History at Home: Leighton House, Sambourne House, and the Heritage Debate (original) (raw)
Keeping up Appearances: heritage values in house museums
2008
Determining and valuing the intangible spirit of place has been a complex and varied exercise for cultural heritage curators. Using historic house museums Elizabeth Farm, Meroogal and Vaucluse House, all properties of the Historic Houses Trust of NSW, as examples, this paper examines the effects that physical methods of conservation and restoration have in the transmission of the spirit of the place. It looks at the role of the statement of significance as a guide to the spirit of the place. The pivotal roles and influences of individual curators, and their use of consultants, including educators, as mediators and determinants of the significance of the intangible elements of the spirit of the place are addressed, with a focus on the role that research-based decision-making plays in interpretation. The paper concludes that the uniqueness of a place can be captured in part by diverse approaches, and that it is valued and continuous.
Is There a Museum in the House? Historic Houses as a Species of Museum
The historic house museum exemplifies the enormous power of the museum idea to make specimens out of the material world. In fact, houses are an old museum form, very numerous and globally spread. This paper surveys the diverse inspirations of the species, its peculiar expressions, and its formative/deformative relationship to the English country house, via case studies in the UK, the US, and Australia. The paper identifies a characteristic museology that has developed to manage the conditions of house museums and suggests that the contemporary practice of heritage management derives an important strand of its direction from the traditions of house museology. Lastly, it considers the challenge, 'who wants house museums?'
Going public: The modern heritage house on display
The Historic Environment, 2013
This paper investigates issues surrounding the conservation, display and interpretation of modern houses of architectural significance. It draws on a large body of research collected by the author through visits to Modern heritage houses in the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Australia, alongside interviews with heritage curators and conservationists associated with these properties. From this work, three key themes are elucidated: Firstly, the paper examines the status of Modern heritage houses as 'historical documents' and the role they play in the ongoing formation of architectural histories of Modernism. Secondly, the research critically interrogates how conservation, interpretation and display strategies have been modified to the particularities of Modern houses, in contrast to older and more 'traditional' heritage properties. Thirdly, the protection of many Modern houses has involved controversy over their value, and divided opinion as to their appropr...
Two-way Street: the memory within historic house museums
Playing off of Walter Benjamin’s 1920s essay, One-way Street, I aim to provide a theoretical framework through which the function of memory within historic house museums can be understood. Benjamin's One-way Street was a break from convention with its non-narrative form at the time it was written. The apparently random selections of prose, poetry, and dreamscapes are related in highly complex, idiosyncratic ways. I argue that his text functions the same way that memories do when they are freely accessed. Benjamin’s vignettes can be read as reveries inspired by landmarks as he travels down a one-way street, or moves through life. These reveries give meaning to life and establish the context in which a person exists. Similarly, some visitors moving through the immersive space of a historic house will see particular items that bring forth memories and inspire reveries.
museum and society, 2009
This collection of ten, wide-ranging essays explores various aspects of heritage, and more specifically, conundrums in heritage management in contemporary, culturally pluralist communities. With topics as diverse as street art and graffiti, social housing, monuments, seaside resorts and the Country House (capital letters mandatory!), this collection presents many thought-provoking and fresh concepts and approaches to heritage. Like the heritage field itself, the authors represent a range of academic disciplines, from archaeology and geography, to architecture and history, as well as contributions from heritage practitioners. From the creativity of these essays, one senses that many of these authors are boundary riders: testing the limits of their respective fields and taking what could be perceived as a backwards-looking field firmly into future territory. Emerging from a series of workshops and presentations as part of an inter-disciplinary research cluster organized by the editors of the book, central to this collection is an interrogation of what constitutes value. Rejecting any idea that value is intrinsic to places or objects, the editors state in their introduction, 'all of the authors contributing to this collection proceed on the basis that concepts of cultural, historical, or social value are culturally and historically constructed' (p.1). This instantly complicates previously-held concepts integral to heritage practice such as the primacy of place and the dominance of expert values in how conservation knowledge is defined. In setting these new co-ordinates for the heritage field, the introduction teases out its inherent paradoxes and constraints but also points to its potential to facilitate democratic dialogues about what matters to communities. Whilst heritage can operate for elitist values or self-interest on the part of communities seeking to protect property values in Britain for example, it can also assist Indigenous people in struggles of recognition and selfdetermination. In the introduction specific examples are used to both theorise and provide practical direction, which characterises this collection as a whole. Stonehenge is an apt example. The editors show how, as a place whose 'enigmatic nature has made it prone, and suitable, to multiple interpretations' (p.5), Stonehenge and its meanings have been subject to ongoing contestation, resulting in regimes of control and exclusion of competing, usually nonconformist, values. Stonehenge reinforces 'the cultural and historical specificity of heritage' (p.4), already highlighted as one of the book's recurring themes, which is explored in the essays through a multitude of cases and contexts. The first grouping of essays 'Values and Heritage Stewardship' opens with David Lowenthal's impassioned Patrons, Populists, Apologists: Crises in Museum Stewardship. This broad sweep of issues currently confronting museums is probably the essay with most appeal to those in the museum field, although many may quibble with the author's characterization of museums that identify as agents for social change as 'avowedly didactic, partisan, chauvinistic' (p.25). Many contemporary museum truisms are questioned in this dense account of crisis and dilemma. Indeed, strategies that are identified elsewhere in the book as positive in regards to dealing with pluralism are tightly questioned here. Close probing continues with Laurajane Smith's Deference and Humility: The Social Values of the Country House and Peter Howard's Historic Landscapes and the Recent Past: Whose History?, two essays that scrutinise elitism, class and expertise and the very real political and social ramifications of these in heritage practice. Part Two explores cultural landscapes, a term used consciously to highlight everyday, overlooked and therefore potentially undervalued places and objects. Both Lisanne Gibson and museum and society, 7(3)