My idea of a great session is one that leaves me with more questions than answers.   Particularly in these days of immediate access to all kinds of information I don’t view conference sessions as how-tos as much as places that stimulate new thinking.   Yesterday afternoon’s session, Dealing with Tragedy:  Museums and Memorialization was just that.    The issues related to three different tragedies and their subsequent memorials and museum presentations were discussed:  the Oklahoma City bombing;  the Columbine shootings and September 11.   The situations were also quite different for the museums:  the memorial and museum here is created on the site;  the Littleton Historical Society’s exhibit on Columbine was presented as a part of a local community story, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History looked at September 11 within a broad national context.

At the Oklahoma City Memorial and Museum, 350 community members helped write the mission which is, “We come here to remember those who were killed, those who survived and those changed forever. May all who leave here know the impact of violence. May this memorial offer comfort, strength, peace, hope and serenity.”   It does that effectively, but on my visit to the museum, I was struck by what it didn’t do, also an issue addressed by historian Bill Bryans.    It doesn’t really explain the why,  in part because family members, who played a significant role in shaping the memorial and museum, felt that to do so gave voice to the perpetrators.   But, as Bryans noted, over time, the question of why becomes more important.

Marilyn Zoldis,  who had worked at the Smithsonian on the September 11 exhibit set forth a set of questions they considered as they developed the September 11 exhibit:

what role should a museum play in an event such as this?  what public expectations do we face?  what responsibilities do we face?  how do we establish and maintain historical perspective?  how do we deal with emotions?  how do we maintain historical objectivity in a time of crisis?

Great questions all–and out of the following discussion came more questions for me.

Should memorials and museums be differentiated?

How do we define a “sacred space?”   and does that harken back to Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address in our American sensibility?

Do these particular events, ones that happen almost in the blink of an eye,  lend themselves more easily to museums and memorials than events than unfold more slowly, such as this summer’s oil spill?

Has a 24 hour news cycle, twitter and the immediacy of the web shaped the public’s interest and perspective on events like these?  What role then, do museums play in peeling back the onion of the media’s coverage?

And finally,  how can these museums/exhibits/memorials be places where we not only remember and grieve, but gain understandings and create change in the world?   I think that comes from looking at the whys of terrorism (state-sponsored or not)  straight in the face, as places like the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC and the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam do every day.

Thanks to these session presenters for their compassion and frankness.

Here in Oklahoma City, I’m reminded of how many ways all of us gain a bit of history–and it’s often not in museums or historical societies.    I skipped out on sessions this morning and went to see the Oklahoma Museum of Art and their fabulous Dale Chihuly exhibition.  Very little interpretation, but I sat down to watch the video.  It was mostly about process, but all of a sudden, there was history!   Chihuly had invited master glassblowers from Murano to come work with him here in his studio and several young American glassmakers described those Venetian masters as having centuries of knowledge in their heads.  It made me realize that when I look at these beautiful shapes and colors, I’m looking at not only a fertile imagination, but those centuries of skill, imagination and as Chihuly said in the video about the masters, the ability to “reflect, change and make a decision”  instantly.

My favorite building here conjures up an entirely different history.  The Santa Fe railroad station, just across from the hotel, is an incredibly evocative place as evening falls and train whistles sound.  The view and the experience summons up a host of history known, and unknown.  It’s tempting to jump on that train and head further west, as so many people did.

I think one of our greatest challenges as museum people is to figure out ways to create this emotional memories, to connect what we know (Venice, or Oklahoma) with what we–and our visitors–don’t.

A collection of what I heard/read/thought about today at the conference:

“It’s the story of our democracy, what we fear, hate, overcome and incorporate.”  Keynoter Susan Stamberg on what American museums can be about.

“Don’t touch everything instead of don’t touch anything.”   “Can we make things evocative and keep them safe at the same time?”   “How long is perpetuity anyway?”

And from my session with Ken Yellis, responses to the question, “Why resist the big idea?”

“Are we leading or reporting?”

“Are we taking sides?  Are we afraid?”

“how much does relevance impact the big idea?”

“how do you overcome communities that don’t want to know?”

“how does the need for compromise impact the formation, relevance, and interaction with big ideas?”

More to come on our session and all our thoughtful participants soon on The Uncataloged Museum.

At Wednesday’s Train the Trainer session for field service colleagues about the new workshop packages for the StEPs program, I was reminded at what we sometimes forget.  As a part of the new workshop curricula on visitors and audiences (yep, those are two different things) we did a collage profiling exercise that Susie Wilkenning of Reach Advisors had developed as part of the workshop curricula.  Scott Wands describes it in his post below, but at lunch afterwards,  three of us had a conversation about who knows what.  The exercise asked small groups to create fictional audience profiles,  thinking about what people did for fun, what stressed them out, what they did for fun, where they got their information,  where they shopped–a whole range of characteristics and activities.

It reinforced for me, thanks to  the lively groups and their reports that every visitor, every learner, comes not encased in a bubble, but rather has a range of tentacles that extend out into their own communities and the world.  Think that the senior citizen volunteer board member doesn’t know about teenagers?   My own mother, who falls into that category,  knows a great deal about what kids from 3 to 30 are interested in–because those are her grandkids.  So she has an interest in and knows a bit about soccer, about studying art in college, about the Peace Corps in Ghana, about paragliding and much more.  And in turn, those grandkids know a bit about what she’s interested in as well.  At the same time, it’s possible to have certain parts of your community that you might never intersect with.  It’s not that you’re in a bubble, or they’re in a bubble, it’s that the network of tentacles hasn’t yet crossed the boundaries of race, of class, of religion, of age, or of any other factor.  And that’s where this workshop about audiences and visitors comes in.  It will help you think about who comes, who doesn’t, and how you might engage those community segments who aren’t yet passionate museum-goers.  And hopefully, will allow your history organization to engage all of your community in history.

Look for the workshop soon at a location near you!

Tomorrow (Thursday) I’m co-presenting a session with Ken Yellis, who I had never met until today.  We’d done our work, when Bob Beatty suggested we might find each other interesting, via email and phone.  We’re aiming for a thoughtful session, with lots of discussion, so lots of discussion has preceded it.  Our time today was no exception.  In a wide ranging conversation over dinner we talked about whether and why museums have become risk averse,  how you might get work as a grant-writer, how the allocation of funds to different museum functions have changed over the years and what that really means, what kinds of big ideas are at work in history museums today, and much, more more.  We hope our session (8;30 AM–don’t miss it!) will engender the same kind of lively conversation.  Unfortunately though, we won’t be providing participants with the flight of brews from the Bricktown Brewery (above) that helped our conversations along.  But do join us!  As Stacy Klingler mentioned in her post below,  these kinds of lively debates are what help make conferences worth going to.

This morning (a Sunday no less) I put a post up on my blog, The Uncataloged Museum entitled, “Are County Historical Societies Dinosaurs?”  and somewhat to my astonishment I’ve had wide readership today and a number of colleagues emailing me their thoughts.   As I head towards Oklahoma City, I’m hoping that similar ideas, conversations and debates will frame my conference time this coming week.  I based the post primarily on my work here in the Northeast so it would be great to hear perspectives from colleagues around the country. If you’d like to have an informal conversation about the issues raised in the post–just leave a comment here or on The Uncataloged Museum.    I’d love to have a cup of coffee with any and all who found the post useful, intriguing, or even annoying!   That dead end the dinosaurs ran into isn’t inevitable for us.

Oklahoma–hard to even to write the name without the song running through your head (Oklahomans, I bet you can do the same for my home state of New York).   One of the best parts of conferences  is the chance to experience a different part of the country.  It means different attendees,  different museums to visit,  different ideas.  So what do I want to do this year at AASLH?

I want to attend several of the workshops within the Tribal Track.  I’m particularly interested in Moving Beyond Material Culture:  Exploring American Indian Issues in the Museum Setting. The opportunity to move out beyond objects in a museum setting is a great one and I look forward to hearing more about how the Abbe Museum and others have done it.  I think the parallels are for all history organizations, not just tribal museum.

Right now I’m at work on interpretive projects at two very different historic houses, the Rosen House at Caramoor and the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, and I’m always interested in ways we can turn what could be our field’s white elephants into compelling visitor experiences.  So I’ll be attending several of those sessions that present new perspectives on historic houses.

But you can’t spend all day in the conference center!  On my visit list are the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum and the Oklahoma Museum of History.   And of course, an old friend who grew up in Oklahoma tells me that I have to go out for a steak dinner.  Recommendations anyone?

I hope I’ll be seeing some of you at my session with Ken Yellis,  Thursday morning at 8:30.   Entitled, Which History, Whose History?  Finding Ground in a Cultural Tornado, we’ll be encouraging lively debate and discussion about the idea of truth–we’ll ask you to consider the complicated ground of truths between museums and visitors.  No talking heads, we promise.

I’ll be blogging here and at my own blog, The Uncataloged Museum.  So check back in and see what I’m up to and share your own thoughts and questions.

Image:  from my favorite place to find 20th century images, the FSA/OWI collection at the Library of Congress. Employees at the Mid-Century Refinery in Tulsa, photograph by John Vachon, 1943?