Time to Define

So we left off on Friday talking about living history and riffing off the “realness” of sites and artifacts that must be constantly replaced to be maintained. It’s a facet of museum work that I hadn't dedicated much thought to in the past, but it’s fertile ground for discussion.

While I've argued a few times that there is an inherent value in an original versus a copy, I haven't ever taken into account the fact that some of those “originals” are in fact, by some definitions, copies. Okay, I mentioned it in passing regarding Ford’s Theater, but only to support the idea that the contagion of that location was the key to the rebuilt theater not being terribly grotesque. And honestly, I would classify a theater rebuilt on the same site much differently than a ship rebuilt plank by plank. I think that it's important in this discussion that we differentiate between "replicas" and "restoration".  Frankly, it's something I should have done much earlier in this discussion.

For my purposes, I'm considering a "replica" to be something that is built or created from scratch from new materials to closely resemble an object, either because the original is too fragile, rare, expensive, or otherwise unfeasible (is that a word?) to display.  A replica may be made with period tools or with period materials, but it is a modern creation.  For me, Ford's Theater as it stands now is a replica - it is built to mimic the original interior of the same building, but it's made with modern materials.  The same thing stands for replica skeletons and hands-on models that mimic actual artifacts.

A restoration, on the other hand, is what I would consider the USS Constitution - new materials and tools (or new materials and old tools, old materials and new tools, etc) are used to repair an existing historic artifact.  Now, this does get a bit tricky, as Howard Manfield touches on in that chapter excerpt, because at some point in a long restoration, the original materials used to create the object will be wholly replaced by the newer elements meant to maintain it.  So does an item that has been repeatedly restored like that remain a restored item?  Or does the act of constant replacement turn an original artifact into a replica of itself?

I'm sure that Manfield will discuss this at greater length in The Same Ax, Twice, and since the copy I put on hold just arrived at my local library I will look forward to getting his thoughts and reasoning.  For my part, I would argue that an original artifact, no matter how repaired or replaced can never become a replica (and that's exactly why I added the key phrase "from scratch" in my definition above).  A heavily repaired object is certainly different than one in pristine* condition, but the repairs don't change it's inherent being.  In fact, based on my thoughts from last week, I'm inclined to say that the repairs and restorations simply add to the story of the object.  (Which ties back to my pet contagion theory in a way - do the restorations add value, in the sense that the object now tells a deeper story about several different eras, or do they remove value in the sense that the object has been altered?  I suspect the answer is different for different objects.)

I'm off to spend the weekend reading about restorations (okay, and maybe also about teenaged necromancers, because I read Lish McBride's first book to see if my nephew would like it and now I really need to know what happens next), and I look forward to digger even deeper into this topic next week.




*I vividly remember the day (January 23, 2007, btw) that I learned that the actual for-real definition of "pristine" is "belonging to the earliest state or period, original." I had always thought it meant "clean", but that's the second variation of the second definition! The first definition makes pristine a work much more applicable to museums and artifacts than the second.
[Why yes, I was an English major, why do you ask?]

A brief history of my history with history museums

My history with history museums starts with this guy:

My dad bought this figurine for me when I was six years old.  I picked it out from all of the other glass animals in the small little gift shop that is still on the ground floor of the Field Museum several hours before it opened to other patrons after one of the best nights of my life.

My family had always been a museum-going one, and my parents made it a point to take my sister and I to a big museum every time we were in the city.  So I was primed and ready when my dad told us that we--along with a hundred or so other folks--were going to spend the night at the Field Museum.  It was a part of a program called "Dozin' with the Dinos," where parents and children come in to the museum after it closes with sleeping bags and pajamas and do crafts, take tours, and explore the museum late into the night.  Basically it is a little kid's dream come true.

It was almost twenty-five years ago, so a lot of the details a blurry.  I remember going to orientation in the big theater and having a security guard tell me that I wasn't allowed to touch the bronze statue I was touching.  But more than just yelling at me, she took a moment to explain that the reason I couldn't was because the oils on my little hands would damage the metal.  I haven't touched a statue since, scout's honor.  I remember trying to pick the very best spot to lay out my threadbare green sleeping bag, and ending up next to this guy:

At that time the Pawnee Earth Lodge was still in this hall, but it's otherwise unchanged. One of my favorite things when I worked at the Field was when an errand would take me through this hall and I could walk past the same spot I'd set up my sleeping bag so many years ago.  My family set up with a few other families we knew and a bunch of other people we didn't, and then set out to explore the museum.

Looking at the program now, we must have had some workshops, there was dinner and a midnight snack at some point, and we probably made some crafts, but I don't remember any of that.  What I remember was that some time around midnight (an inconceivable time to my tiny mind) they turned off the lights and told us any further exploring would have to be done by flashlight.  My dad armed Sister and I with flashlights and we set off to go through Ancient Egypt.

I don't think I will ever be closer to the feeling a scientist on the verge of a discovery has than I did that night.  It didn't matter that we'd been through that exhibit dozens of times in the well-lit day--every artifact was newly-discovered in the wavering beam of my flashlight.  It was the most terrifying and exhilarating night of my life to that point, and while the details have faded over the years, that thrill of discovery and excitement lingers.  And I've been lost to history museums ever since.

The next morning Dad let me pick out a figurine, and I've kept that little leopard with me ever since.  Every time I look at it on my desk I'm reminded of that night, and it makes me excited to try to bring that same feeling to other little kids.  And while I'm sure that art museums and science centers bring the same joy to others, for me it's always going to be the history museums.  They've been blowing my mind for as long as I can remember.  Seriously: dinosaurs.  mummies.  life-sized adobe pueblos and honest-to-goodness meteorites. lions and tigers and bears and little glass leopards. Oh, my indeed.