How should NCPH commemorate the past and help shape the future of federal preservation policy? (Part II)
09 February 2015 – Barbara Little
Editors’ Note: In 2016, the National Park Service will mark the 100th anniversary of its founding, and the National Historic Preservation Act will have been in effect for 50 years. These two landmark moments come just two years after the National Museum of American History quietly marked its own 50th anniversary in 2014. A Working Group at the National Council on Public History 2015 Annual Meeting in Nashville will serve as a collaborative forum for planning a scholarly symposium to mark these important events. The symposium will take place in March 2016 during the NCPH Annual Meeting in Baltimore. This post is directed to participants in the working group, but all blog readers are invited to comment.
Photo credit: Library of Congress, WPA Poster Collection
In just a few months we’ll be in Nashville, working together to plan the 2016 symposium to address how NCPH should commemorate the past and help shape the future of federal preservation policy. Thank you for your contributions to get us started identifying key themes and issues for the 2016 symposium. This blog post is the second of our three posts to stimulate the discussions that will guide our work in Nashville (Part I can be found here).
Each of you brings unique experience and insight to the conversation. The following six major themes or issues have emerged:
- Ask different questions. Stop assuming that historic preservation will or should happen and find the “why?” for practicing it.
- Focus on meaning and relevance. That is, make historical meaning–rather than the physical fabric and integrity–central to historic preservation. Reform historic preservation practice by putting interpretation at the center of it. How could historic preservation policy and practice support the idea of sites of conscience where people can challenge themselves to be better citizens and neighbors?
- Historic Contexts. Advocate for, support, and insist upon better historic contexts and broader contexts for evaluating the significances of places.
- Be intentionally inclusive. Be multivocal. Focus on including places and stories of under-represented and marginalized peoples and the difficult histories represented there.
- Tackle the integrity requirements. Reform historic preservation to solve the potential effect of erasing history that does not have an intact “place” associated with it. How does historic preservation interconnect with the stories that have no specific place or surviving trace?
- Collaborate. How do we break down the barriers that inhibit collaboration across institutions, communities, and professions? How do we integrate history across our own borders of identity, type, institution, and profession?
Please consider the following questions in your responses:
If these were the focal points for the symposium, what would be the most stimulating way to consider them? What themes or issues are missing? Is there lumping or splitting that should happen? What would be your 4-6 themes?
Please jump right in to get the discussion going. Please reply no later than February 25, when we’ll take stock of where we are as a group. Our third blog post will appear in March to finalize our preparation to meet together in Nashville.
~ Barbara Little is Program Manager, NPS Cultural Resources Office of Outreach, Education, and Training.
1. Interpretation and the important role that it places in the preservation process.
2. Alternatives and effective means of presenting history and meaning in light of past conservation decisions that resulted in the demolition of fragments of historic resources considered insignificant or demolition with no consideration of historic resources. ( include cultural arts, technology, and reconstruction in this discussion)
3. Focus and identity interconnectivity between various professions, institutions, and communities. Create panels with practitioners from the different areas with a moderator (generalist) able to facilitate discussion.
4. In light of all the issues facing preservation, review current policy and create a new overall preservation policy.
5. Discussion of Critical Race Theory as it relates to historic preservation.
While all of these themes are excellent, six of the themes look to me as if they could be adjoined to make three larger themes. First, the “Focus on Meaning and Relevance” category seems closely related to the “Tackle the Integrity Requirements” category. Second, the “Historic Contexts” category could potentially be coupled with the “Be Intentionally Inclusive” category. And, finally, the “Ask Different Questions” topic could possibly be aligned with the “Collaborate” motif. Let me explain.
In the first case, the “Focus on Meaning and Relevancy” category is stated to have at its core the importance of highlighting the historic meaning and interpretation of a site/story, as opposed to “…the physical fabric and integrity—central to historic preservation.” In my opinion, this important concept should be taken into consideration not only regarding built-environment sites that do indeed meet the requirements of “historic integrity” (but still need to find a way prop up their stories to the front and center), but also to sites that may not meet the requirements regarding “historic integrity” either because they may be deemed to have poor aesthetic physicality or simply do not exist at all (“no specific place or surviving trace”). In all three of these scenarios, then, the comment “Reform historic preservation practice by putting interpretation at the center of it” hits the nail on the head, as one could define historic integrity as being both powerfully symbolic (to both community members and visitors alike) as well as corporeal.
In regards to the second pairing, I believe that in order for sites to have a “better” or “broader” historic context, they need to be scrutinized with an eye on possible connections to multi-vocal or underrepresented voices. Specific stories, for instance, do not develop inside of a vacuum. And, more broadly speaking, advocating for a landscape in which more inclusive memorials exist is, in reality, simply practicing good history.
Finally, I think that collaboration is the crux of the “why” we do public history, or more specifically the “why” we care about historic preservation. It is a community endeavor, which, at its best, is full of continual collaborations between communities of scholars, architects, artists, organizations, politicians, neighbors, children and adults….
This is a good start for the focal points of the symposium. However, I think we should dig a little deeper within each of these focal points. My themes would be:
1. Multi-vocality- How do we delve into the untold stories and voices and utilize a collaborative approach with peoples who have traumatic histories with institutions?
2. Reflexivity- Vital to the profession in 2016, we should constantly question and assess our own role in the context of preservation and the role of the institutions that we are a part of. The history of preservation should be considered as integral to the historic site as the site’s own historical story.
3. Historical Contexts- Instead of thinking that our nation’s historic sites exist in a vacuum away from the historical narrative, place historic sites within our nation’s narrative through well articulated and well research interpretation that pushes boundaries.
4. Advocate-This is where we should ask different questions, by stopping to live under the false pretense that historical preservation will or should happen, we will be forced to question our own practice. By placing advocacy at the center of our practice rather than as an afterthought, it allows for the development of sites of conscience raising where people can challenge themselves to be better citizens and neighbors and a renewed investment in their nation’s history.
5. Collaboration-How do we move from a profession divided by labels to a profession defined by doing history in a multiplicity of venues including institutions, communities, and type? How do we create an identity in which we champion on all rather than a few?
I also would like to consider alternative ways that these themes could be considered, rather than having a symposium where panels around somewhat formulaic topics are created (i.e. a National Park Service panel, a Smithsonian panel). I would like to break apart these traditional ways of dividing ourselves. I think it would be effective if we broke up the symposium around these key ideas where each theme has:
1. A presentation by one or two people presenting that theme and questions to consider around that theme.
2. A breakout “lightening” session where people are allowed to present either formally or informally about ways that they have encountered this theme or ideas allowing for conversation after these presentations to discuss models of practice.
The symposium then will culminate in a large presentation led by five or six commentators where all the themes are considered and the What Next? question is discussed.
I see the major themes identified trending into three different areas: inventory/ cultural resources management, interpretation/ outreach, and collaboration. I agree that we want to explore these base areas, but I would caution against lumping, and certainly splitting. Instead, I would argue that each topic raised should incorporate these three areas in conversation together. Beyond just discussing the phenomena/ questions listed, I would like to see a symposium parsing out *why* are these questions ones that come up, and *what* can we do to move the dial on them?
I love Gloria’s suggestion of a CRT discussion of historic preservation (and I’ll add to that interpretation of historic sites). Building on these outlines, some guiding questions I would like to see explored:
1. What is the role of historic preservation in diverse communities? How does the practice and policy of historic preservation support these communities? How does it hinder them? What common ground exists?
2. Whose history is preserved? What role do integrity requirements and existing practice play in maintaining a status quo? Is there a space between a community’s needs for preservation and those of the community of professional practitioners, and why? How do we bridge that gap?
3. How do the needs of preserving a site and sharing the history of that site publicly overlap? How do those needs diverge? What common ground exists, and how different disciplines work together to overcome challenges?
One of the primary issues that both I and others have raised, which I think must be considered in the symposium, is the place of interpretation (or lack thereof) in the modern historic preservation paradigm. The challenge, however, is to find ways to bring interpretation into preservation activities without denigrating or losing the other important contributions of the preservation movement. Although I greatly bemoan the fact that education and interpretation have been increasingly marginalized in historic preservation initiatives ever since the 1960s in favor of aesthetic, environmental, and economic considerations, I believe that it is a fact that the preservation movement has produced some positive aesthetic, environmental and economic results. Architecture as art and as the basis for positive environmental experiences is important; it is just not the be all and end all. (Personally, I’m not particularly concerned with the economic impact of preservation.) What I loathe, however, is the trivialization of history in modern preservation, which typically occurs when preservationists stress “the sense of history” or “historic charm” over the possibilities of critical engagement with the past. I would not argue that interpretation has to be at the center of preservation (except in museums), but simply that it needs to be a part of preservation today. What we might need to look for are people who can speak to how they have successfully incorporated historical interpretation (that goes beyond identifying architectural styles) into preservation organizations and initiatives, and to create an opportunity to brainstorm about other methods of doing so.
It is also clear that one of the themes that the contributors to this discussion have suggested is the need to collaborate and partner across institutions, disciplines and stakeholders. However, I do not believe that collaborations and partnerships are the means by which we can best create more relevant, more multi-vocal or more multi-perspectival interpretations. There is a tendency amongst public historians today to think that the more voices involved, the better the interpretation and the better the history being constructed. Such a perspective is problematic because it essentially denies the possibility that profound insights can come from individuals who are able to offer compelling, authentic interpretations after having listened to many voices and many perspectives. Following a collaborative model across disciplines or communities is also dangerous because such a model requires participants to select representatives from particular disciplines or communities to speak for those groups, which of course is impossible since no discipline or community is monolithic. An alternative way to approach the incorporation of multiple perspectives or voices is to focus upon creating opportunities for dialogue, not collaboration. The concept of shared authority does not deny the authority of the individual; in fact, it suggests the direct opposite, that every individual is an expert in his or her own way (although that does not mean that every individual is capable of producing meaningful or even useful insights). What we need are opportunities for critical dialogue not collaborative products. Of course, I know that most people who seek collaborations are not suggesting that history is better when constructed by committee, but I do think that the words we choose to describe how we engage with each other, whether collaborate/partner or discuss, is not just academic. To collaborate or partner is to submerge the individual into a whole, while to discuss preserves the individual—and his or her voice or perspective—but places that individual in community rather than keeping him or her in isolation. Some of you may disagree, but that is a good thing; perhaps the question, “Collaboration or Dialogue: which is the better model?” is a theme we could address in the symposium.
I like the discussion and focal points so far. I am going to go in a bit of a different direction. Rather than refine themes, I would like to respond to Barbara’s first prompt and propose a stimulating way for considering them. At risk of irreverence, I would like to consider them all through asking – “…decolonization?”
This loaded word seems to address a great many concerns behind our themes, and in doing so provides a central query for categorically discussing the Park Service. As importantly, it offers a variety of levels for symposium participation and audience engagement; from debating whether colonization is an issue at an institutional level or an attainable/desirable ideal to discussing how local Parks are (or aren’t) moving towards decolonization.
In some way every Park is a flattened idealized place outside of time – either because it is a “pristine” setting or the sacred landscape of a frozen moment of national “significance.” Decolonization of those places enables us to discuss the textured past of a landscape and its marginalized historic occupants as well as broader contexts. In so doing, it will also suggest new avenues for interpretation, preservation, and collaboration moving forward.
I agree with the issues we have identified but would like to move beyond the words and talk about the how – how do we expand the interpretation of historic sites so it is not just my view but the view of past residents and present-day viewers.
1. Visual evidence – I have found using images from the past that do convey a diverse workforce, or diverse visitors to the site, or diverse residents of the neighborhood do reach even visitors strolling by, as they see themselves represented in the historic site. They are more likely to be drawn in and then to offer their own views.
2. Reminiscences from past and present people at the site – Visitors become more engaged in the historic site when they are asked for their own reminiscences – it may not be of this particular site, but of the ways this site is similar to or different from their own experiences. And I also use diaries, postcards, letters, etc., to share earlier voices with visitors today. Personal stories engage the visitor and then can be used to draw broader conclusions at the end of the exhibit or public program.
I do agree with Kenneth Shefsiek that the public historian then has the responsibility to weave these varied voices into a coherent story. Every historic site has a variety of stories, but I think they can be woven together or used in counterpoint. I do think public historians often do a good job of sharing authority between their professional perspective and the viewpoints of earlier residents and present-day visitors. But the public historian needs to hone his or her listening skills and visual analysis skills, in addition to our reading skills, so he or she can draw out the stories inherent in the historic site.
I realize this post is a bit late but I hope I can add to the discussion here. One of our predominant themes throughout this process has been “inclusion”. I dislike that word in the same way that I dislike the word “tolerance” when it is associated with embracing diversity. I think it implies that the authority to include is limited to a specific group or demographic. WHO is doing the “including”? Is there any merit in discussing or defining what we mean by inclusion and whether or not there is an implied hegemony?
This implies that there is an “us” and a “them”. I think this relates to April’s questions about the role of historic preservation in diverse communities as well as Kenneth’s discussion about dialogue vs. collaboration. How do various groups view their own history-making process? I think this is a slight deviation from the idea of shared authority because it requires us to look inward and examine how we see ourselves in relation to those communities we seek to serve.
(I apologize for my delayed response. I was “in transit” relocating from Omaha to Cambridge, Maryland.)
I think all of the comments have been “spot on” and have raised a few thoughts:
It is unfortunate that preservation and interpretation have been de-coupled for so long in practice in this country. Without an understanding of why something is important, why are we devoting resources to its preservation? I definitely agree that the aesthetic qualities that history preservation has added to communities across the country is important. While I feel that interpretation and the “history” have been missing from historic preservation in favor of the “pretty” resources, I don’t think that we should bounce too far back and not preserve what we can. There needs to be a balance somehow in representing our collective heritage, even though it may be missing from the landscape, and preserving what remains where possible.
I believe that historic preservation and “integrity” mean different things to different groups. Perhaps a place to start the discussion is to listen and “hear” how the past is lived and remembered by different groups within the population. What “past” are we preserving, what is the place of the living culture that represents the past or traditional cultural practices. We might look to other countries and how they preserve their heritage through recognizing practitioners of traditional “crafts” or lifeways. Perhaps it is possible to weave the threads of the past into the present of our cultural heritage so that preservation is not a static object but a living part of the community.