History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment ed. by Warren Leon, Roy Rosenzweig

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 651 For historians of technology the most valuable part of this book may be the all-too-brief discussion of the wide variety of traditional and innovative technologies in which scientific instrument makers en­ gaged and to which they contributed. Those interested in technology transfer will appreciate the detailed evidence of peripatetic artisans moving not only from town to town, but from one country to another. The ultimate goal of the authors is to understand the social, economic, and scientific context of the Irish instrument trade. In this light, “Vulgar and Mechanick” “should be regarded as an interim report.” One can only applaud this handsome start and hope that a fuller study will soon be forthcoming. Deborah Jean Warner Ms. Warner, curator of the history of physical sciences at the National Museum of American History, is editor of Rittenhouse, a quarterly journal pertaining to the American scientific instrument enterprise. History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment. Edited by Warren Leon and Roy Rosenzweig. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Pp. xxvi + 333; illustrations, notes, index. $34.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper). There has long been an uneasy relationship between academic historians and history museums. While a fair body of literature exists exhorting each to reach out to the other, the fact of the matter is that the public outcomes of “doing” history in a museum are different from the far more formal and more intellectually sustained experi­ ence of a monograph, seminar, or lecture. The history museum must inevitably deal with a lay audience as well as a professional one. This audience, for the most part, has a different expectation of the history-museum experience. It takes its history in small doses, does it in leisure rather than work time, and has limited interest in the internal debates of the historian. For those of us who struggle to “do” history interpretation in a museum setting that is informed by good scholarship, but tries to reach out and engage a broad public audience, the pull between professional concerns and public expec­ tation is perhaps the most deeply felt tension we have to confront on a daily basis. There has not been much help in articulating, let alone helping address, such tensions in the literature of either museum or academic history. For this reason alone, History Museums in the United States is a major contribution. This study “seeks to initiate formal, critical discussion of historical interpretation at museums” (p. xiii) through a series of essays that explore the present state of historical interpreta­ tion in a variety of museum settings. Among the most useful of all the essays is the brief introduction by Warren Leon and Roy Rosenzweig, 652 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE that sets out the landscape of issues that must be addressed to adequately shape a critical assessment of the present state of historical interpretation in history museums. The primary yardstick of measure for both the editors and essayists in assessing the quality of historical interpretation is the degree to which the new social history has found a place in history-museum exhibitions and programs. While all of the essayists contributing to this volume share this assumption, the best of them recognize that a history-museum program, whether it be an exhibition, living history, or some other format, involves issues of visitor expectation, program planning and design, and communication strategies totally foreign to an academic setting. Unfortunately, several of the essays assume that the history museum’s role is primarily to put an individual scholar’s directly revealed truths, in words and pictures, up on a museum wall and call it an exhibit. This kind of self-congratulatory purism serves neither history nor history museums. Yet the pressure to enlarge our agenda to include new groups, new issues, and new topics, shrill as it may be at times, is good. There is no question that the new social history has done much (along with the high standards of quality imposed by the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Division of Public Pro­ grams) to stretch both the range and depth of historical interpretation in our museums. Among the very best of the essays...