At this spring’s National Council on Public History annual meeting in Monterey, California, outgoing NCPH President Bob Weyeneth proposed that it was time for historians to let the rest of the world in on our trade secret about history: that it isn’t a static set of facts, but a matter of “interpretive fluidity” that demands a continual reassessment of what we know about the past. Read More
A few weeks ago, I asked readers of History@Work to nominate articles on historic preservation and place from The Public Historian for a yearlong conversation in honor of the upcoming 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 2016. Read More
In the nomination form for the US National Register of Historic Places, one of the main criteria excludes “structures, sites and objects achieving historical importance within the past 50 years.” Using this criterion, if the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, which authorized the National Register, were a building, it would only become eligible for inclusion in 2016. Read More
The New York Times blog recently posted a piece about the recent AHA conference in New Orleans. Touching briefly on panels about horses and trash in history, the author pauses momentarily to describe a discussion about “The Public Practice of History in a Digital Age.” Read More
Public history has been at the forefront of democratizing historical knowledge and utilizing nontraditional modes of inquiry—from oral history to personal archives—since its inception. In that time, it—we—have substantially affected the larger practice of history in the academy.[1] But, to vastly oversimplify, the promises and possibilities of the digital have risen as a challenge to all historians to rethink how we disseminate our work and, at the same time, to spur conversations that question and critique the role of technology in the 21st century. Read More
During a slow moment on the Love Letters tour, while the couples snuggle each other casually, I ask Barbara to talk more about the effect of the murals. A nurse by training, she tells me that she sees them as having a public health impact—images of hearts helping people’s hearts—and improving people’s attitudes. Read More
“There was this young man from West Philadelphia,” our tour guide, Barbara, told the group of us assembled on hard plastic chairs. “He was a tagger, a graffiti artist, kept getting in trouble. He finally got sent to jail, and when he got out his girlfriend told him she didn’t want him around their baby anymore. Read More
Founded in 1984 to combat graffiti, Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program replaced tags and bubble letters with larger-than-life murals that were designed collaboratively by community members and professional artists, becoming one of the most influential public arts organizations of its kind. Since that time, more than 3,000 murals—memorializing famous Philadelphians, commemorating immigration and migration stories, and acknowledging groups ranging from veterans to people with disabilities—have put a visual face on many neighborhoods, identifying and crystallizing their unique character.[1] Read More
The Toynbee Tiler’s main style, in Philadelphia’s Center City.
At its heart an exhibition is a display of objects, grouped together by a shared theme, style or message, and designed for public consumption. In the award-winning 2011 documentary Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles, four men from Philadelphia search for the creator of an idiosyncratic series of public art pieces that, in its consistency and repetition, can be seen as an exhibition. Read More
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