Tag Archive

museums

Unfamiliar terrain: Reevaluating a landmark’s past (Part 1)

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Through the support of the Arts of Citizenship Program at the University of Michigan, I recently found myself, along with my team of colleagues, navigating unfamiliar territory in the form of partnership with Cliveden of the National Trust to update the site’s National Historic Landmark  (NHL) nomination.  Read More

Would you like a side of history with that? Toward a more holistic public history practice

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Around the time that I took on my current position with The Trustees of Reservations, the organization made an internal change: our historic resources department became the cultural landscapes department, our historic resources staff the cultural resources staff. Why was this significant? Read More

Mind in the marketplace (Part 1): Taking the leap into historical consulting

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1997 was the hardest year of my adult life.  During that year my marriage of 15 years ended in divorce; during that same year, my employer, a nationally prominent museum of American cultural history, began to transform itself into a children’s museum, and eliminated the position of “senior historian” that I had held for the previous seven years. Read More

Letters from Chile: A photo gallery

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In addition to the photos that have accompanied Zach McKiernan’s “Letters from Chile” series this spring, there have been many more that we didn’t post with the articles, but which we’re including here in a visual addendum to the series. All are by the author unless otherwise noted. Read More

Letters from Chile: A dead dictator's homage, a public history movement (Part 2)

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/continued from Part I

At the outset of this series, I proposed two seemingly simple questions in hopes of unpacking the complexity of sites of memory and how they “engage citizens in human rights issues” vis-à-vis the past.  What type of historic work is taking place?  Read More

Developing public history at a community college

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As a professor at a community college, I am typically absorbed in teaching, focused on my classes and students–as many as five classes and upwards of 120-150 students per semester.  But recently, I’ve been increasingly engaged  in public history by way of developing an associate’s degree program in the field and through involvement in other activities, including the utilization of a restored 1808 manor house on campus, which was the centerpiece of a horse farm when the region had a thriving thoroughbred racing and breeding industry.  Read More

National Stadium, national memory: A personal letter

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This is a personal letter.  It is personal because I came to Chile to write and participate in the history of the museum project “National Stadium, National Memory,” whose aim is “the material establishment of national memory in respect… to the Concentration Camp… in 1973.”  Read More