OUR MUSEUM—ANOTHER HANDSOME CONTRIBUTION (original) (raw)

Memory, Slavery, and Plantation Museums: The River Road Project

Heritage tourism plays an increasingly important yet controversial role in interpreting the emotionally and politically charged memories and legacies of African enslavement. Antebellum plantation museums in the southeastern USA remain relatively underanalyzed by researchers, despite their tradition of ignoring and minimizing the contributions and struggles of the slave community. Yet, this neglect is being challenged somewhat by a growing number of plantations and counter-narrative sites that incorporate slavery into docent-led tours, promotional materials, exhibits, and preserved structures. Responding to a need for scholarship that can ferret out the nuances, complexities, and conflicts of producing and consuming heritage at these tourist sites, this special issue presents the results of a study of four plantations (Laura, Oak Alley, Houmas House, San Francisco) along Louisiana's River Road. The issue's editors and contributing authors address a central question: what factors, social actors, and interactions (social and spatial in nature) shape, facilitate, or even constrain the remembering of slavery at southern plantation museums, including those sites making seemingly significant progress in recovering the enslaved? River Road is a microcosm of the larger politics of reshaping southern and American heritage tourism and demonstrates the value of industry-engaged, multi-method examinations of different plantation landscapes within the same region.

A Brief and True Account of the History of South Carolina Plantation Archaeology and the Archaeologists Who Practice It

2013

This paper’s genesis is the perception that archaeologists’ communal memory of the early days of South Carolina plantation archaeology is fading, incomplete or at times overly judgmental. In order to combat this loss, some of the projects, processes and theoretical orientations that affected South Carolina’s plantation studies are explored. Examples of influential forces are the growth of Cultural Research Management (CRM), burgeoning museum and university programs in historical archaeology, and initially the Tricentennial and Bicentennial. Early references have been searched, including much of the "grey literature" and archaeologists and administrators in academia, government and private industry have been interviewed. Interview topics include early theoretical perspectives and how they relate to field and laboratory methods. Statistical methods have not been used in this study; results are interpretive and qualitative rather than quantitative. Instead, examples have been...

Commemorative Surrogation and the American South's Changing Heritage Landscape

The past two decades have witnessed momentous changes on the American South's heritage landscape. First, and most dramatically, ascendant civil rights museums have established themselves as bona fide heritage attractions. Second, and more subtly, a nascent movement on the part of plantation house museums is afoot to engage with the lives and labour of enslaved African Americans. The two trends are interrelated and the result is a regional heritage landscape that is more attuned to the dynamics of racial oppression than at any time in the past. Geographers and other tourism researchers have begun to document and analyse these changes, seeking to better understand the motives and implications that are reworking the region's heritage scene. The task remains, however, to develop a more nuanced understanding of audience reactions to the evolving content of southern heritage tourism. Drawn from two extent surveys of visitors to civil rights museums and a plantation museum, this article uses the concept of commemorative surrogation to interpret audience evaluations in order to better understand visitors' assessment of the changing landscape of southern heritage tourism. Results of the analysis suggest that whereas concerns over deficient surrogation are held by visitors at both civil rights and plantation museums, charges of excessive surrogation are limited to civil rights museums. The implication for the cultural landscape is a potentially revived, searching assessment of the region's past.

Decolonizing African-american Museums: a Case Study on Two African-american Museums in the South

2016

DECOLONIZING AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSEUMS: A CASE STUDY ON TWO AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSEUMS IN THE SOUTH by Anastacia Scott The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2016 Under the Supervision of Professor Doreatha Mbalia This dissertation seeks to understand how African-American museums’ exhibits help individuals gain their sense of racial identity through public memory. In an era where the United States is supposedly “post-racial” African-American museums are flourishing. As institutions serving an important role in preserving the collective memory of AfricanAmerican people in the US, African-American museums evoke questions of representation within the larger US narrative that confirm the persistent saliency of race in society, and therefore continue to have a public function in maintaining and developing a racial AfricanAmerican identity (Jackson 2012; Eichstedt and Small 2002; Wilson 2012; Golding 2009). My research is focused on the following question: What impacts do African-American mu...

Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740-1870

The American Historical Review, 1991

REVIEWED BY DANIEL GOLDSTEIN, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA r Joel J. Orosz examines the histories of eleven American museums and places them in the context of the communities they served. He describes a century-and-a-half-long effort by museum directors and curators to establish institutions devoted to science, art, and history that could also prosper in an environment that was often indifferent to their goals. He argues that from 1740 to 1870 American museums passed through six distinct ages, in each of which a different facet of the museum was dominant. From 1820 to 1840, for example, American museums were directed primarily toward popular education, while from 1840 to 1850, the public interest suffered at the expense of the demands of professional scientists. Finally, by 1870 the conflicting goals of popular education and professional research had been balanced in a uniquely American fashion that Orosz calls the American Compromise. That compromise, he says, has shaped the course of American museums ever since. Museum history is a small but growing specialty of great potential, and this book makes a genuine contribution to the field. Orosz demonstrates that there was a dynamic museum culture in America earlier than we have usually recognized. He concentrates on museums in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York, and more briefly looks at museums in other cities, including Cincinnati and Charleston, South Carolina. Most of these institutions were dedicated to natural science, while a smaller number focused on art and history. Orosz is at his best when he explains what he has discovered about the changing fortunes of the museums from his careful examination of their archives. He shows how their owners and directors struggled to define the character of each museum, and how their plans often failed to develop as expected. In doing so, he raises questions that have confronted and continue to confront all museum professionals. Why should this museum exist? Who is the intended audi