Each year countless museums produce major historical exhibitions, expertly crafted and shaped by the best of current scholarship. Nevertheless, until recently few scholarly journals acknowledged this large body of historical information and devoted substantial attention to reviewing and discussing exhibitions. Because they are so temporary, and because the information they convey quickly becomes outdated, exhibition reviews provide a unique and useful forum for scholarly exchange. They help to define the field of history museum studies and create a literature and vocabulary for evaluating the content and form of historical exhibits.
Histolircal exhibits communicate ideas, research results, socio-political messages, and the cultural significance of objects in a way that is not possible or effective in any other medium. Unlike monographs, which typically take years to reach a broad audience, exhibitions must be able to captivate visitors within the limited space and time of their installation. They must also serve as a foundation for future exhibitions, and be translated to other formats such as videotapes or catalogues.
Successful curators combine their scholarship with management skills and interpersonal talent, knowledge of material culture, and a sense of visual literacy to develop exhibitions that educate, inform, and stimulate the imagination. Their work is not only scholarly but is often collaborative; it requires the input of curators, designers, production staff, and a wide range of other professionals who contribute to the final product.
The enduring popularity of the Cabinet of Curiosities and other early historical displays illustrates that the public has an appetite for learning about the past in a hands-on, interactive fashion. Today, the demands of an increasingly diverse and global society challenge museums to do even more than that. They must make it clear to their audiences that they are worth the tax-exempt status they enjoy, and that they offer a service for people whose stories have not yet been told.
One way museums do this is by exploring issues and themes that reflect the lives of a large number of people, rather than just a narrowly defined elite few. Rites of passage such as birth, death, marriage/divorce, and coming of age are fertile topics for exhibits. So are abstract ideas such as home, freedom, faith, and democracy.
The New York Historical Society, for example, is addressing these challenges through three exhibitions that explore women’s history through everyday clothing, the life of Robert Caro, and two centuries of New Yorkers and their pets. Each is a niche exhibit, but they demonstrate the ways that modern museums can use their collections to engage their local communities. As this column continues, Perspectives will seek to highlight innovative exhibitions that stretch the established parameters of interpretation, presentation, and collecting. We will also look for ways to expand collaboration between the academy and museums. This will include examinations of exhibitions that suggest new ways to improve scholarly exchange and the role of museums in teaching about the past. In addition, we will review exhibitions that address key issues in the ongoing debate on the nature of history.