Each year, hundreds of historical exhibitions appear in museums across the country. Often, they celebrate common events, commemorate tragedies and injustices, or challenge widely shared points of view. They also share the same interpretive challenges as scholarly publications or public lectures, and should be subjected to the same level of intellectual analysis. Unlike monographs, however, exhibitions do not survive indefinitely and are largely lost after they close. Reviewing the form and content of these exhibitions helps to establish a literature, develop a common vocabulary, and assure that critical assessments outlive the exhibit itself.
Museum exhibitions, as a unique medium, offer the chance to explore the human dimension of history in ways that are not possible through academic work or even public lectures. Museums’ ability to tell inclusive visual stories through objects and personal experiences allows them to engage many more visitors than scholarly monographs or public lectures. They can connect with ideas about home, freedom, faith, social justice, and mobility in a way that is not possible through textbooks or history blogs.
The work of the historian, curator, and staff of an exhibit is complex. It requires a mix of management and interpersonal skills, knowledge of material culture, and a sense of audience. It involves a creative marriage of historical research and interpretation with imaginative visual storytelling. It demands a deep understanding of the relationship between a specific object and its place in a story and of how a specific artifact or object can serve as an elegant metaphor.
This column will seek to expand the collaboration between the academy and museums by informing Perspectives readers of key issues and essential discussions relating to historical exhibitions and interpretation. We will examine notable accomplishments of individual museums or institutions, innovative programs, and important collecting initiatives, but our main focus will be on reviewing exhibitions.
Each review will attempt to balance a discussion of the intellectual underpinnings of an exhibition with an examination of how it communicates its information to a museum visitor. Historians will discuss the scholarly currents that underlie an exhibit, and curators will address the questions of how to make historical research accessible to a museum audience. They will consider the use of photographs, documents, graphics, re-created spaces, and a wide range of other visual and textual elements to convey history at a level that is both compelling and authentic.