Today, Philip Kennicott of The Washington Post penned an interesting article concerning the new additions and orientation center at Mount Vernon, the home of our nation's first president.
Mount Vernon spent over $100 million to alter the ways in which their visitors experience the historic home and grounds, and I say "BRAVO!" I can't assume that everyone grew up with parents like mine, who took our family to museums, nature centers, and campgrounds rather than Cedar Point and Disney World, and neither can the educators and administrators at Mount Vernon.
I remember visiting Mount Vernon for the first time when I was about ten years old. My brother was seven. It was our first trip to the Washington, DC area, and instead of driving directly there, we stopped for a few days in Gettysburg and then Antietam before making our way to DC. Bloody battlefields? Don't be alarmed -- we were fascinated. We were excited to get to DC, of course, but museums were old shoe to us. We'd been visiting the University of Michigan's Exhibit Museum of Natural History in strollers, and I will never forget the spiral staircase or suits of armor at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
The Mount Vernon experience, however, was entirely new. My brother and I had never been to a historic site like that before, at least not on that scale. We were absolutely blown away by the size of the house, the furniture, the grandeur. Though what really caught our attention was the slave quarters, and learning that this great man owned slaves. That may have been the moment in which my love for history was born, realizing that my schoolbooks weren't telling me the whole truth. And where did I learn the real history? At this historic site, learning by doing.
But Kennicott argues that Mount Vernon has become, in a word, Disneyfied. He complains that the visitor feels "herded" through the orientation center "with air conditioning and electric lighting and all the other ambiance killers" before being able to visit the house itself. Maybe so, but I, for one, am happy that the staff at Mount Vernon are trying to reach the masses rather than shutting out history to only the educated and cultured.
I understand Kennicott's frustrations, but I find it difficult to sympathize with someone who doesn't seem to understand that museums have GOT to change with the times. If he thinks that Mount Vernon could thrive for a hundred more years with the same displays, he's as ignorant as the visitors with whom he's embarrassed to be grouped together. He and I may benefit from the old, tired displays and historic home experience, but not everyone will. I learned early in my museum career that the "experience" is the most important part - if a visitor leaves learning even one new thing, then they've done their jobs.
I think that people in DC (with the somewhat correct stereotypes of being educated, cultured, etc.) tend to forget - or just aren't aware - that many museum visitors are first-time visitors who don't know what they are supposed to experience. Maybe that sounds stupid, but we are in the minority and aren't necessarily a main focus when it comes to the design of exhibits.
"The one experience that is very difficult to have at Mount Vernon (and, to be fair, at most popular historic attractions) is a simple, unmediated, uninterpreted, un-air-conditioned meander through the Great Man's home." Maybe he's right - I haven't been to Mount Vernon in years - but I think that after having experienced the orientation center, with it's bright lights and air conditioning, the visitor will realize the contrast all the more after making his way to the house itself. (This is entirely formed from my experiences working and volunteering in stiflingly warm and musty museums and historic homes, so I know that contrast!)
The new facilities do sound huge, and maybe they will be too much, but I maintain that change is good in museums, and entirely necessary in order to remain relevant to the public. Imagine if museums were the same as they were in the early 1900s. Paintings hung on the walls from ceiling to floor with almost no open space, "cabinets of curiosities" crowding rooms with absolutely no explanation... Tastes changed, technology changed, so museums changed.
Man, I can barely see the ground from up here on this soapbox!
2 comments:
That last quote that you mentioned made me cringe a little. If sites are "uninterpreted," visitors won't take anything away from it. It wouldn't have any meaning other than being a "great house." Suddenly everything I read in my Historic House Museum class at GW is coming back to me....
"Interpret" obviously means something different to him. To me, lack of interpretation means no docents, no text, no brochures, no tours, and no labels. To him, it means less reading and fewer films.
Ironically, what I think he's describing - "...a simple, unmediated, uninterpreted, un-air-conditioned meander through the Great Man's home..." - is exactly the "experience" he downplays at the start of the article. It's just his kind of experience.
I think that he jumped too quickly to criticize something that he simply doesn't "get." If he understood anything about museum culture and Mount Vernon's historical responsibility to the public, he wouldn't have made those comments.
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