Out of all the readings that stuck with me this week, a single quote struck me the hardest as the central theme and idea surrounding all of these readings and the importance of the idea of shared authority.

 “If interest in the past is booming while museums and sites are struggling, we need to reassess. Perhaps we in museums have focused too much on what we think people need instead of what they want.” (Filene, 14).

            To me, this statement is the cornerstone behind one of the most important conversations currently being discussed in public history and throughout the museum community. In so many of the readings the debate about whether or not the public actually cares about the past was repeated, with various arguments being levelled at the public themselves of at historians or museums for being the reason behind drops of attendance at historic sites, or being blind to noticing how communities responded or didn’t respond to different challenges at individual institutions. Museums who take the time and energy to create a sense of shared authority with their community are the historical institutions that will remain a part of the community

This idea could be no clearer than in Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen’s book The Presence of the Past, which presented a series of common themes across over 800 interviews with Americans about history and the past in their own lives. The idea of participating in the creation of history, the closeness that the past brought to their interviewee’s lives, through personal or family connections, as well as traditional means of history allowed for history as an idea and part of the American identity to be embraced and experienced alongside the present (Rosenzweig and Thelen, 37-38). In response to Presence of the Past, Spencer R. Crew continued the conversation surrounding this active participation by the public in museum interpretation by emphasizing the importance of how these personal connections to the past could enhance the visitor experience. Allowing audiences to “create a bridge between the visitor and the object and its history.” (Crew, 25).

Museums that give the public what they want, the idea that “history happened, and it happened in your own backyard too,” (Filene, 21) ties those visitors, guests, and locals to the site through emotional reactions and familiarity. They will be the institutions trusted to serve as pillars of historical authority in the community. An authority that belongs not just to the historians and museum staff, who arguably deserve some amount of authority that comes along with the trappings of their field and the work they have put into learning specific research methods, techniques etc., but the authority of the community as well; as members engaged in the history making process.

Bibliography

Cauvin, Thomas. “Shared Authority: Purposes, Challenges, and Limits.” In Public History. 216-229. 1st ed. New York: Routledge, 2016.

Conrad, Rebecca. “Do You Hear What I Hear? Public History and the Interpretive Challenge.”” In The Public Historian 22, no. 1 (Winter 2000). 15-18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3379325

Corbett, Katharine and Howard Miller, “A Shared Inquiry into Shared Inquiry,” The Public Historian 28, no. 1 (Winter 2006). 15-38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/tph.2006.28.1.15

Crew. Spencer R. “A Museum Perspective on The Presence of the Past,” In The Public Historian 22, no. 1 (Winter, 2000). 23-26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3379327.

Filene, Benjamin. “Passionate Histories: ‘Outsider’ History-Makers and What They Teach Us,” The Public Historian 34, no. 1 (Winter 2012). 11-33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/tph.2012.34.1.11

Rosenzweig, Roy and David Thelen. The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Zuckerman, Michael. “The Presence of the Present, the End of History.” In The Public Historian 22, no. 1 (Winter 2000). 19-22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3379326