Read on Twitter
The US National Park Service says monuments in its care “will not be altered, relocated, obscured, or removed, even when they are deemed inaccurate.” They'll add signage to "contextualize" monuments. But... this doesn't work. My essay for @SmithsonianMag: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-just-adding-context-controversial-monument-may-not-change-minds-180976583/
#LaurajaneSmith knows changing someone’s mind about history isn’t as easy as tacking on a new sign. Her new book, Emotional Heritage, summarizes what she has learned during a decade of interviewing thousands of visitors to historical sites: https://www.routledge.com/Emotional-Heritage-Visitor-Engagement-at-Museums-and-Heritage-Sites/Smith/p/book/9781138888654
Smith found the vast majority of visitors to national heritage sites are “engaged in reinforcing what they knew and believed.” Their visit serves as a shared experience that gives them a comfortable sense of fitting in to a history and a society.
An “almost negligible” amount of visitors - <3% - said they had learned something substantial from their visit to a historical site or monument - although Smith chose sites with new displays to educate visitors about painful, previously overlooked, parts of their history.
Visitors showed a variety of strategies for avoiding this info. Most classified it as "irrelevant" or twisted it to fit into the version of history they wanted to hold. For example: Smith surveyed visitors to an exhibition about Jefferson's ownership of enslaved people, and...
many visitors said they had learned Jefferson was a good master, that the life of enslaved people was better than they had thought, or that Americans should “move past” Jefferson’s ownership of people because “we should be focusing on what he did for this country as a stateman.”
@KosherSoul has written about being challenged by visitors who told him that enslaved people were “well fed” and had “nothing to complain about.” https://afroculinaria.com/2019/08/09/dear-disgruntled-white-plantation-visitors-sit-down/
See also the hilarious and terrifying video series from @AzieDee based on the types of questions she got as a historical interpreter:
I argue that it's even harder to change what visitors think about monuments, because they are designed to invoke particular reactions. How can a few lines of text overcome the emotional pull of a statue?
More on my proposals for what might work, if not signage, in the piece itself. Thanks to @brianwolly for this, my first but hopefully not last piece in @SmithsonianMag!
And I have a review of Smith’s book forthcoming in Museum Anthropology (thanks @lilliamcenaney!) - everyone who curates/interprets historical or controversial material should read it, despair about existing methods, and then get to reimagined work...
