Oral History and Museum Exhibits: Successful Exhibits
From OHA Wiki
Waikato University: A Railway Community Exhibit
The use of oral history in museum exhibits is relatively widespread in the United States as well as abroad, but the focus of most exhibits is still on material objects. At Waikato University in New Zealand, a group of graduate students collected oral histories from a railway community in Frankton Junction and completed an exhibit comprised mainly of those interviews.1 The students knew that one of the most intriguing aspects of oral history is that the listener can hear the emotion and expressions that a written transcript cannot duplicate. As a result, the listener becomes involved in the story and often captivated by what the storyteller is saying. This phenomenon makes oral history extremely valuable for museum professionals and can make an exhibit more dynamic and interesting for the visitor. For this particular project, the oral histories were conducted by the same individuals that constructed the exhibit.2 Many organizations or groups do not have this luxury and exhibit designers often have to interpret the interviews to the best of their ability.
There were many aspects of the exhibit to consider in this case, especially when choosing the interviews and clips to use and deciding how the information would ultimately be presented. The students discovered an innovative way to avoid sound bleeding within the exhibit space, which is often a major concern when utilizing oral histories. At the University, there was a language lab that was in an open area and required students to sit in small groups that had the speakers attached at shoulder level. In the lab, there were several different stations playing a variety of languages without any sound bleeding.3 Placing the speakers at ear level for the patrons was innovative because the volume level could be much lower for the patrons and they would still be able to hear the oral histories. In the case of the railway exhibit, the lighting was intentionally low so the visitor would focus on the oral history accounts.4 The students were able to manipulate the exhibit space to tell a story and compel visitors to see the exhibit and experience it in a specific way.
Children’s Museum in Boston
Another interesting example of utilizing oral history to benefit an exhibit and a community is the exhibit entitled "Kid’s Bridge" that began at the Children’s Museum in Boston in the 1980's. The mission of the museum is to “help children understand and enjoy the world in which they live,” and the museum has used oral history to complete that mission.5 The exhibit "Kid’s Bridge" focused on how children define themselves and handle discrimination and prejudice. The project was one of the first multicultural exhibits used in a children’s museum and featured many children’s oral accounts of their experiences and feelings.6
This exhibit became a traveling exhibit for the Smithsonian Institution, and allowed a young audience to interact with a museum exhibit in a unique way. Being able to hear the voice of someone your own age can be very powerful, especially as a child. Connecting with a museum as a young person can be difficult, but using oral history can break down the wall of misunderstanding and create an educational atmosphere for children of all ages.
The Minnesota History Center
Oral histories can breathe new life into an institution or community. The Minnesota History Center was built in 1991 with the intention to create a livelier and more interactive museum space. Nina Archabal, director of the Minnesota Historical Society, states that “Our guiding principle was that history is most powerful when people are able to engage it on a personal level, both emotional and intellectual.”7 The museum focused on first-person oral history accounts that were paired with artifacts which gave visitors a way to connect with the past. The opening exhibit of the center was titled “Minnesota: A to Z” and had a section that corresponded to each letter of the alphabet. When visitors got to the “V” section, it was called “Voices” and was designed very simply: an open booth with stools and a computer screen. Visitors were able to touch the screen and select a voice to listen to from moments in Minnesota history.8 The exhibit was a huge success with consistent stream of visitors who wanted to hear first-person accounts of their communities history.
The Minnesota History Center is still thriving, and contains many oral history exhibits for visitors to view, including “Minnesota’s Greatest Generation,” which is a collection of oral histories from Minnesota residents who grew up during the Great Depression.9 New technology has allowed many institutions to reach a wider audience, and not only with physical exhibits. The internet has afforded unique opportunities for museums to extend their exhibits online. While viewers will not be able to see the actual artifacts as in person, they are still able to listen to and watch different audio and video presentations, many of which contain oral histories. The use of the internet creates an even larger audience for the institution, and the Minnesota History Center has taken full advantage of that opportunity.
The September 11, 2001 Oral History Narrative and Memory Project at Columbia University
National tragedies and events can be a trigger for oral historians to explore how memory interacts with oral histories. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States began to focus more heavily on communication and heightened awareness. It was inevitable that there would be an oral history project or foundation that focused on the attacks. Mary Marshall Clark, the director of Columbia University’s Oral History Program, states that the events “changed our consciousness about documentation,” especially concerning firsthand accounts.10 Because the attacks were seen in real time live on every major news network, there are many different stories that can be collected to document the event. Clark’s project includes interviews from over 600 individuals to piece together the events and how those events shape collective consciousness.
The objective of The September 11, 2001 Oral History Narrative and Memory Project is to “gather as many different individual perspectives on the impact of September 11th as possible, and to allow people to speak about their experiences outside the frameworks quickly developed by official media and government accounts.”11 The interviews for the project are currently being processed but will be open to the public once all of the release forms have been collected and verified. This project is significant because the project creators plan to interview the narrators several times to document how memory changes for individuals and for the community as a whole. Being able to track those changes is a unique way in which oral historians can make an impact on both history and memory studies.
The interviewers have noted that there is a strong connection between stories and objects, which is a fact that ties oral histories to exhibits. This connection has also been noted in a PBS documentary entitled Objects and Memory that includes many interviews and oral histories from historians and those who experienced 9/11 firsthand. The film “follows people driven to preserve meaningful objects in the aftermath of 9/11 and other upheavals. Otherwise ordinary items come to symbolize experiences, aspirations, and identity.”12 Edward Linenthal, a professor of History at Indiana University, comments in the documentary that “[Objects] help us think that we can touch the past in many ways and convey a reality that the past had material substance. It doesn’t just exist in ideas or expressions of nostalgia…it is what’s left.”13 Interspersing oral histories within the larger context of memory studies is important and is one way to prove that oral histories are vital to the mission of museums and other institutions. This documentary is an excellent example of how oral history can be used in variety of ways, not just within museum exhibits. In every facet of historical presentation, oral histories can be an intriguing and interactive way to illustrate how everyday people experienced specific events or time period.
“A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the United States Constitution”
Museum exhibits can be informational, educational and controversial: sometimes all at once. In recent years, museums have done more than present the history of famous figures and military generals and have branched out into collecting and preserving the histories of ordinary people. Learning about regular people can bring audiences closer to an exhibit or institution because they can identify with themes and specific stories that are told. However, museum exhibits can also be points of contention within a society or community, and in some cases oral histories can help smooth over the controversy. If an audience knows that the stories being told are firsthand accounts of an event, they might be less likely to attack the institution. However, if the exhibit is more traditional and there is controversial material on labels, the museum is often to blame for trying to sway the audience in a particular direction.
The exhibit “A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the United States Constitution” was a controversial exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Open to the public in 1987, the exhibit explored internment camps from the perspective of the detainees. To effectively present the information, the Smithsonian staff used an oral history perspective to present the material in an effort to understand and better explain the nuances of the Constitution of the United States. This exhibit explored how to use oral histories in a variety of ways, curating them as if they were artifacts rather than sound bites and audio clips intended to supplement artifacts that already existed in the exhibit.14 Not only were the stories presented in text, but there were video and audio additions to the exhibit that made the oral histories come alive for visitors. Selma Thomas, one of the designers of the exhibit, states that “We wanted to create a document that was incontestable, so that even museum visitors who were strangers to the story would have to accept it as true…the oral history also gives [the story] a humanity that is often lacking in other kinds of documents.”15 By using oral histories, the museum was able to stave off some controversy while still presenting a story that was relevant and powerful for all types of visitors. The exhibit is now housed on the internet, and viewers can read text, look at artifacts, and hear the oral histories that were included in the original exhibit.16 The internet allows exhibits to have a longer lifespan, and the oral histories make them more compelling and interesting.
Continue this discussion here with Oral History and Museum Exhibits: Opposition and Technology.
Related Pages
Oral History and Museum Exhibits: An Introduction
Oral History and Museum Exhibits: Catering to the Audience
Oral History and Museum Exhibits: Opposition and Technology
Oral History and Museum Exhibits: Looking to the Future
Oral History and Museum Exhibits: A Bibliography
References
1 Green, “Oral History in a Museum Setting,” 53.
2 Green, “Oral History in a Museum Setting,” 54.
3 Green, “Oral History in a Museum Setting,” 68.
4 Green, “Oral History in a Museum Setting,” 69.
5 Boston Children’s Museum, “About Us – History,” Boston Children’s Museum, http://www.bostonchildrensmuseum.org/about/history.html.
6 Ron Chew, “Collected Stories: The Rise of Oral History in Museum Exhibitions, Museum News (November/December 2002), http://www.aam-us.org/pubs/mn/MN_ND02_CollectedStories.cfm.
7 Ron Chew, “Collected Stories.”
8 Ron Chew, “Collected Stories.”
9 Minnesota Historical Society, “Minnesota’s Greatest Generation,” Minnesota History Center, http://www.mnhs.org/people/mngg/index.htm.
10 Ron Chew, “Collected Stories.”
11 Columbia University Libraries, “Oral History September 11th 2001 Oral History Narrative and Memory Project,” Oral History Research Office, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/oral/sept11.html.
12 Jonathan Fein and Brandon Danitz, “The Objects and Memory Project,” Ever Production, http://www.objectsandmemory.org.
13 Ibid.
14 Selma Thomas, “Private Memory in a Public Space: Oral History and Museums,” in Oral History and Public Memory, ed. Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 90.
15 Ron Chew, “Collected Stories.”
16 Smithsonian Institution, “A More Perfect Union,” National Museum of American History, http://americanhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/experience/index.html.
