Good Afternoon
Eric,
I enjoyed your
response and especially your mentioning Tilden’s First Principle of
Interpretation….Amen to that! By the way, I couldn’t help but notice
that my well worn and dog-eared copy of Tilden’s Interpreting Our Heritage
(required reading for me in museum studies back in the late 1960s and early
70s) will be celebrating its 50th anniversary of its 1st
edition in two years.
Best
Wishes,
Wesley
P.S. If I had
to go to a desert island (with no internet access) to set up a new museum and
I could only take 10 museum–related books…..Tilden would be on the
list.
Wesley S. Creel
Administrator of
Programs
Pink Palace Family of
Museums
3050 Central
Avenue
Memphis, TN
38111
U.S.A.
www.memphismuseums.org
Office telephone
901.320.6370
From:
Museum discussion list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Eric Johnson
Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2005 8:40
PM
To:
[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Interpretation or
Not?
Nick, for a quick search of
scholarly literature you might try http://scholar.google.com -- there's some
interesting results in there when I searched under "museum
interpretation." You might need to try a couple of different search
terms.
And building on what Annmarie
wrote below, I too have done living history interpretation from a number of
eras. The toughest nut to crack for me has been trying to help modern
Americans understand the material and social cultures of late
14th-century English people. It's extremely hard to stay in a
first-person narrative with something that is so far removed without drawing
parallels to things that modern Americans are familiar with.
We've sometimes done a mix of
first- and third-person narration, welcoming them onto the site and talking in
one area as our first-person selves (especially about basic stuff like food)
and then having a "museum tent" in the third person to address the more
complex things (the ubiquity of the church, the complex strata of society
after the Black Death, etc.). I find it easier to connect modern
Americans with something that is *so far* removed from their experience when
we can talk in the third person about the parallels that do exist.
First-person works best, in my experience, when the differences aren't so
great.
In short, perhaps it can be easily
said that there are instances where first-person narrative gets in the way of
fulfilling Tilden's first principle: "Any interpretation that does not somehow
relate what is being displayed or described to something within the
personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile." If that can't
be done using first-person techniques due to distance or complexity as I
mentioned or some other reason, then third-person interpretation might be in
order. The point, I'd say, is to be effective rather than to lock
oneself into a single form of presentation.
Either way, it's a fun challenge,
but I'm always interested to hear "best practices" when it comes to
interpretation--whether based on Tilden's seminal work or on "home grown"
solutions.
The Village Factsmith Historical
Research & Consulting
----- Original Message -----
Sent:
Saturday, August 06, 2005 2:37 PM
Subject: Re:
[MUSEUM-L] Interpretation or Not?
I work for a historical museum
and we do first person interpretation but there are still hard facts that
are neccessary to get out. I feel we short change our audience by just let
them see, smell, touch, etc the buck skin but not share the wonderful
thought of how this buckskin became soft by brain tanning and the inginuity
of the Natives that created this tool just because it would be telling
people facts and not interpreting. Just my 2
cents
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