Beyond that I think the conference was a resounding success, elsewhere* it has been reported that 603 people registered, the most so far for NCPH. It was great for me, a student, to mingle with others (including many other students, which speaks loudly for the future of public history). I also got to see the latest in public history related books and sit in on sessions showing the future of public history. There was so much offered that it made deciding on what to see difficult, but at I learned in an attempt to go to one session which was full, there was something else that I could go to without worrying if I would have an interest in it.
I had very much been looking forward to Session 8, called "Remembering Slavery," dealing with how different sites portray the history of slavery and how audience views of that history has changed over time. I took a class on the African American Diaspora my first semester at Salve Regina (technically my junior year after transferring) and found it fascinating. However, even with my arriving quite early for the session, which I figured would be crowded, there was no room and people were already sitting in the doorway. Disappointedly, I walked to Session 9, "Commemorating Times of Change: Innovative Approaches to Public History at the Presidential Libraries of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan".
I've never given Presidential Libraries much thought beyond knowing that they are libraries which happen to contain the particular President's writings, papers and correspondence, while they do contain these things, they also feature exhibits on the specific President or about the time in which they held office. I found myself to be quite interested in the topics presented, which involved how do you keep the public involved with the particular past (something that most historiy museums face, if not all). What makes this so vital to the Presidential libraries, however, is that as time goes by people become increasingly separated from the events and the President himself, for example when school children come to view exhibits.
The first presentation was about FDR, entitled: "Action and Action Now" FDR's First 100 Days. In addition to giving a brief history on the events surrounding his election, we were presented with information regarding the challenges that were faced in creating the exhibit and how these were ultimately dealt with. In a sentence, it was the challenge of presenting the scale and scope of the crisis that was not a recitation of a history made stale by the cliches of Alphabet soup (brought on by the different things he created during his administration: WPA, CCC etc). In order to do this, they thought it best to create a narrative into five chapters of his administration, ranging from a room meant to give the feel of his radio "fireside chats" to installing scaffolding to bring about the effect that FDR was responsible for many building projects (and was often shown as a construction worker in cartoons that contained scaffolding on buildings). They also acknowledged that this era is a period of contested history and rather than promote or ignore one side, the decision was made to frame the debate and provoke a dialogue among the audience, a move I think is vital to have in a museum atmosphere. Initial comments of the exhibit were along the lines of how people had it rough during the Great Depression, but as we have entered our own economic crisis, many comments are about how the times are similar to today. It is because of this crisis that those at the library decided to leave this temporary exhibit on display until the end of this year.
The second presentation was on the JFK library, which gets an amazing 6 million visitors a year, many of whom are school children or foreign. This exhibit was created to look at events through the JFK's eyes and follows a chronological path of his administration. The exhibit even contains a replica of the stage used during the first televised Presidential debate. The goal of the exhibit was to strike a balance for those who witnessed the history with those who know relatively little about what took place so that all who go to the library have an engaging experience with history that is still meaningful today. The presentation also mentioned how size constraints have limited the amount of things that can be shown in the exhibit, and because of this events like the Vietnam War are left out of the story. They also mentioned how temporary special exhibits are highly successful and allow them to portray other facets of JFK's Presidency, for example they once displayed Jackie Kennedy's dresses. Things like this bring a whole new audience to the library (always important). There is also an extensive website for the library that can be found here. Interestingly, I learned that this library is also Kennedy's memorial, which is why there is not on in D.C.
The third Presidential Library is Ronald Regan's whose educational mission is to "Engage, Excite, Educate" a very good mission if you ask me. It houses 55 million papers of his and the exhibit is currently in a redesign where context is being added along with thematic presentations involving things like the Cold War. One of the interesting ideas the presentation was the Great Communicator Files, which shows the process of creating a speech. Another was the opening of the Air Force One Discovery Center which is geared to audiences at a fifth grade level and was created to provide room for debate among exhibit goers.
What I originally was disappointed in going to, I came out an hour and forty five minutes later being quite satisfied by this new information. If I'm ever in the area of one, I will totally go to a Presidential Library.
Other semi-conference related, but not so specific things I learned are: everyone has presentation troubles in some way, like verbal crutches (umm, uh, and um uh... unnecessary words that fill up empty space), going over time limits when not reading a script, and not having tested powerpoint images and movies prior to presentation time (sometimes your pictures are way too small to properly see in the audience). As a student, I see this a lot, and am glad it happens in the professional world as well. While certainly not desired by any means, it makes me feel better that it pretty much happens to everyone, as I am guilty for doing these on occasion as well. I continue to maintain that it is important to work on these elements (especially making sure that everything is working on powerpoint as that happens to be a pet peeve of mine).
I had very much been looking forward to Session 8, called "Remembering Slavery," dealing with how different sites portray the history of slavery and how audience views of that history has changed over time. I took a class on the African American Diaspora my first semester at Salve Regina (technically my junior year after transferring) and found it fascinating. However, even with my arriving quite early for the session, which I figured would be crowded, there was no room and people were already sitting in the doorway. Disappointedly, I walked to Session 9, "Commemorating Times of Change: Innovative Approaches to Public History at the Presidential Libraries of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan".
I've never given Presidential Libraries much thought beyond knowing that they are libraries which happen to contain the particular President's writings, papers and correspondence, while they do contain these things, they also feature exhibits on the specific President or about the time in which they held office. I found myself to be quite interested in the topics presented, which involved how do you keep the public involved with the particular past (something that most historiy museums face, if not all). What makes this so vital to the Presidential libraries, however, is that as time goes by people become increasingly separated from the events and the President himself, for example when school children come to view exhibits.
The first presentation was about FDR, entitled: "Action and Action Now" FDR's First 100 Days. In addition to giving a brief history on the events surrounding his election, we were presented with information regarding the challenges that were faced in creating the exhibit and how these were ultimately dealt with. In a sentence, it was the challenge of presenting the scale and scope of the crisis that was not a recitation of a history made stale by the cliches of Alphabet soup (brought on by the different things he created during his administration: WPA, CCC etc). In order to do this, they thought it best to create a narrative into five chapters of his administration, ranging from a room meant to give the feel of his radio "fireside chats" to installing scaffolding to bring about the effect that FDR was responsible for many building projects (and was often shown as a construction worker in cartoons that contained scaffolding on buildings). They also acknowledged that this era is a period of contested history and rather than promote or ignore one side, the decision was made to frame the debate and provoke a dialogue among the audience, a move I think is vital to have in a museum atmosphere. Initial comments of the exhibit were along the lines of how people had it rough during the Great Depression, but as we have entered our own economic crisis, many comments are about how the times are similar to today. It is because of this crisis that those at the library decided to leave this temporary exhibit on display until the end of this year.
The second presentation was on the JFK library, which gets an amazing 6 million visitors a year, many of whom are school children or foreign. This exhibit was created to look at events through the JFK's eyes and follows a chronological path of his administration. The exhibit even contains a replica of the stage used during the first televised Presidential debate. The goal of the exhibit was to strike a balance for those who witnessed the history with those who know relatively little about what took place so that all who go to the library have an engaging experience with history that is still meaningful today. The presentation also mentioned how size constraints have limited the amount of things that can be shown in the exhibit, and because of this events like the Vietnam War are left out of the story. They also mentioned how temporary special exhibits are highly successful and allow them to portray other facets of JFK's Presidency, for example they once displayed Jackie Kennedy's dresses. Things like this bring a whole new audience to the library (always important). There is also an extensive website for the library that can be found here. Interestingly, I learned that this library is also Kennedy's memorial, which is why there is not on in D.C.
The third Presidential Library is Ronald Regan's whose educational mission is to "Engage, Excite, Educate" a very good mission if you ask me. It houses 55 million papers of his and the exhibit is currently in a redesign where context is being added along with thematic presentations involving things like the Cold War. One of the interesting ideas the presentation was the Great Communicator Files, which shows the process of creating a speech. Another was the opening of the Air Force One Discovery Center which is geared to audiences at a fifth grade level and was created to provide room for debate among exhibit goers.
What I originally was disappointed in going to, I came out an hour and forty five minutes later being quite satisfied by this new information. If I'm ever in the area of one, I will totally go to a Presidential Library.
Other semi-conference related, but not so specific things I learned are: everyone has presentation troubles in some way, like verbal crutches (umm, uh, and um uh... unnecessary words that fill up empty space), going over time limits when not reading a script, and not having tested powerpoint images and movies prior to presentation time (sometimes your pictures are way too small to properly see in the audience). As a student, I see this a lot, and am glad it happens in the professional world as well. While certainly not desired by any means, it makes me feel better that it pretty much happens to everyone, as I am guilty for doing these on occasion as well. I continue to maintain that it is important to work on these elements (especially making sure that everything is working on powerpoint as that happens to be a pet peeve of mine).
* elsewhere is the homepage of the NCPH which is located at http://www.ncph.org
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