1KLucy

Kendall Lucy

Public History

Dr. David Cline

December 8, 2016

Final Reflection Paper

This semester I have been working with Mr. Calloways service learning class

at Christiansburg High School toward creating an exhibit on the history and heritage

of the Christiansburg Institute. I found that this project was something the teacher,

Mr. Calloway, was really excited and enthusiastic about, but he had to balance that

with making the project something from which all the really clever students in his

class could take a lesson from, and I think he started that by familiarizing them with

the Christiansburg Institute Museum and the Institutes time line. This was a good

idea, but I believe he was hampered by his inability to get the students out of the

classroom, and the museums objects to his class so that they could put into action

the vague plan they had in place. Without being able to get acquainted with the

objects they wanted to display from the Christiansburg Institute, they were

continually stuck in first gear.

I believe this project needs to be more accessible to be truly successful in its

purpose to inform the public of the culture that sprung from the Christiansburg

Institute. To do that, those in charge of the collection of artifacts that survived time

need to allow those involved in the project access, or at least a complete and current

list of what is available for display in the high school, as the one we were given had

incorrect locations for many of the artifacts. What should be preserved? How should
 2KLucy

it be preserved, and where should it be placed? These are the types of decisions

those students will be making as they create the display, and they get the larger

problems public historians face everyday.

A book we read recently for class, The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a

Postindustrial City by Cathy Stanton, has influenced my views on the Christiansburg

Institute Museum, and not necessarily in a beneficial way. It highlighted for me what

needs to be present in a community for a heritage project or institution to thrive,

and this is not something I could confidently say Christiansburg has. Stanton states

that successful competition means being able to deliver ever more complex and

innovative combinations of knowledge and experience, and the exponents of such

concepts as the creative class, creative city, experience economy, place-making,

and branding are greatly in demand by places and organizations seeking a

foothold in this intensely competitive global marketplace, and I just do not know if

the Institute can be successful in the setting it is in now1. A community needs to be

wholly proud of its past, and in a state of need to be reminded - and want to be

reminded.

I have been working at the Alexander Black House throughout the semester

and I believe they survive because the location is good, they have an interesting

setting, and in combination with the growing interest in the arts in Blacksburg and

the roots of the city, the Alexander Black House is in a prime niche for a heritage and

cultural center. The Christiansburg Institute is not in a happily situated location, it

barely looks safe, and the museum is so small as to be unidentifiable. I understand

1 Stanton, Cathy, The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City

(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), pp. 7.

 3KLucy

that the exhibit at the Christiansburg High School is meant to garner attention for

the Institute, but until I see the project come to fruition, I will have a hard time

believing it can thrive in the setting it is currently situated in.

This semester we have been going over the boundaries of public history and

what, if any, responsibility of those in the profession have over the preservation of

culture. This issue is something I believe comes into high relief at the Christiansburg

Institute simply because it has only held on this long because of the dedicated

memory and preservation efforts of those previously involved with the school.

Memory though, is a tricky matter to undertake as an historian, as Richard White

says in Remembering Ahanagran, history forges weapons from what memory has

forgotten or suppressed. Few non-historians realize how many scraps a life leaves.

These scraps do not necessarily form a story in and of themselves, but they are

always calling stories into doubt, always challenging memories, always trailing off

into forgotten places.2 The memories of those who went to this school see it as

something vital to the landscape of Christiansburg and their history. I think, like the

house in Ahanagran and White, it is taking the destruction of this landmark to make

the community realize it is trajectory. But the community that remembers and cares

is a small one. So it begins to fall under the consideration of whether the

preservation of this landmark of south western Virginian African American culture

is the responsibility of local public historians and whether it should or will be one of

those things that gets over looked and forgotten.

2 White, Richard. Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories. (Seattle and London:

University of Washington Press. 1998), pp. 4.

 4KLucy

As a historian, I believe one of the main obstacles this project is facing is

audience. As James Gardner states in Contested Terrain: History, Museums and the

Public What we have, to be blunt, is a great yawning gap between our

understanding of the past as historians and the publics. A gap that cant be

addressed simply by adapting professional practice to popular uses, and his

statement makes the dilemma of audience, understanding, and need transparent.3

This is an issue the Christiansburg Institute is not just running into with the exhibit

at the Christiansburg High School, but in the CI Museum itself. To have strong

numbers of attendance on a museum you have to have a subject matter that both

intrigues the public and matters to their understanding of their everyday lives. If the

impact the Christiansburg Institute had on the development of the current

community is highlighted in both displayed it believe the exhibit will have a much

wider spread impact than just those who go to school at the Christiansburg High

School, and therefore encounter it everyday. Consider the recent opening of the

National Museum of African American History and Culture. Its existence validates

much of why institutes like the CI are still important today, if only so that we can

look back and see the lopsidedness of our cultural and historical common

knowledge.

Another responsibility of the public historian is to understand when to

preserve large cache of material culture, and when to call it a day. This issue with

the Christiansburg Institute is that much of the material culture we have left is small

in comparison to the plans they have for it. I understand, as a student of the Material

3 Gardner, James. Contested Terrain: History, Museums, and the Public The Public

Historian Vol. 26, No. 4 (Fall 2004): pp. 14

 5KLucy

Culture and Public Humanities Program, the need to preserve and appreciate

material culture, as artifacts constitute the only class of historical events that

occurred in the past but survive into the present. They can be re-experienced; they

are authentic, primary historical material available for first-hand study.4 The

struggle here is understanding who the audience of the Christiansburg Institute will

be when we create the display. Who is getting to experience the material culture?

Part of the issue with the high school display is admittedly administration, but I

think when the Superintendent decided to include an exhibit on CI, someone should

have told him the challenges evolved in making such a display, given the constraints

of the materials available. Without removing a large, if not complete, portion of the

Christiansburg Institute Museums material, it will be nearly impossible to create

the exhibit they have envisioned.

A good alternative to an exhibit made entirely of the existing artifacts would

be to either fabricate commissioned replicas, or find examples of the missing pieces

from other similar institutions like the Christiansburg Institute. Maybe even

including a panel on how the Christiansburg Institute fit into a larger community of

privately owned African American schools. An issue this alternative brings into light

is numen. This concept that the artifacts society has preserves holds a metaphysical

presence, which gives the viewer a near spiritual connection to an object. A study

was taken of the experiences and goals of those people who attend museums or

historic sites, and a paper by Catherine Cameron and James Gatewood explicated its

4Prown, Jules David. The Truth of Material Culture: History or Fiction? in American

Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture, ed. Jules David Prown and Kenneth Haltman,
(East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2000), 12.
 6KLucy

results. In addition to gaining information, having fun, or creating family memories

during a trip to a historic site, people often seek a deeper and more meaningful

connection with a place or time period, and they achieve this connection through

the objects they perceive.5 I believe that those who support the Christiansburg

Institute Museum could take issue with the loss of the personal experience provided

by original artifacts to the school if we substitute replica in with the display.

My experience in the high school with the students so far was encouraging,

for with what little information the students have they have reacted enthusiastically

and with such limited resources that is impressive. But they are currently stalled,

and it is a combination of my groups fault and the institutes, because they cannot

move on from a timeline to an exhibit without knowing what materials will be used.

The exhibit could be very interesting, and fit well into the niche they have picked for

it, especially with the objects the students and I went through last week. They want

to highlight what made the students of the institute just like them, and what made

them exceptional, like the vocational schools and such. An issue that arises with the

control we have given the students towards the design is that they have come up

with ideas that they are really attached to, that are not feasible. For example, they

want the timeline either on the floor so that you walk in the footsteps of the CI

students, or they want the timeline running around the ceiling that frames the

exhibit. These will not be a good idea because the area is high-traffic, so anything on

5 Cameron, Catherine M. and John B. Gatewood. Excursions into the Un-

Remembered Past: What People Want from Visits to Historical Sites, The Public
Historian, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Summer, 2000), pp. 109.
 7KLucy

the floor will not last, and the viewers eye should never be drawn that far up,

especially if it is to take in information.

As a part of the team that will be assessing the material culture of the exhibit,

or the artifacts, I will be responsible for portraying an accurate, but interesting

dialogue between the artifacts and the current student body it will be displayed for.

I have been apart of a course this semester exploring how to research material

culture and I am rather excited for this portion of the project to really get underway,

as this was a major part of the project affected by the lack of access to the Institute

materials. Throughout the projects duration, I was under the impression we had a

cache of artifacts to work with, that the Institutions community had at least an idea

of what they wanted and what they could offer. None of this was necessarily true.

The cache of artifacts has mainly been housed at the museum already, and what

they have has not been catalogued for years, nor has it been verified. The

community was scarcely informed about the project before our participation. An I

found that the timelines between the two classes involved were totally different; the

high school students have all year to finish, and my class has only the semester to

contribute.

While this incomplete dream of an exhibit is something to look forward to,

and will garner attention in the schools hallways (initially), I do not see where it will

raise too much more attention to the Institute itself, as those who would be most

interested in it will have free access to it. The students and teachers in the area are

going to have the most pull for viewing the Institutes material culture, and outside

of the school system will be harder for the students to access than just walking
 8KLucy

through the Christiansburg High Schools halls. The project is walking a fine line

between bringing about more interest and destroying what basis of interest the

Institute already has. Most museum professionals agree that a major value

museums support is providing the public with some kind of educational experience-

intellectual engagement resulting in a change in understanding, appreciation, or

behavior.6

When reading for class, and I came upon the articles I had for leading

discussion, which was sort of a reiteration of the beginning of class, where the

question was how to define history, and the roles with in history that plays into the

responsibilities of historians. When reading about the administration ideals that the

author, Michael J. Devine, laid out, I was struck by how much of the experience with

the class at the high school was mirrored in his descriptions of his bad experiences

in the field of public history.7 When initially going into the class room with Mr.

Calloway, I expected to be told what he wanted out of our participation in the

project, what he needed out of our time, resources, and abilities, and just generally

what he thought our timeline of work would be. This was not the case, as we went in

and were immediately put on the spot to create a game plan for a project I had

minimal understanding of how far along it was, its goals, and its participants.

The question of how I was expected to move and act in this project was really

muddled for me because I walked in expecting to find a set of goals, and a vision of

6 Falk, John H., and Lynn D. Dierking. The 21st Century Museum. in The Museum

Experience Revisited, (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2013), 295-317.

7 Devine, Michael J, Management, in Public History: Essays from the Field, ed. James

P. Gardner and Peter S. LaPaglia, (Malabar: Krieger Publishing Company, 2006), pp.
45-56.
 9KLucy

what the exhibit would look like. Devine mentions this too, where the elements of

success in management of historic sites and societies are the most important thing

in creating a successful museum. What I think will be the best way to insure the

continuation of the project after my participation in complete is a guide setting up

how communications between the Institute and the students should work, what

object should be included and how to frame them within the parameters of the

museum and space, and how the build the exhibition around the objects and the

stories they wish to portray. In this I believe we can be like Michael J. Devine, and

organize until its realized.

In conclusion, I believe the project of moving as exhibit into the

Christiansburg High School to be one fraught with complications, lack of materials,

and poor planning. Maybe by expanding the basis of the exhibit to the community of

colleges the Institute was in, fabricating replacement material culture, and

compromising on how much must be included in the exhibit the team at

Christiansburg High School can make a successful exhibit. The course planned to

create this exhibit was not well thought through, being that there is so little material

to spread for a full year. It needed more communication and teamwork to be truly

successful. And to be successful the class will need a full complement of instructions

to make it through the next semester and into a successful exhibit.

 10KLucy

Works Cited

White, Richard. Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories. Seattle and London:

University of Washington Press. 1998.

Cameron, Catherine M. and John B. Gatewood. Excursions into the Un-Remembered

Past: What People Want from Visits to Historical Sites. The Public Historian,

Vol. 22, No. 3 (Summer, 2000). pp. 107-127.

Devine, Michael J. Management, in Public History: Essays from the Field, ed. James P.

Gardner and Peter S. LaPaglia, 45-56. Malabar: Krieger Publishing Company,

2006.

Falk, John H., and Lynn D. Dierking. The 21st Century Museum. in The Museum

Experience Revisited, 295-317. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2013.

Gardner, James. Contested Terrain: History, Museums, and the Public. The Public

Historian, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Fall 2004): 11-21.

Prown, Jules David. The Truth of Material Culture: History or Fiction? in American

Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture. ed. Jules David Prown and Kenneth

Haltman. (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2000), 11-27.

Stanton, Cathy. The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City.

Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006. E-Book.