As director-curator of the Colby-Curtis Museum in Stanstead (Québec), I had
a chance to do something about that last year, with rather interesting
results.

The Colby-Curtis Museum is part of the Stanstead Historical Society, which
has a long tradition of heritage preservation.  When the Society accepted
the donation of a victorian home where it could establish itself permanently
in 1992, an important faction of traditionalist members of the Historical
Society felt estranged by the new location, a house most of them had never
been allowed in when it was inhabited.  So they stayed away from the Museum
altogether, complaining that they couldn't see the objects that related to
ordinary people anymore, thet there were only bourgeois victorian objects to
be seen.  Some even demanded to get their donations back.

My solution to this was to involve those members in preparing their own
exhibition and, therefore, to get part of our public to actually do what we
do.We held many meetings (some very emotional) and a exhibition scenario was
finally agreed upon.  Committees were formed for each theme, and members had
to select the artifacts and write the texts for the section they were
responsible for.  At first, they thought glorifying the past would be enough
but they gradually started questioning their own writing, selections and
actions.  After a 6-month process, the members' room was finally opened and
was a great success with the more traditional members.

Afterwards, many among the members involved came forward to say how
difficult it was to 1) decide what to say 2) how to say it 3) who to say it
to 4) which artefact to use.  Since then, hardly anything has been said by
members against the Museum.  Next summer, the same teams are invited to
change the whole content and to keep on changing them at will, so that
locals get to see what they want to see.

This might not be an ideal solution for every situation, but it sure worked
in a small-community museum.

Hervé Gagnon
Director-curator
Colby-Curtis Museum
35, Dufferin
Stanstead (Québec)
Canada
J0B 3E0

Len Hambleton a écrit:

>         In response to Claudia J.Niclson's  question  ............how do
> museums really educate the public to what we are trying to do?
>
>  I 'd like to suggest to all on the list to consider creating an exhibit
> illustrating  the process of creating exhibits. This could be placed at
> the entrance to the museum ,preparing the visitor in hopes to supplement
> their notions of what is the context .
> Until I joined the museum field there was always a mystique of how the
> exhibit originated.Who wrote the storyline ?
> The Children's Museum of Manhattan I visited a few years ago had a large
> pyramid constructed of white arborite . Underneath was sheet metal.
> Magnetic Post-It size cartoons depicted components of a storeyline. The
> visitor could arrange them and in effect become " curators' for the day.
> It was a great exhibit on "Hobbies ..Why I Collect."
> We forget that the internal working flow charts that are second nature
> to us are not evident to the visitor or at least to most.
> The Maritime Museum in Norfolk VA is a great museum. For any of their
> staff on the list who may read this ,please take a bow. The staff,
> research librarians and volunteers are cheerful and so helpful. It has
> to be the brightest and most exciting of  museums on the eastern
> seaboard to visit with a great giftshop for those on the list who love
> the sea and maritime memorabilia ,all that is there.
>  I learned of a video in 1992 they created when I viewed their exhibit
> in one area on the Conservation of the Leif Ericson statue .
> There were black and white photos along with the video to show behind
> the scenes and how different departments work. Education- the visitor
> will appreciate it I am sure if we "let them in on the process" of our
> craft , we all sometimes  take for granted
> Yes we are magicians .Smoke ,mirrors and the works ,let's show them and
> measure the response and share the reults on this list!
> We as staff members were all offered a case to curate no matter where in
> the museum we worked.
>
> Len Hambleton - Chief Conservator
> North Carolina Museum of History
> 5 East Edenton Street
> Raleigh NC. 27601-1011
> [log in to unmask]
> 919-715-0200 x244
> "Information in the spirit of sharing,catch the wave!"
>
> Opinions expressed in this message may not represent the policy of my
> agency
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Nicholson, Claudia [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> > Sent: Thursday, January 22, 1998 2:06 PM
> > To:   [log in to unmask]
> > Subject:      Re: VANDALISING UNPOPULAR STATUES ETC. - using the
> > pieces             inmuseums
> >
> > Harry Needham has raised an interesting point when he noted that the
> > museum gets accused of "glorifying" Hitler because they show the
> > decapitated head of a Hitler statue in the museum.
> >
> > I ran into the same problem in South Dakota.  An exhibit of a Ku Klux
> > Klan robe brought a sharp response from some visitors, including one
> > who
> > bothered to write her anger.  She accused us of "glorifying" the Klan
> > because we showed the outfit.  We thought that it would be good to
> > point
> > out that the Klan was not simply an organization of the American
> > South--that it was active in the northern parts of the country too,
> > and
> > in the case of South Dakota, went after foreigners and Catholics.
> >
> > Unfortunately, many visitors still think that what museums do is
> > glorify
> > the past.  Anything that we show, therefore, is out for the public to
> > see so that they might revel in the ever-upward spiral of
> > civilization.
> > Although the context and explanatory labeling of any potentially
> > controversial object in a museum exhibit can very carefully show why
> > the
> > object is not there to be glorified, if the visitor does not read the
> > label or pay attention to the context, they can make an incorrect
> > assumption.
> >
> > Once again, I will ask the question:  how do museums really educate
> > the
> > public to what we are trying to do?  How do we get visitors in a
> > questioning frame of mind when they come through our doors?  How can
> > we
> > get them to question--and then seek to find the answer--when they see
> > something in our galleries that they think is inappropriate?  How do
> > we
> > get them to understand that, at least in history museums, we are tying
> > to talk about both the good and the bad of the past?
> >
> > Claudia J. Nicholson
> > Curator
> > Museum Collections Department
> > Minnesota Historical Society
> > 345 Kellogg Blvd. W.
> > St. Paul, MN  55102-1906
> >   Tel.:  612/297-7442
> >   FAX: 612/297-2967
> >   E-mail:  [log in to unmask]
> >
> > >