Selling the South

In her forthcoming book, Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture (UNC Press, 2011), Dr. Karen Cox examines the cultural origins of the concept of the romanticized South.  She discussed her work in a recent visit to the Center for the Humanities at Temple University. 

In her presentation, Cox traced the emergence of the image of the antebellum Southern ideal through the popular culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, finding its origins in northern cities.  The locus of American advertising and cultural production, the North is where the romanticized notion of the Old South was created and popularized.  Cox described the emergence of a distinct southern typology in popular culture from the 1880s to World War II which supported this image of the South.  Characters like the mammy and the uncle, and the chivalrous aristocrat farmer and the southern belle, coupled with images of white-columned mansions and King Cotton established an idyllic and imaginary portrait of the antebellum American South.  These images appeared and were repeated through the literature (Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind), print advertising (the Aunt Jemima and Maxwell House brands), film (D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation), radio (the radio minstrelsy of Amos N’ Andy, Maxwell House Showboat, and the Aunt Jemima radio show), and popular music (“coon songs” and “back to Dixie” songs of the era) of the period.  

This Southern imaginary was a product successfully sold, not only to Southerners but to Americans generally. They reinforced and shaped heroic notions of Southern history and self, but also Northern perceptions of the region as exotic and other.  Further, the creation of an alternative historical narrative through advertisements, et al. tided up one of the messiest (putting it mildly) periods in American history.  

How does Dr. Karen Cox’s scholarship enhance our understanding of museums?  The way in which popular culture shapes perception is at the core of Cox’s discussion of the (re)creation of the South, and perhaps most relevant to a discussion of museums.  In what ways do these institutions mediate our experience?  How do they shape our understanding of objects and/or the past?  

In her book Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge, Eilean Hooper-Greenhill suggests that, from inception, the museum-going experience has been a heavily mediated one.  A viewpoint is always present, whether it is that of the prince, merchant, institution, or state.  In each of these instances, the choices made by those in power inform how value is assigned, the presentation of objects, and their context in relation to other valued objects.  In the modern museum, it is often the curator (or curators) who decides what will be displayed for the viewer, and how it will be presented.  A narrative is constructed which reflects the ideology and tastes (aesthetic and intellectual) of the dominant culture, and given authority through the institution.  Knowledge is shaped by social, economic, and political forces in the larger culture, and in turn it shapes society through the transmission of these culturally sanctioned narratives.

Why is this important?  In The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life, authors Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen sift through the survey data collected during a landmark study examining the ways in which ordinary people interact with the past.  Looking at the national sample, 57 percent of total respondents had visited a museum or historic site in the past twelve months.  More importantly, museums where identified as the most trustworthy source of information about the past.  In interviews with respondents, Rosenzweig and Thelen discovered that ”respondents felt there was nothing between them and the reality of the past.”  Their perception of the trustworthiness of museums was rooted in the belief that they were objective places, their artifacts presented without manipulation or agenda. 

What Cox’s work illustrates is the power of culture to shape our perception of the past – the way in which ideas and concepts are rendered credible through repetition, ubiquity, and positive consumer response.  It shows us that we must always be aware of the mediation of our experiences.  An awareness of this power is essential to any critical examination of museums.    

The Wagner Free Institute of Science of Philadelphia

Part museum, part educational center, the Wagner Free Institute of Science is one of Philadelphia’s most interesting places.  Located on the corner of 17th Street and West Montgomery Avenue, it is also one of the most overlooked.  It would be difficult to stumble upon accidentally and its North Philadelphia address places it well off the beaten path for both tourists and locals.  But once you’ve discovered the Wagner it is difficult not to return and bring others with you to this fascinating place. 

A recent visit to the Wagner began in the auditorium with a brief overview of the Institute’s origins, evolution, and current mission from director Susan Glassman.  Born in 1796 to a wealthy Philadelphia family, William Wagner had both the means and opportunity to pursue his love of science.  In her discussion Ms. Glassman pointed to three periods in Wagner’s life which helped shape the Institute.  Beginning in 1817, Wagner, serving as an agent of Philadelphia banking giant Stephen Girard, traveled extensively.  Circling the globe, he acquired the specimens which would form the core of the Institute’s collection.  The 1820s and 30s saw Wagner engaged in a local, national, and international network of science collectors and researchers.  In the early 1840s, Wagner embarked on a two year trip to Europe to visit the institutions and individuals he had been in contact with during the preceding years.  Interested in examining educational institutions devoted to science, he found that most European collections and institutions were extremely private, accessible only to men of certain social classes.  When Wagner came across the rare exception, like a free public museum in Berlin, he noted it as a model to be emulated.    

Shortly after his return to Philadelphia, Wagner began organizing his collection and presenting a number of informal lectures centered on his holdings.  Wagner’s cabinet began to draw visitors, and by 1855 his series of informal presentations of his collection had become an incorporated educational institution.  The Wagner Free Institute moved to its Montgomery Avenue location in 1865. 

Wagner’s model shares with the prototypical museums of Europe – beginning with Florence’s Medici Palace of the 15th century and continuing with the cabinet collectors of the 16th century – the impulse toward acquisition and education.  What distinguished the Wagner from its historical and contemporary European antecedents was access. Where the collections of his forebears were symbols of wealth and power construed through the control of knowledge, Wagner’s lectures and collection, and later the Institute’s educational programs were open to the public, regardless of gender or class.   

The Wagner underwent a second wave of development following the death of its founder in 1885.  Under the leadership of biologist Joseph Leidy the Institute not only actively expanded its collection and continued its educational programs, but emerged as a research organization, undertaking and financing expeditions and generally contributing to the expansion of scientific knowledge.  The changes of the Leidy period, both to the physical structure and to the collection and its presentation, are preserved in the Institute’s current incarnation.  It is in the Wagner’s specimen collection that the influence of Leidy is perhaps most apparent.  

Housed on the second floor, the biological and geological specimen collection illustrates the move toward classification and hierarchical order characteristic of 19th century science.  It also illustrates the Wagner’s shift in use over time, suggesting the problems associated with the contemporary public perception of the Institute and its mission.  Certainly the collection is fascinating in its own right, both for what it contains an in the way it differs from the contemporary museum going experience.  Initially an extension of the Institute’s educational efforts, the collection seems a primary draw for the contemporary visitor.  Filled with natural wonders, methodically organized and arranged in heavy wooden cases, the exhibition hall is a taxonomist’s (and taxidermist’s) dream.  Filled with natural light and the sounds of the surrounding neighborhood, the collection room is warm and inviting.  The arrangement of the collection – hierarchically for biological specimens, chronologically for geological ones – certainly suggests for the visitor a specific path.  For the contemporary viewer, separated from these organizing principles by time, evolving scientific methods, or a lack prior knowledge, the collection can be experienced in a variety of ways.  One can move freely from one exhibit to the next leaping over millions of years in the process.  Here, invertebrate sea creatures give way to crustaceans and large, bony fish.  Winged beasts – moths, bats, and seagulls – sit near fierce looking birds of prey and snakes and squirrels set in action poses.  The skeleton of a draft horse sits near a scattering of Brontosaurs bones, while geological specimens mingle with the fossil record in nearby cases. 

In his 2009 article “Preserving the Future of Natural-History Museums,” Thomas H. Benton (the pen name of Hope College professor William Pennapacker) provides several observational recommendations for natural history museums moving into the 21st century.  Three of Benton’s recommendations suggest the strengths of the Wagner Institute.  The Wagner “foreground[s] the art of science and aesthetics of the museum” by keeping intact the work of Wagner and Leidy, and it is certainly not “ashamed of dead animals.”  Most importantly, Benton observes: “The world is full of simulations.  Natural-history museums should cultivate the aura of the real: the rare and unique, the beautiful, the exotic, and the grotesque.”  This is what makes the Wagner so remarkable.  It is through the exhibition of its collection that the Wagner restores a sense of (analog) awe and wonder to the museum going experience.  

But the collection also draws attention away from the educational mission of the Institute.  Ms. Glassman noted that the Wagner is often thought of solely as a museum, rather than an institution focused on public education in science.  This seems a natural hazard of preserving and presenting a museum’s past.  By presenting the museum as object, one risks elevating static physical qualities over continually evolving ideological mission.    

Ms. Glassman observed that when preservation efforts began in earnest twenty years ago, the Wagner had become something quite rare – a cultural artifact.  A piece of a scientific history well worth preserving.  Indeed, the Wagner straddles two eras.  It is at once a 19th century natural history museum preserved in amber and a contemporary institution with an active educational mission.  It is both a historical artifact and a living institution, and each has its own appeal and set of priorities.  In the first case, the building, library, and extensive specimen collection draw visitors looking for a authentic representation of a 19th century institution, while in the second, it must provide free, contemporary scientific educational programs to the community.  To maintain authenticity requires constant preservation of the Wagner’s structures and specimens.  The educational programs require the development of attractive and relevant programs and continual community outreach.  By engaging the public on both fronts, the Wagner seeks to establish a balance between its past and present, preservation and growth.

Leaving the Wagner, heading toward Broad Street via Montgomery Avenue, one wonders how its location has helped and/or hurt the Institute over time.  Located on the relative outskirts of the city’s most attractive commercial and cultural districts must have had some effect on frequency of use and effectiveness of its mission.  One wonders how it might look if William Wagner had decided to build his educational institute near what are now Independence National Historical Park or the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.  Would it resemble the American Philosophical Society or the Academy of Natural Sciences?  Certainly its relative isolation made it easier to preserve the collection and structure in its 19th century form.  But has it also limited the execution of its mission?  Moving through the construction dust of Temple University’s expansion project, one wonders how current changes will affect Institute’s future.