Dissertation Research: Exhibiting Real America: History and Heritage in Museums of Science, Technology and Industry

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A National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant will be used to begin a history of how the nation's industrial and technological heritage has been defined. The central means of understanding this heritage is how it has been presented in museums of technology, industry, and science, particularly through representations of memory and authenticity, key terms by which heritage and identity are forged. More specifically, this study will examine how past representations of what is authentic, both in terms of history and the objects themselves, change through the material culture of the museum, that is, the artifacts, arrangement of the artifacts, attempts to contextualize artifacts, the architecture, the location, all of which mark an understanding of how to portray a "real" past and what artifacts are counted as the "real" thing. Although the larger project includes other museums, research supported by a NSF grant will be limited to two sites, the Smithsonian Institution and the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, both of which will serve as focal points for understanding federal and national "layers" of heritage and museum history. Research will concentrate on locating artifacts and exhibits that played a formative role in the development a national sense of inventiveness, innovation, technological prowess, or material capabilities, particularly as they relate to flight, industrial manufacturing, and the military, and on collecting information on the debates, correspondence, and discussions between those responsible for putting them together. As a policy guide, this dissertation seeks to outline a philosophy of preservation and a framework for making connections between public and academic discourses about history and heritage. Heritage has long functioned as a touchstone for preservation efforts, and attention is increasingly turning to sites of past industry and engineering as potential heritage zones. There is much at stake with these projects to turn industrial pasts into tourist dollars, revitalizing economically stagnant cities and towns. With such a clear impact on the prospective fortunes, the past may bend too much to serve the present. The artifacts of heritage sites or zones not only involve big business but big politics. In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City much thought has been given to memorializing the event. Clearly, heritage and commemoration are a tremendous source of political capital. Thus a primary goal in this history of museums is to think deliberately and systematically about uncoupling history and heritage, and the ramifications of the distinction on the politics of representations of the past. An essential part of this project includes constructing a philosophy of heritage and preservation to inform not only museum practice, but dialogue between public and academic domains more broadly. This dissertation proposes to ground such a philosophy in an understanding of authenticity, of how the past is portrayed as real.