Session Abstract

When museums challenge local perceptions of history, they often make history themselves. In this roundtable, Timothy Naftali, the founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Museum and curator of its Watergate exhibit and Mindy Farmer, the coordinator of the Library’s educational programming, will discuss the lessons for public historians of the transformation of the Nixon Library from a private shrine into a non-partisan, federal research institution. Christine Baron, the former Director of Education and Interpretation at the Old North Church, Boston, will offer insights from her efforts to correct common misconceptions and reinterpret the nationally known landmark, using previously untouched archival sources. Finally, Gary Sandling the Vice President of Visitor Programs and Visitor Services at Monticello will chronicle his institution’s multiyear effort to incorporate the stories of Sally Hemmings and other slave narratives into the exhibits and educational programs of Thomas Jefferson’s beloved home. Public history, as these panelists will explain, often involves not only delicately incorporating new scholarship and new understandings into museum exhibits and programs but in carefully educating the museum’s local allies about the significance and rationale for these changes. They will share their successes and failures and speak to relevant issues in public history, including the responsibility of the visitor, the balance of fundraising and truth telling, the difficulties of managing docents/volunteers, the role of new technology in bridging the historical interest gap, and the current place of history museums in American society and education. Together they hope to engage the audience in a discussion of museums as authoritative unbiased sources of information and the role that these institutions and public historians are playing in the national conversation on evidence, expertise and historical knowledge.