Willa Cather Review

Copyright © 1998 by the Willa Cather Pioneer ISSN 0197-663X Memodal and Educational Foundation (The Willa Cather &~ciety) Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter and 326 N. Webster Street VOLUME XLI, No. 3 Red Cloud, Nebraska 68970 Winter/Spring, 1997-1998 Review Telephone (402) 746-2653 The Patrimony of Blue Mesa: The Professor’s House and Museum Theory Charles L. Crow Bowling Green State University The Professor’s House is a complicated meditation and his memoir of Blue Mesa. Meanwhile, a grander, on time and ownership. Appropriately its protagonist, rival institution, Outland, created by Louis and Rosa- Godfrey St. Peter, is a historian (a professional re- mund Marsellus, recreates Tom’s laboratory, among memberer), author of an ’epic cycle of histories about other Outland-ish exhibitions, which are resented in the American past, who is confronting the effects of varying degrees by the rest of the St. Peter family. time on his own life and his family. The novel is, like- At the time of this novel’s publication, 1925, the wise, as David Stouck phrases it, "structured in an theory of museums was stable, well enough under- elaborate pattern of references around the theme of stood that it seemed to need little articulation. But if power and pos- the questions of sessions" ~ (99). what a museum These issues, does and for time and owner- whom it does it ship (or posses- were simple then, sion), converge in today they so are the idea of the difficult that at museum, which is times they seem our culture’s in- nearly insoluable. stitutional way to The practical control time and consequences of package the past. museum . theory The Profes- today may be sor’s House can seen in the re- be considered a cent bitter con- book which dra- troversy over the matizes museum exhibit of the theory: what Eno/a Gay at the museums do, Smithsonian, and who validates the current dis- them, what as- pute between sumptions they scientists and are built on, what Northwest Coast goes into them, Cliff Palace Ruin, Mesa Verde. tribes over the what audiences -- Photo by David Stouck ancient skeleton they assume and construct. A museum, the Smithso- known as Kenne- nian Institution, plays a key role in Tom Outland’s wick Man. At the center of most of these disputes is story, and is indeed mentioned in the first meeting of the question of patrimony: in what sense can a muse- Tom and Professor St. Peter. Only slightly less obvi- um own a cultural artifact in the name of a nation, and ously, the house of the title, abandoned except for the what are its rights in defining it, and fitting it into a Professor’s study, is a kind of private museum of the national cultural narrative? scholar’s life and of that his favorite student, contain- ing, among its exhibits, Tom’s old sweaty horse blanket (Continued on Page 54) PATRIMONY OF BLUE MESA refusal of various groups to have their cultural identity (Continued) folded into a national narrative. Thus various Native American tribal groups in Canada and the United This paper will argue that patrimony is likewise at States have sued for the return of what is theirs, not the center of The Professor’s House, and that Cather some idealized, citizen’s, patrimony. The result has interrogates this idea in a way similar to recent de- been a reexamination of basic premises by museum bates over museum theory. This is not to say that her directors, a heightened consciousness of what it views exactly agree with today’s cultural theorists, for means to display culture, and the development of they do not. Nor should we evaluate the novel, or its alternative curatorial practices. A recent essay by author, according to their compliance to the orthodox- James Clifford (who has worked out his ideas on ies of the present. But the work of Donna Haraway, museums in detail in The Predicament of Culture) Steven Greenblatt, James Clifford, Carol Duncan, and explores how the new museum consciousness moti- others, may at least refine our understanding of one of vates "Four Northwest Coast Museums" in British Cather’s richest and most challenging novels. Columbia to approach Native American culture in several ways, none of which pretend to the preemptive national authority of the old practice. The museum, as a modern institution, evolved from the private collections of princes. The earlier collections, of art, war trophies and objects of vertu On Blue Mesa, in that long ago time before he met were designed to showcase the wealth and power of the Professor, Tom Outland, tutored by Father Du- the lord or prelate. When the French Revolutionary chene and assisted by Roddy Blake, attempted to train government turned the Louvre into a national gallery, himself in museum practice. He carefully removed it transformed as well the theory of museums (Duncan specimens and catalogued them in his diary. In 88). Although the modern museum may appear to be choosing artifacts for his visit to Washington, Tom does a neutral space for displaying objects of great beauty what museum curators typically do, or did, when or cultural significance, the museum, as originally selecting objects to exhibit, identifying the most repre- intended by the French Revolutionaries, becomes a sentative and artistically best works, and motivated by way of defining the modern secular state. As Carol ’the sense of owning a collection that is a treasure... Duncan explains, "the work of art, now displayed as for the national patrimony, and for humanity" (Clifford public property, becomes the means through which the 225). Less obviously, Tom is also making himself over relationship between the individual as citizen and the into the ideal museum audience, viewing Blue Mesa state as benefactor is enacted" (94). The objects on and its Anasazi relics with rapt attention, experiencing display are shorn of whatever original personal or what Stephen Greenblatt calls "resonance and won- cultural or religious function they might once have had, der," wonder being the response to the beauty of a are redefined as objects of art history produced by museum object, while resonance is conveyed by the original geniuses, and now part of the national patri- historical and cultural associations of the artifact -- mony (Duncan 99, Clifford 255). here evoked by the speculations of Father Duchene The visitor to the museum is asked to bring a and Tom about the story of Mother Eve, and the fate "certain state of receptivity" (Duncan 91) and to as- of the villagers who went out to the plains and never sume a special role as an enlightened citizen. Donna returned. Haraway has shown that the same sort of reinvention Thus Tom, on his remote mesa, is enacting of the spectator is implied by the American Museum of cultural rituals which define his relation to the state and Natural History as well. Here, rather than art, the bring him to the roles of enlightened citizen and ideal physical environment --a subdued and idealized Rooseveltian youth. When he travels to Washington, Nature -- is presented as the patrimony. Entering the then, it is not surprising that the national symbols he Theodore Roosevelt Memorial of the museum, one encounters there evoke in him some of the same finds that "Youth, paternal solicitude, virile defense of emotions he feels among the Anasazi ruins of Blue democracy, and intense emotional connection to Mesa: nature are the unmistakeable themes" (Haraway 27). I got off the train, just behind the Capitol building, In short, one is asked to become the ideal boy or one cold bright January morning. I stood for a long young man of the Teddy Roosevelt era, something like while watching the white dome against a flashing blue sky, with a very religious feeling .... I an Eagle Scout ~ rather like Tom Outland, in fact-. decided to put off my business for a little and give Whether viewing an art museum or a natural history myself a week to enjoy the city. That was the most museum, then, one encounters "powerful identity sensible thing I did while I was there. For that week defining machines" which "control the representation of I was wonderfully happy. (225) community and some of its hightest, most authoritative What he then meets, of course, is the world of real truths" (Duncan 101, 102). politics: the expediency and compromise of small and Or so it seemed until recently. Museum theory in selfish hearts, museum directors who seek only recent years has been immensely complicated by the (Continued on page 56) WILLA CATHEI:P.’S NEW YOP-.I< An Internotionol Willo Cother Colloquium June 20-2_7, 1_~_@~ Presented by Drew University Graduate School and in association with The Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation. ~’her’~ yec~rs as ~ New York (:::iW re~iden~r had a deep impact on the direction of her life and her work. We will examine this impact in keynote addresses, lively discussions, and tours of the locations in New York City and environs that appeat: in ::~ ........... Or -55- PATRIMONY OF BLUE MESA and that process, going on in my mind, brought with (Continued) it great happiness. It was possession .... For me the mesa was no longer an adventure, but a religious emotion. I had read of filial piety in the Latin honors and grants and career advancement, and petty poets, and I knew that was what I felt for this place. clerks who ask for precious relics to use as ashtrays. It had formerly been mixed up with other motives; (These are insects of the same sort as the university but now that they were gone, I had my happiness administrators and state legislators who bedevil the life unalloyed.

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