contribute mightily to our understanding of the past. At the same time, they encourage a dialogue about broader issues of historical significance. Although museums are not partisan and their exhibitions do not promote a particular point of view, they still make interpretive judgments about cause and effect, perspective, and meaning.
Exhibits are a unique medium that allows the museum to communicate with a public eager to learn about the past. However, they must also be able to convey complex historical information in ways that are accessible to a broad range of visitors. This is no easy task, and it requires a balance of scholarship, objectivity, and empathy with the needs of the public.
Museums strive to be relevant in the 21st century and demonstrate that they deserve their tax-exempt status by providing a useful service for the people who live within their borders. To do this, they must reach out to those groups that have been historically excluded from the historical narrative and tell their stories. This can be done through research into new sources and by embracing the diverse voices of local communities.
In addition, museums must prove that they deserve their tax-exempt status through the quality of their collections, exhibitions, and programs. Museums that want to stand out in the competition for visitors must have memorable, high-quality exhibits that resonate with the public and keep the past alive for them.
While many museum experiences contain few or no artifacts, the most memorable of these exhibits are able to communicate a story or information in a way that lingers in the visitor’s mind. Often, these exhibits have strong historical arguments and compelling visual images that help the audience connect with a particular period of time.
The creation of an exhibition implies that the curators and staff of a museum have made important intellectual choices. This column, in partnership with the historian Spencer Crew, seeks to illuminate the process of exhibition development and scholarly interpretation through its reviews of historic museum shows. Each review will consider the following questions:
Is the exhibition based on sound research? Does it reflect current scholarly trends and developments? Does the exhibition break new ground in historical understanding?
The reviews in this series will be published in conjunction with a companion volume of the same name, Perspectives on History. Together, the book and the reviews will provide a permanent record of historical presentations in museums and serve as an essential tool for teaching about the process of museum exhibits. This endeavor reflects the underlying principle of this column: that museum exhibition scholarship, like other types of scholarship, is a collaborative effort between scholars in the academy and those in museums. This column will be a forum for dialogue about these efforts. We will feature reviews of exhibitions that highlight the contributions of each partner and that suggest a more productive relationship between the academy and museums.