Curating America : journeys through storyscapes of the American past / by Richard Rabinowitz ; with illustrations by Richard T. Hoyen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rabinowitz, Richard, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Public history--United States--History--20th century.

Public history.

Public history--United States--History--21st century.

Museums--United States--History--20th century.

Museums.

Museums--United States--History--21st century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (393 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill, North Carolina : The University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

Summary:

How do history museums and historic sites tell the richly diverse stories of the American people? What fascinates us most about American history? To help answer these questions, noted public historian Richard Rabinowitz examines the evolution of public history over the last half-century and highlights the new ways we have come to engage with our past. At the heart of this endeavor is what Rabinowitz calls "storyscapes--landscapes of engagement where individuals actively encounter stories of past lives. As storyscapes, museums become processes of narrative interplay rather than moribund storage bins of strange relics. Storyscapes bring to life even the most obscure people--making their skills of hands and minds "touchable," making their voices heard despite their absence from traditional archives, and making the dilemmas and triumphs of their lives accessible to us today. Rabinowitz's wealth of professional experience--creating over 500 history museums, exhibitions, and educational programs across the nation--shapes and informs the narrative. By weaving insights from learning theory, anthropology and geography, politics and finance, collections and preservation policy, and interpretive media, Rabinowitz reveals how the nation's best museums and historic sites allow visitors to confront their sense of time and place, memories of family and community, and definitions of self and the world while expanding their idea of where they stand in the flow of history.

Contents:

Becoming a public historian. Discovering a calling ; No ideas but in things ; Twentieth-century minds dissecting nineteenth-century problems ; Other hands, other minds ; The elements of interpretation

Finding ourselves : interpreting place. History, dislocated ; Envisioning place on gallery walls ; Museum visitors on center stage ; Museums without walls ; Visitors reinsert human presence into the landscape ; Storyscapes everywhere

Beholding : interpreting stuff. The object of the object ; The object as evidence and experience ; The invention of the cluster

Belonging : interpreting identity and community. The body politic in the museum ; History turns critical ; Taking the new social history public ; The community as curator ; Can the history museum fix it?

Postscript

A reader's reflections.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.

ISBN:

979-88-908471-9-5

979-88-908472-0-1

1-4696-2951-8

1-4696-2952-6