Nicolai Ouroussoff’s article “An Architect’s Fear that Preservation Distorts” challenges the ideas that preservation, actually conserves and shares the past, rather his article focuses on the ideas of two architect’s and their idea that preservation sanitizes history, creating a more comfortable narrative for audiences and erasing some of the more difficult histories. In my opinion, this idea holds up to the reality of museums and historic sites across the nation, and those spaces like Eatonville which are on the frontlines of the debate surrounding the gentrification and erasure of history.

Historic preservation is a crucial part of studying history. There is no reason to deny that, however the history of preservation, particularly in the United States has a problematic past that needs to be acknowledged alongside all of the good that preservation continues to do for museums, historic sites, and libraries, just to name a few venues for preservation today. With ladies groups commemorating the Veterans of the American Revolution, thus commemorating what they interpreted as a being worthy of remembrance, the effort by private individuals and philanthropic groups sparked into something of a national tradition (Stipe, 1). Historic preservation has been used in different time periods for different reasons: the memorialization of the Confederacy by groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy, as a Jim Crow-era intimidation tactic, in the 1970s following a leap in the creation of local and regional historical societies who took it upon themselves to preserve their local history (Stipe, 18).

One of the most important themes discussed in Cauvin’s book this week, centers around the ideas of authenticity in preservation (Cauvin, 111). Several historic sites and open-air museums like Colonial Williamsburg market themselves as being the examples for authenticity in the realm of historic preservation and demonstration of not only the history of the 18^th century but the true preservers of life during the Colonial era (Stipe, 5).

However, coming back to Koolhaas and Shigematsu’s idea, Colonial Williamsburg still presents a more sanitized version of history than would have existed. There are other museums who take the ideas and problems of authenticity and sanitization of history to heart and attempt to preserve difficult histories as well as the attractive side that visitors enjoy.

One such example comes from Black Country Living Museum in Dudley, United Kingdom. A museum dedicated to the lives of workers from the Industrial Revolution through the post-WWII, it introduces visitors to the lesser-seen side of history, the lives of lower-class Victorians who lived and worked in the Black Country as Miners and Iron Workers. Just this past weekend, the museum held the final weekend of a program entitled, “Living Dangerously” and they focused on the “devastating disasters and downright bad luck that plagued Black Country workers.” As I conclude this blog post, I leave you with what I believe to be a great example of just how Black Country Living Museum balances the visitor experience and difficult history to bring about genuine historical preservation authenticity.

Bibliography

Black County Living Museum. “Black by day and red by night: the Black Country story,” YouTube, February 8, 2023, educational video, 6:24, https://youtu.be/lju0Vpd1MD8.

Cauvin, Thomas. “Historic Preservation.” In Public History. 53-88. 1st ed. New York: Routledge, 2016.

Ouroussoff, Nicolai. “An Architect’s Fear that Preservation Distorts.” New York Times, May 23, 2011.

Stipe, Robert E., ed. A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.