Boston Museum and Exhibit Reviews The Public Historian, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Spring 2003), pp. 80-87 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the National Council on Public History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/tph.2003.25.2.80 . Accessed: 23/02/2012 10:14 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press and National Council on Public History are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Public Historian. http://www.jstor.org 80 n THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN Boston Museum and Exhibit Reviews The American public increasingly receives its history from images. Thus it is incumbent upon public historians to understand the strategies by which images and artifacts convey history in exhibits and to encourage a conver- sation about language and methodology among the diverse cultural work- ers who create, use, and review these productions. The purpose of The Public Historian’s exhibit review section is to discuss issues of historical exposition, presentation, and understanding through exhibits mounted in the United States and abroad. Our aim is to provide an ongoing assess- ment of the public’s interest in history while examining exhibits designed to influence or deepen their understanding. We seek to review a broad range of exhibits, including those directed to a large public audience, those that employ new or unique strategies of presentation or perception, and those that embody particularly popular or representative views of history. Occasionally, the exhibit review section will publish thematic or comparative essays that consider geographic re- gions, special-interest audiences, or methodological dilemmas in historical discussion or understanding. Reviews will assess the scholarly content of the exhibit; the extent, vari- ety, and appropriateness of the objects displayed; the function of design in the exhibit; and issues of funding and institutional support. We welcome suggestions for exhibits to review. J. B. Voices of Protest. Old South Meeting House, Boston, Massachusetts. EMILY CURRAN, director; L OUIS HUTCHINS, historian. Permanent ex- hibition opened in March 2000. Voices of Protest is a permanent exhibition at the Old South Meeting House, a national historic landmark and one of the major stops on Boston’s Freedom Trail, a walking trail connecting the historic sites re- lating to the American Revolution. The multimedia exhibition was de- veloped in partnership with the National Park Service as part of a major renovation of Old South. The exhibition opened in March 2000. In planning the exhibition, a visitor-use survey was conducted by Serrell and Associates on the previous permanent exhibition and used by the core team for the new exhibition. The team consisted of the Old 80 BOSTON MUSEUM AND EXHIBIT REVIEWS n 81 South Executive Director Emily Curran; the education director, the marketing and events manager, and the historian and chief of interpreta- tion from Boston National Historical Park. This group met regularly with the exhibit design firm of Ralph Appelbaum Associates, and a panel of historians reviewed exhibition plans. The formulative evaluation surveys gave the team a clear understand- ing of who the audience was—mainly tourists, including many foreign visitors, with an average stay of twenty minutes. Clearly the team made good use of audience response and realized that “exhibitions, after all, are designed for people to walk through and are not complete until visi- tors animate the interpretive spaces with their presence. The best exhi- bition scripts realize that an exhibit is not a tombstone but a conversa- tion.”1 The Old South Meeting House, built in 1729 as a Puritan meeting house, is the primary artifact of the exhibition, and both the exhibit teams and historians realized that this was central to the exhibition. The question was how to develop an exhibition that blended into the historic fabric but at the same time stood out enough to be noticed. The goal was to add a layer of interpretation not seen in the architecture itself. The exhibition also had to allow for the continued use of the building, which is still an active meeting place. The subject of the exhibit is not an easy one. It attempts to convey a sense of the people who used Old South as well as the challenging issues that shaped both Old South itself and the history of the nation as a whole, such as free speech, censorship, and abolition. On all fronts the exhibition succeeds. Original research, par- ticularly on the Free Speech section of the exhibition, was conducted by interns under the supervision of the historian of the Boston National Historical Park. An article in New England Quarterly resulted concern- ing the Old South’s governing body, which in the 1920s debated whether the building should be preserved as a museum or should maintain its role as a meeting house and “if the public were to be invited to use the meeting house, should some groups—perhaps those with incompatible goals or inflammatory views—nonetheles s be barred.”2 The exhibition runs along the side wall across from the pulpit and allows free and easy access to the meeting space. The exhibition is di- vided into six sections: Old South Meeting House, Old South’s Role in the Revolution, House Divided, Saved from Demolition, Free Speech at Old South, and The Tradition Continues. Each section is a self-con- tained kiosk and makes use of copies of period illustrations, broadsides, and posters, often blown up and cut out to give dimension to the display, creating a collage effect. These materials are used alongside original ob- jects. In the Old South’s Role in the Revolution section, for example, a vial of tea believed to be from the Boston Tea Party is included. The team assembling the exhibit has presented the text in a hierarchical 1. Gary Kulik and James Sims, “Clarion Call for Criticism,” Museum News 68, no. 6 (November/December 1989): 55. 2. Jonathan B. Vogels, “‘Put to Patriotic Use’: Negotiating Free Speech at Boston’s Old South Meeting House, 1925–1933,” The New England Quarterly 72, no. 1 (March 1999): 4. 82 n THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN manner, and visitors can get the main point by looking solely at the sec- tion label. The exhibitions don’t stand out as much as they could, a result of designers’ efforts to blend the panels into the historical color scheme of the building. A bit more contrast or at least color in the cases may have helped. The only other criticism I have is the exhibit’s relative lack of artifacts. Quite a few paper items are on display, including a Chinese tea label and a pew receipt, but many of the objects are small. More artifacts would enhance the exhibition, especially in the Free Speech at Old South section. What the team did include, the death masks of Sacco and Vanzetti, proved to be especially moving to this viewer. The designers make use of a c. 1900 model of 1775 Boston which seems automatically to draw visitors to it. Here you can press a button to light up where famous locals were when the Tea Party took place. Life- size cast figures of four historical characters associated with Old South stand adjacent to their corresponding time section and help personalize the narrative. These include the famous such as Phillis Wheatley, America’s first African-American author; Margaret Sanger, who is pre- sented dramatically with her mouth taped to protest efforts to ban her from speaking at Old South; and Mayor James Michael Curley, who pre- vented both Sanger and the Ku Klux Klan from speaking at Old South. By choosing George Robert Twelves Hewes, a patriot who took part in the Boston Tea Party, to help illustrate the Old South’s role in the Revo- lution, the team stresses the role of the ordinary person in that event. Historian Alfred F. Young writes, “Hewes might have been unknown to posterity save for his longevity and a shift in the historical mood that rekindled the ‘spirit of ’76.’” 3 Several interactives add to the visitor experience, some more success- ful than others. These range from sliding panels which illustrate how two architectural styles came together in Old South, a Puritan Meeting House, and an Anglican Church, to pressing buttons to identify from a panel of portraits who could attend various gatherings at Old South. By choosing one button you would learn that women were not allowed at the Town Meeting or Body of the People Assembly but were allowed at the Boston Massacre Memorial. I enjoyed the two interactives where visitors were posed a question, “If you were in charge of the Old South Meeting House, is there anyone you would not allow to speak in this historic building?” This low-tech interactive is very effective, judging from the comments in the adjacent binder. The exhibition offers some flexibility in that after September 11, 2001 another question was added asking people’s response to the tragedy of that day. These responses make for fascinating reading. Opposite the exhibit on the back of the last pews is a timeline with illustrations which help put each section in historic context. The exhibi- tion can be viewed on its own, but it is recommended that visitors use an audio program which allows them to walk around the building and learn more about the events that took place at the Old South.