Questions in a Museum?

I repeat: questions in a museum?  At first glance, it almost seems like an oxymoron of a phrase.  However, it is what Dr. K (my professor) suggests for our museum project on I-496 in his infamous blog for the course (in the post “Questions and Answers”).  He suggests that instead of giving the answer, our exhibit could pose the question.  I think it is a great idea.  At the beginning of the course (in conjunction with discussions about the Enola Gay controversy ~ see my earlier post), we discussed the role of museums.  Most of the class seemed to agree that part of the role of a museum is to promote critical thinking.  Critical thinking is not possible without questions.  Critical thinking can not happen if answers are simply provided to the visitors.  It requires people to interact and come to their own conclusions.

Following that reasoning, if one of our goals with this exhibit is to promote critical thinking than I say why not pose a question instead of providing an answer?  It should be our job as exhibit creators and researchers to come up with the material to get visitors of the museum thinking.  So, perhaps instead of shaping our message around the answer we should, as Dr. K suggests, shape it around the questions we want people to think about and ask themselves as they interact with the material.  Why did the interstate end up where it did?  Were racial politics at work?  Or was it purely economics and geography at play?  Was it the best possible option?  Did the positive outcomes outweigh the negative outcomes?  Was this a reflection of something larger?  Why learn about I-496?

This does have some obvious implications.  First, what if people do not interact on a deep enough level with the material to ask any questions?  On a previous visit (for a different class), a museum guide explained that most people will only spend 18 seconds on any given artifact.  This means minutes on any single exhibit.  Is this enough time?  Can the material be presented in a way that either makes people stay longer at this exhibit or interact at a deeper level?  Second, by posing a question instead of an answer, it has the obvious implication of not specifying an answer.  By this I mean, people can come to any conclusion they wish.  People could come to an answer different than you expected or intended.  However, if people are engaging with the material, critically thinking about it, hasn’t the museum succeeded?  Or is it necessary for a museum to convey a certain message and for all the visitors to learn and accept that message?

On a more specific level, I think the idea of creating the exhibit around a question works really well with ideas the design team has discussed.  We have talked about having an interactive part at the end of the exhibit where people can post their reflections about the old community, exhibit, and/or other related items.  If the museum poses a question then this reflection board can have particular relevance.  It gives people a place to pose the other questions they have come up with and/or answers and thoughts about the issues presented.  It will also help address some of the negative aspects of organizing the exhibit around a question(s) because it allows museum personnel to see what people are thinking from the exhibit.  This way the museum can see if the exhibit is effectively evoking critical thinking and the conclusions it leads people to.

All in all I think it is a great idea to a least discuss.  Why can’t a museum be about questions?

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Michigan Historical Center Revisited

I went to the Michigan Historical Center again today with my education class.  If I am being honest I was not particularly excited for this visit because I was afraid it was going to be the same thing covered as my last visit with this class.  I was pleasantly surprised.

Unlike most people who grew up in the Michigan school system, I had never been to the Museum there.  I don’t really know why, but I had low expectations.  I was incredibly impressed.  I feel like they identified their audience (as we were told on our last visit it is elementary aged students primarily).  Their exhibits I felt were really relatable and placed in context rather than just artifacts randomly placed around a room.  Their exhibits (or at least the ones we visited today) were designed as though you were walking through an early 20th century city (for example).  I feel like this will better hold the attention of fourth and fifth graders.  So, it was interesting to see how someone (or institution in this case) identified their audience and organized their historical information accordingly.

It was also interesting to talk to someone from the museum (unfortunately I never learned her name) at the WWII exhibit.  She gave us three directions.  First, try to figure out what the intended big message of the exhibit was supposed to be.  Second, what artifacts stand out to you.  Third, what would stand out to the students.  I think these make some great points about my search for my audience and this class’s project on I-496 for the museum.

She explained how the museum had to choose how they wanted to approach WWII and they decided to focus on the home-front.  They had contemplated using soldiers’ uniforms and other artifacts, but instead decided on focusing on what was going on at homes in Michigan.  I found this so relevant when considering my future in education and anything regarding history.  It is impossible to address everything from every angle.  You have to make a decision.  For every unit (if not the course in general), I think it will be much more beneficial for my students (and myself) if I think about, plan and now what my bigger message is.  What am I trying to get the students to know, understand, or contemplate by providing all the information or “artifacts?”  Otherwise it will simply be a tangled mess of facts.  Similarly, what do we want the I-496 exhibits greater message to be?  What would we want visitors of the exhibit to take away?

I also found it interesting and useful that she had us consider what we found interesting and what students would.  This insinuates that these are not the same.  I cannot assume that my students’ interests will be the same as mine.  I have to come up with innovative ways to make them interested.  When considering our audience, it is important to realize that they will be different and have different interests than ourselves.  For our I-496 project, how would we reach a group of fourth and fifth graders and make them interested in I-496?  She also said that the average person spends 17 seconds on an exhibit.  An EXHIBIT, not an artifact.  So when we are planning our project, how are we going to grab people’s attention and what do we want to be most important?  S, if the visitors only notice one thing it is the thing we want them to notice.

I found these interesting to think about for my teaching, but also for the I-496 project.  They also shared some interesting websites to use for resources for teachers, but I think they can also be useful for our project.  I am also curious to look for genealogy information too.

First an index for the archives can be found online.  This is an index so that we can find out what is there before making a trip.  I personally thought the photo section would be helpful.

Next, there is Seeking Michigan.  This is where MHC is putting all the archives on-line.  So instead of looking at the index, you can look at the documents themselves.  This will be especially useful if you can’t make trips there.  However, everything is not up yet.

Just a few things to think about as our project really gets rolling…

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Looking toward Pittsburgh

As part of the background reading for the I-496 project, I read John Bodnar, Roger Simon and Michael P. Weber’s Lives of Their Own: Blacks, Italians, and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900-1960. I would recommend this to anyone interested in urbanization, industrialization, migration or immigration.  It provides an interesting case study of Pittsburgh on all of these topics.

At the most basic level, their argument is that urbanization and industrialization treat different people differently.  They argue this by looking at how migration to Pittsburgh and then adapting to life in an industrial Pittsburgh affected Poles, Italians and Blacks differently.  They considered background and expectations, work and residence, family dynamics, neighborhood formation, and occupational mobility (devoting a chapter to each) for each group from 1900-1960.

Pittsburgh c. 1900 - from Encyclopedia Britannica

The authors found that each group was affected differently; however Italian and Polish immigrants had similar experiences and Black migrants’ experiences differed drastically.  Family played a major role in migration patterns, job choice and housing for Poles and Italians.  They were able to supply housing and jobs because they had enough clout within their industrial sectors to get their friends and family into companies.  However, for Blacks, family was important for providing information about migration and housing, but couldn’t help their family find work because they were “unable to establish beachheads in any major local industry” (7).

This resulted in different groups raising their children differently.  African American families stressed individualism and the necessity for their children to rely on their own abilities, while other groups stressed the importance of familial relationships more.

The same issues seemed to surface for each category the authors discussed.  African Americans in Pittsburgh faced more negative implications of urbanization, industrialization and migration than the other groups.  The authors argued that all of these groups experienced racism.  For example, as soon as one of these groups would move into a neighborhood, the native population would move out.  However, Italians and Poles benefitted from the stereotypes (they were seen as dependable, hard workers), while African Americans suffered (seen as inefficient, unstable).  Poles and Italians were able to get (and keep) stable jobs, which aided them in creating secure ethnic neighborhoods.  However, the African American population couldn’t get steady jobs and were scattered throughout the neighborhoods.  Thus, they were unable to create a solid, racial community.  Partially because of this, as time went on, Italians and Poles were seen as more stable and almost as natives, but African Americans continued to be seen as migrants.

The authors make an important point in the conclusion of their book.  They say, “racism…did not operate in isolation…[Italians, Poles and Blacks] lived out their lives in response to multiple pressures exerted by tradition, discrimination, urban structure and industrial employment” (264).  I find this one of the most intriguing parts of their book.  Through the research they present, it is evident that racism and discrimination could not really be separated from the other pressures.  It influenced industrial employment and housing, which in turn influenced how children were raised.  It is clear that other factors were important: unions excluded African Americans, unions became ineffective in Pittsburgh after agitators in the 1892 Homestead Steel Strike were blacklisted from working in the industrial sphere anywhere, competition increased in the industrial sector, and mechanization increased the demand for unskilled labor (and drastically reduced the demand for skilled labor).  However, racism was deeply intertwined with the other pressures that resulted from industrialization, urbanization and migration in Pittsburgh during this time period.

[It is interesting to look at two different perspectives on the Homestead Steel Strike, I came across.  Here is the PBS version based on a film about Andrew Carnegie.  Here is the AFL-CIO version.]

This book also has implications for our research on the I-496 development in Lansing.  It is important to consider the role of racism, but also to consider the authors statement about Pittsburgh.  What other pressures were at play?  Was this a simple case of racism?

It was also interesting to learn that one of the few African American neighborhoods was eliminated in Pittsburgh: the lower Hill district.  This neighborhood was eliminated as a result of the “Pittsburgh renaissance.”  It took 1,551 families out of the neighborhood to build a domed arena and new high rent apartments that would accommodate 594 families.  The authors say this “attests to the lack of political power of the residents” (221).  These African American families that had resided here moved to other ethnically populated neighborhoods – usually ones that already had a Black population, which then expanded.  However, the old residents of these neighborhoods generally left as the Black population increased.  Unfortunately the authors only spend about a page on this topic.  It still presents important parallels for our work.  They also say to look into Roy Lubove‘s work for further description of the Pittsburgh Renaissance.  This suggests that the development of I-496 in Lansing was not an isolated incident, but rather may have been part of  a larger pattern.  This provides important context for our own research.  It puts our research into better perspective knowing what was happening in other cities.

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Just a Couple Questions…

Well now we are really getting started on our I-496 project, where I will really delve into “public history.”  We will look at the construction of I-496.  The construction of I-496 meant the destruction of the largest African-American community in Lansing during the 1960s since the highway was to be built right over top of their neighborhood.

Before I read the first article about the construction of I -496, I first read Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You by David E. Kyvig and Myron A. Marty.  It was an extremely helpful book that is written in a plain, get to the point way that any college student juggling classes, work, internship (plus anything else that is going on) can appreciate.  The second chapter of gives hundreds of questions to stimulate research based on many different categories.  While these questions do not particularly pertain to this topic, they suggested similar questions that could/should be asked for this project.  Here are some of the questions I think should/could be asked, which I separated by categories:

The Decision:

How did it get decided that the highway would be placed through that neighborhood?  Who got to decide this? What factors did they look at?

Community

To what extent were people involved in community affairs, local government, etc.?  Did this affect how/if the community fought the decision to demolish their homes?  Did this change after they were relocated?

Were the houses, buildings, stores, etc. that were demolished owned or rented?

What was type of community was it, e.g. primarily residential, business, recreational?  Or did it have some of everything?

Did any buildings/institutions have special significance to the population there?  Why?  Did they find a replacement?

Who were the community leaders?  How did they react

Effects

Where did people move to?

How did people in this neighborhood earn a living before the interstate?  Did this change after they were forced to move?

How did relocation and the destruction of their neighborhood affect different age groups?

Did the social activities of the community change after relocation?

Then I read Matthew Miller’s article “Looking Back: I-496 Construction: A Complicated Legacy” from 2009 in The Lansing State Journal. This helped me really create three some more specific questions for the project and validated some of the questions I had already created.

Miller mentions Stuart Dunnings, Jr. as a lawyer who worked on civil rights issues in the city.  Who exactly was he?  What other cases did he work on?  How did he become involved in this issue (his own initiative or was he approached)?  Was he a member of the community?  A leader?

In his article, Miller also quotes someone who said that most people who were forced to leave and whose businesses were demolished, never reopened their businesses.  What did they do afterwards then?

Miller also reports that the Chamber of Commerce argued at the time that more white houses would be ruined.  By looking at the map that shows the population breakdown of where the interstate now lies, you can see that some white homes were destroyed (I am not a math major for a reason and so didn’t do the math to figure out if there were more white homes destroyed or not).  However, what was the reaction in the white community who had to relocate?  What did their compensation packages look like?

Out of these three questions, I find the first most compelling.  I am particularly interested in the community’s response to the decision to demolish their neighborhood.  I think knowing who was involved in the fight for compensation/relocation packages is important.  What other kinds of cases he tried as a civil rights lawyer provides the context for the “racial atmosphere” during the time that this decision was made.  Was this just one more decision in a parade of seemingly racist policies/decisions?  Or was it an isolated decision? If he was indeed a member and leader of the community, if we could learn about him, it might give us an idea about popular strains of thought of the community during this period.

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