Classified past

The summer TV season is just around the corner, and I can’t wait. It’s a guilty pleasure that I don’t usually brag about to my academic colleagues, but I adore summer TV. Summer television, like beach reading, is supposed to be entertaining – romance and intrigue without the burden of a challenging plotline. For me, last summer’s dark horse winner on the television turned out to be USA’s Covert Affairs. I admit up front that the plot is ridiculous: I know that curators at the Smithsonian (the main character’s cover story) do not fly back and forth to the British Museum regularly, and I am skeptical that all the women at the CIA come to work dressed in cocktail attire, but the show hooked me in Episode 2 when the Agency had to grab a machine from the CIA Museum in order to decode information being transmitted through an old Cold War radio transmission station.

Ridiculous, right? Well, somewhere in Hollywood there is a historian with a sense of humor who is getting the facts (mostly) right. The CIA does have a museum, although I bet it is a stretch to believe that current intelligence officers are using its collections today for active assignments, right?

Actually, it is not a stretch at all. According to Museum officials, the Agency workforce does consult with the museum periodically on technical lessons learned from operational applications of some of the historical items held in the collection. Any current intelligence officer worth his or her salt knows the importance of learning from the past. What better place to do so than in the museum!

Ever since I learned about the CIA Museum, I’ve been intrigued. The museum is not open to the public (you need to be pre-screened to gain admittance to Langley, and even then you are under strict escort), yet it has a very high visitation level from CIA employees and dignitaries. Besides the problem of access, much of the museum’s collection is classified, which can complicate the exhibit design process. Who knew you needed government clearance to be a collections manager?

But the intrepid team at the CIA Museum is determined to reach the public. They are currently in the process of redesigning their website. They have partnered with other institutions and would like to develop traveling exhibits. They are working to draft a collections plan that conforms to American Association of Museum standards (too bad AAM doesn’t have a deaccessioning policy for classified objects). And of course, they are reaching out to couch potatoes like myself through popular television programs. Technically, that last bit isn’t true. It is the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs that liaises with the media. The CIA Museum does not unilaterally reach out to tv producers.

I love it when museums show up on TV (Bones, Warehouse 13, White Collar), but I wonder if museum professionals should be a bit more proactive in describing what we actually do. We all have such great jobs, and all of our cultural institutions have fabulous objects with wonderful, made for Hollywood stories. We just need to get our own story out. I propose that the National Council on Public History develop an “Ask the Public Historian” call center with a direct line to Hollywood so that we can do a bit of professional activism. Plus my mom would love it if I could win an Emmy.

The new season of Covert Affairs begins tonight.

~ Allison Marsh

Hen House History: No Harm, No Fowl

I am obsessed with a chicken coop.

On a long and poorly charted road trip this past summer, I wandered into Lake Solano Park campground, located on the quiet banks of Putah Creek just off California Highway 128. The campground is on land originally populated by Patwin Indians, then homesteaded in 1875 by Daniel Tucker who managed a cattle and sheep operation and quarried limestone from local hills for area building foundations. Teeming with wild peacocks (legend holds they were brought in to manage the rattlesnakes), the campground proper was established by the Bureau of Reclamation (“B of Rec” in local-speak) in 1973 and is currently managed by Solano County Parks.

Two sturdy bird houses stand in the large and open campground, near the public showers, one on each side of the narrow road. Open on three sides but fully enclosed in wire—presumably to keep the objects in and the humans out—one coop held the expected collection of birds. For a quarter dropped into a gumball machine, both the tiny Silkies and uncaged visitors were briefly entertained by a handful of cracked corn. Just across the campground road is a second coop (a “hen house” in local-speak). Contents: a miniature museum. Thus began my obsession with this surprising and out-of-the-way staging of local history.

I spoke with Duane Davis, just-retired from Solano County Parks after 35 years of service as Ranger Supervisor, and exchanged emails with his wife, Leslie. Both were graciously helpful and patient with my many questions and emails. The structures alone have an interesting story as told by Mr. Davis.

“The present day Hen House evolved from a smaller enclosure. A nearby neighbor learned of the park theme and donated a few birds along with historical farm equipment from the local area and barn wood for other displays. The campers and their children liked the addition. The first birds were attacked by a bobcat one night and witnessed by the nearby camp host. Attempts were made to strengthen the enclosure and roof the pen. More birds were donated (Chickens and Doves) by the same source and Guinea Hens by myself. Various campers donated money, food and wire. That summer a horde of large rats got under the wire and were found dining on unhatched hen eggs. A concerned camping family made a large money donation. I copied the enclosures design after one at the Sacramento Zoo. Volunteers, Sheriff inmates, and park staff built what you see today, I think in 2000 or 2001.”

“Sheriff’s inmates”? Now this is getting interesting.

Lacking a larger county agenda, the Hen House was a labor of love by proud, local people. Haphazard and humble, it appears almost accidental. The barn wood used for the structure and featured objects within the structure came from the “old Hubert ranch,” though being a stranger in their country, I could not appreciate the significance of the Huberts. The tiny display housed a limited and dusty collection of objects, unlabeled and without contextualization. A small sign provided a frustratingly meager amount of information.

I am an admitted museum snob. I like things tidy, well-organized, with lots of in–depth information and well–placed wall boards. Hen House had none of these. So what was it about this display that spoke to me—that stopped me in my tracks? Is this a new and unique development in public history? No. Is this a critical component of public history? Yes. Because of its very simplicity, this casual accumulation of objects invited curious engagement. What was this stuff behind the wire and where did it come from? How was it used and by whom? What were the complexities and humanity of those lives? How did time move forward for the people but not for the objects left behind? Can the intimate history of person:possession ever be recovered?

Absent formality or sophisticated scholarship, these homespun efforts may provoke sniffs from professionals. The Hen House museum obviously lacked the staffing and skills of trained curators and historians found at “real” museums. But the formality of access to these museums--location, hours, admission fees, rigorous professionalism--engenders a preemptive contract with visitors to engage the exhibit in a certain way. Historical museums, just like the news, or a textbook, or even People magazine--any venue in which information is delivered--necessarily stage knowledge in a factual and linear way, privileging particular information above other information (theme and scope management), providing the visitor with carefully crafted intelligence understood by the majority of the audience to be sum total fact.

Michel Foucault, in his 1980 essay, "Power/Knowledge," speaks of the State creating and manifesting power by controlling the production of and access to knowledge. While formal museums and informal historical displays are not in gladiator–like combat with each other, the point can be made that local (capillary) knowledge legitimately augments knowledge as a whole and can challenge State–crafted margins of truth. Despite its informality, the low-history of the Hen House importantly redraws these margins of “proper” and “sanctioned” knowledge, touching people in ways that formality cannot.

The Hen House created an opportunity in which I was forced to craft my own set of critical questions that I may not have done at an exhibit where information is carefully constructed for efficient visitor consumption. The failure of the Hen House to explicitly speak to the hidden meanings and history of its objects was, in part, its success.

~ Anne Coogan-Gehr

History museums in a wiki world

This January Wikipedia will be celebrating its ten year anniversary, and it’s safe to say that in the past decade the editable encyclopedia has challenged the academic and cultural sectors in a number of ways. A recent post on Off the Wall has already discussed the shifting role that Wikipedia plays in academia, specifically noting its potential for historiography. For a while now I have been interested in digital history, having studied history and social studies education at the home of the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University.  But it wasn’t until I shifted my focus to museum studies and collections management that I fell into the world of Wikipedia. I haven’t looked back.

In the fall of 2009, Jennifer Geigel Mikulay, assistant professor at IUPUI, and Richard McCoy, associate conservator of objects at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, integrated an experimental Wikipedia project into the museum studies course “Collections Care and Management.” Inspired by the nationwide “Save Outdoor Sculpture!” project of the 1990’s, Mikulay and McCoy hoped to remedy the lack of coverage of public art within Wikipedia by bringing the SOS! database into the 21st century. Wikipedia Saves Public Art, now called WikiProject Public Art (that's its logo above), began by documenting the artworks on the IUPUI campus. Within the semester, students researched and wrote forty-two public art articles and the IUPUI Public Art Collection was organized and documented for the first time in its history. The resources of the project have continued to be used to document other public art collections in cities, college campuses, and public spaces such as the Indiana State House.   

What I find to be most encouraging about WikiProject Public Art is the model it provides for sharing information about objects that are otherwise ignored, forgotten, or misunderstood. Now Wikipedia can be combined with the technology of smart phones to find and share information from anywhere at any time. For example, a visitor on the campus of IUPUI can pull up Google Earth and see a slew of “W” icons denoting Wikipedia articles about the artworks surrounding them. You can stand in front of John Torreano’s Mega-Gem and, in spite of its lack of label, learn about the artwork, its provenance, and the artist, all by accessing the Wikipedia article on your smart phone.

Museum exhibits are beginning to utilize this technology by implementing it in a number of ways such as in-gallery computers or iPads, QR codes,and simple labels prompting visitors to search for Wikipedia articles on their phone. The Brooklyn Museum’s Seductive Subversion exhibit is a recent example of Wikipedia and iPad integration. Staff updated and created Wikipedia articles on women artists in the Pop Art movement which visitors can now access oniPads in the gallery. Historical institutions have yet to tap into Wikipedia’s potential for on-site interpretation. Likewise, historians are only beginning to see Wikipedia as a viable community for sharing research. As the late Roy Rosenzweig, the founder of the Center for History and New Media, has said, "If Wikipedia is becoming the family encyclopedia for the twenty-first century, historians probably have a professional obligation to make it as good as possible." The Wikimedia Foundation is currently funding an effort to train Campus Ambassadors who will assist professors in integrating Wikipedia into their curriculums. The first focus has been on United States Public Policy, which will help alleviate the backlog of updates that these particular articles require. While this is a start, museums and cultural institutions can certainly help fill the gap in the broader scope of historical topics in Wikipedia.

Other than the perks of interactive technology experiences, there are other implications for the integration of Wikipedia in historical exhibit spaces. Access to Wikipedia articles can help alleviate the museum educator and curator’s struggle over the depth of content to include on labels, providing a variety of levels of information for a range of audiences. Likewise, Wikipedia is a means for sharing the abundance of research that goes into preparing exhibits, much of which never reaches the public. This research can be taken out of the filing cabinets and shared with a much wider audience. By contributing new information to Wikipedia articles, cultural institutions are not only providing new content through in-exhibit technology, but are also increasing the accessibility to their collections with a global audience on the most widely used online encyclopedia. More practically speaking, at a time when museum budgets are continuing to tighten, Wikipedia is a valuable free resource, the only cost being the time it takes to update articles.

The process of contributing to Wikipedia articles will remain an important concern for museum staff. As a freely editable encyclopedia, Wikipedia is only as good as its contributors. For Wikipedia, cultural institutions are a largely untappedsource of expertise in the field. I’m now interested in ways that museum staff can efficiently share their expertise and collections information on Wikipedia. GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) is a global initiative that is considering ways to streamline the collaboration between Wikipedia and the cultural sector. Some pilot projects have included individual Wikipedian-in-Residence programs, such as the British Museum’s project in May-June 2010 (shown above), and E-Volunteer programs like the one recently launched at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

It is my hope that museums, schools, and other cultural institutions will take a fresh look at Wikipedia as a tool for furthering their missions.  By contributing to Wikipedia and integrating it into exhibit spaces, museums can combine technology and accessibility for a wide range of audiences. Each museum has unique information to share and should be considering ways that Wikipedia can be used to make it more accessible to their audiences, both in and out of exhibit spaces. There’s little doubt in my mind that Wikipedia will become increasingly relevant within cultural institutions as a tool for expanding accessibility to broader audiences.

~ Lori Byrd Phillips

Guest reviewer Lori Byrd Phillips is a museum studies graduate student at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), a project leader for Wikipedia Saves Public Art, and the current Wikipedian-in-Residence at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis