A Historian as Museum Curator

Article reprinted with permission from the Northern Illinois Faculty Bulletin.

From 1983 through the summer of 1987, I served as a museum curator at the Chicago Historical Society, preparing the exhibit We the People: Creating a New Nation, 1765–1820, which opened September 12, 1987, in time for the bicentennial  of the Constitution. Al­though it was the most demanding, the most time consuming, and at times the most frustrating experience of my scholarly life, it was also the most excit­ing and rewarding.

My work began in 1983 when the society, whose major exhibits focus either on Chicago or on Illinois history, as well as on pioneer life in the Midwest, decided to inaugurate a new American history wing with a permanent exhibit on the founding era of the nation. Be­cause 150,000 to 200,000 people annual­ly visit the society, a permanent ex­hibit—which to the society meant at least ten years—would attract 1.5 mil­lion viewers. How could a college profes­sor resist?

Before work began on the exhibit, the society had a nondescript exhibit on the Revolution, first put together in the 1930s under the sponsorship of the Colonial Dames and enlarged and refur­bished for the bicentennial of the Revolu­tion in 1976. Meanwhile, the society had acquired through donations and pur­chases rare original printings of five major documents of the founding period: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, a 1789 version of the Bill of Rights, the   Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and the Treaty of Greenville of 1795. The society displayed some of these documents on and off and kept its original printing of the Constitution in a vault.

The Society also had on display in other galleries an array of early American paintings and uninterpreted artifacts. Most curators did not know what else from the period was in storage. Because its collections in early American history are small, and because the museum is lo­cated in the Midwest, scholars rarely turned to it to do research in the field either in manuscripts, prints, paintings, costumes, decorative arts, or in books and maps.

As Ellsworth Brown, the society’s director, recently said, “the society had curators who were specialists in their genres but it had nohistorian who was a specialist in the Revolutionary and early national periods.” I was recommended as a historian on the cutting edge of scholarship in both eras, as someone who had edited texts, and as a scholar who had made major use of visual materials in his own research.

I was invited in as a consultant for a preliminary exploration to help the society draw up a planning grant and then to prepare a grant proposal for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our first proposal did not make it; the second, based on an exhaus­tive search and a more focused script, did. The NEH awarded the society $200,000 in outright funds and $75,000 in a matching grant. That sum and awards from other foundations gave the society more than $600,000. Major ex­hibits can be expensive.

From the outset, I made clear that I was interested in doing an exhibit only if the society had the kinds of materials that would enable me to develop inter­pretive themes on the role of ordinary people in shaping history, a route my own scholarship had taken. It soon be­ came quite clear that there were troves of untapped, hidden treasures in the museum—more than enough to under­take the exhibit I hoped to do. I realized this somewhere between stumbling (literally) across slave shackles in the basement, finding an unknown artisan’s diary in the manuscript collection, and staring in joy at an array of beautiful “samplers” embroidered by school girls.

The society approved my approach and from beginning to end allowed me com­plete freedom to develop my own inter­pretation; at no time did the society ask me to include or exclude a particular ob­ject or to soft peddle or play up a subject. I worked in an atmosphere that en­couraged me to be as creative and im­aginative as possible.

It was understood, of course, that the major documents would be displayed, but the context for the displays was up to me. Only two constraints existed: the exhibit had to fit into 2400 square feet of space, and because the exhibit would be permanent, all items had to come from the museum’s collection. Since the exhibit opened in September 1987, I have heard many visitors express wonder at how all these things ended up in a mid­western museum.

I should say “we,” not “I.” From the out­set of the project, work on the exhibit was a collaborative experience. Mary Janzen was the project coordinator, and Terry Fife, who had earned her MA in history from NIU and who had previously served as an associate curator at the museum, was the full-time in-house curator. In the final year of the project, Fife and I worked together on a daily basis, and we both worked with two design consultants from Washington, DC, and with the society’s editors who deftly and painstak­ingly went over our labels. Fife also worked with a group of specialists in preserving, mounting, and displaying the exhibition.

The first stage of our work was to find out what was hidden in the “attics” of the museum. As is usual in historical re­search, this was the fun part of the project. Throughout our search, I was amazed at what was stashed away, and some of the society’s curators were amazed at my enthusiasm, which must have seemed odd coming from an academic.

Our effort to discover what was hidden was a search-and-scour operation in a half dozen collections. Among the manuscripts, we worked through several large potpourri collections donated or bought from antiquarian collector seventy-five years earlier. These collections included unpublished letters written by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and a number of single items by soldiers, sailors, farmers, artisans, Indians, and slaves. The stack of copies of the manuscripts I examined measures eight inches high and amounts to more than 2000 pages. To research books and pamphlets, I went through shelf lists and found about 150 titles printed before 1830. And I read through about 500 is­sues of newspapers published in the original thirteen states.

The search proved that the society had some extraordinary holdings among early American prints: Paul Revere’s “Boston Massacre,” all four of Amos Doolittle’s “Lexington and Concord” battle scenes, and Philip Dawe’s tar and feathering caricatures. What else lay hidden in storage? To help us in our search, we brought back the retired former curator, who, as I had earlier discovered in other libraries, knew where the old uncataloged prints were buried. I suppose I went through 500 engravings, cartoons, and broadsides. In examinin1 more than seventy-five paintings, I found that, as is often the case in museums, many of the most interesting oil paintings were in storage.

In its decorative arts collection, we found a small but valuable sampling of furniture and silver crafted by such renowned eastern artisans as Duncan Phyfe, Samuel McIntire, and Joseph Richardson; a fine collection of women’s domestic decorative arts; and some wonderful folk art. I walked several hundred feet of shelves looking at a large mishmash of things: military and naval paraphernalia, tools, Indian artifact children’s toys, George Washington memorabilia (the “schlock” of earli1 eras).

In addition to items that were easily identifiable, we found a number curious artifacts of uncertain attribution: George Washington’s telescope, Benjamin Franklin’s printer’s stick, Francis Scott Key’s dueling pistols. Some of these had come to the museum in a huge private collection that included what was purported to be “the skin of the snake in the Garden of Eden.” Some of these checked out; those that did not check out ended up as generic samples. We displayed what had been called “Martha Washington’s sewing box” as a lady’s sewing box to accompany the embroidered samplers. In the costumes department, however, we found authentic pieces of clothing that had survived from the period (an artisan’s leather apron, a lady’s “pocket”) plus several suits that really could be attributed to John Adams and George Washington.

On sifting through this amazing array of items, I became even more convinced that the society had the materials to do the kind of exhibit that had begun to take form in my mind’s eye. The challenge would come in determining how to sort the items out and how to choose from the myriad ways to arrange them coherently. In retrospect, I think of this process as finding pieces of a jigsaw puzzle for which there was no single picture—only a variety of possible pictures.

In working out our options, we decided to focus on two major themes: first, the part played by ordinary people, as well as by extraordinary leaders, in shaping the nation through the Revolution, the sub­sequent war, the creation of a new govern­ment, westward expansion, and the crea­tion of a distinctive national republican culture; second, the extent to which the ideals of the nation expressed in key documents in the exhibit—”all men are created equal” and government by “con­sent of the governed”—were realized for the diverse ordinary people of the nation.

For the era 1765 to 1820, “ordinary people” meant dealing with the working population of farmers and artisans, in­dentured servants, and laborers; it meant dealing with African Americans (one out of every five Americans at the time of the Revolution was a slave); it meant dealing with Indians who fought with the British in the Revolution and then resisted American expansion into the Northwest; and it meant dealing at all times with women.

We decided to organize the exhibit chronologically in eight sections, stress­ing movement: 1) Introduction: A Diverse and Aspiring People; 2) The Road to Revolution, 1765–1775; 3) Declaring Inde­pendence, 1776; 4) Winning  the War, 1775–1783; 5) The Constitution and the Bill of Rights, 1787–1791; 6) The Republic in Action, 1789–1820; 7) The Republic Moves West; and 8) Creating an American Culture.

Within each chronological period, we developed the themes of class, race, and gender. Thus, for example, we developed the themes of class, race, and gender. Thus, for example, we introduced artisans symbolically in the opening seg­ment through a blacksmith’s tools and leather apron; touched on artisans in the making of the Revolution with the engravings of the silversmith Paul Revere and in the winning of the war with the tools of war; and then ended with a rich display of craft objects, many bearing the eagle, the national symbol, interpreted under the rubric, “A Republican Spirit in the Crafts.”

But how to convey a sense of the active role of men and women making history? Our ideas evolved beyond our original script. We created ten “Portraits of Americans,” capsule biographies of un­ known or lesser known individuals for whom there were interesting original ar­tifacts. For instance, a biography of the life of Mercy Otis Warren, perhaps the most articulate woman of the Revolu­tion, accompanies her poems; and a biog­raphy of the life of infantryman James Pike goes with the powder horn on which he carved the “Tree of Liberty,” the sym­bol of the Revolution.

To personalize a larger trend, we used letters written by individuals. To ex­emplify the westward movement, we in­cluded a grandfather’s letter urging his grandson in Connecticut to take up land; to dramatize the life of blacks freed after the Revolution, we used a stunning note from Hannah, a slave, asking her master Robert Carter Brown for a loom to pur­sue her trade in freedom. Taking curatorial license, we moved in a small handloom of that day to call attention to her request.

We made no effort to underplay famous figures. Quite the contrary. A remark­able unpublished letter written in 1822 by Thomas Jefferson extolling government’s spending money for peace, not war, introduces a section on the political economy of the new nation. A crusty note penned in 1809 by John Adams scolding his countrymen for neglecting their history sets the theme for a segment on veterans remembering the Revolution.

We tried to deal with Indians both with honesty and empathy. A major unit on Indians, “Displacing the Indians,” is set bluntly in the context of broken American promises. We show the federal government’s policy—with silver peace medals awarded to cooperating In­dians, a primitive painting portraying the signing of the Treaty of Greenville, and a first printing of the original Treaty—but we counter these with im­ages of the leaders of the Indian resis­tance in the Old Northwest, Tecumseh and his brother, The Prophet.

Throughout the exhibit we attempted to provide, often by juxtaposing objects, a counter-point of elite and non-elite ex­ pressions. Thus in front of the portraits of Jefferson and Adams, the principal authors of the Declaration of Independence, we put a small display of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and a letter describing its influence on “the common people” in creating the senti­ment that led to the Declaration. Nearby we placed a large engraving of New Yorkers who, acting on the principles of Paine and the Declaration, are shown pulling down King George III’s statue that symbolized the monarchy. We placed a painting of Washington and his officers next to a segment on the foot sol­diers, and an engraving showing the naval exploits of John Paul Jones next to a list of the seamen in his crew. Occasionally we used objects from “popular” culture to demonstrate a con­sensus of values. For example, we mounted George Washington’s farewell address and Thomas Jefferson’s in­augural address behind plain earthen­ware pitchers bearing symbols and slogans illustrating their principles.

My final year as co-curator was scholarship under fire. With opening day deadline a reality, I met with desig­ners to narrow the objects to be dis­played; worked with my co-curator and other curators to verify and authenticate objects; tracked down mystery items; and wrote the major narrative thematic panel labels while my co-curator wrote the labels for each object.

Writing was a creative yet seemingly endless process. Copy for the narrative panels and object labels had to be rewrit­ten to supplement one another, yet avoid duplication. Russell Lewis, the chief editor, prodded for vocabulary suited to the average museum viewer. My files show that I rewrote most panels seven or eight times. Toward the end of this process, we became actively aware that this was a permanent exhibit; our judg­ments were going upon a wall for at least ten years.

Choosing the design for the exhibit was both a painful and a joyful experience. The designers, Barbara Charles and Robert Staples, were chosen because of their creativity in designing exhibits heavy—as ours is—with two dimen­sional objects, i.e., documents, manuscripts, and engravings. The designers functioned as visual editors. They did not impose a preconceived pat­tern on the exhibit. The interior walls of one wing of the museum were torn down, and the designers were given carte blanche to design spaces adapted to the segments of the exhibit. They were al­ways probing and asking questions to determine the major visual point to be made in each section: the Declaration of Independence today is a sacred icon. What do you want the design to convey about it in the historical context of 1776? (We agree on mounting it, not in classic marble but in a warm wood frame making it acceptable.) Here is an entire section on the war that conveys no sense of battle. How about blowing up engrav­ings of battle scenes and mounting them high on the walls? (We do, and the sug­gestion works.)

Narrowing the objects to be displayed was torture. Like most scholars, I did not enjoy throwing out hard-found dis­coveries, but space was a major constraint. For example, I wanted to dramatize the growth of newspapers of the Jeffersonian era by using eight front pages of newspapers, but space allowed only three. We had to decrease the num­ber of objects to be used—from ap­ proximately 400 in our original script to 300.

Either historical importance or relevance to the two themes of the exhibit were the major selection criteria, and in malting this judgement, the curators had the final say. Gradually I acquiesced as such museum criteria as readability, legibility, variety, and sheer human in­terest came into play. I wanted to use a letter written by Jefferson in which he describes land in the midwest as a haven for Europeans, but the single important line was buried on the third page, too deeply for a museum reader ever to reach. We were constantly faced with choices. Everything was a trade-off. Thus, like the writer who must often eliminate, to cut, to choose one item over another.

Terry Fife was in  charge of verifying and authenticating artifacts: Is it really George Washington’s telescope?  (Very likely.) Is it Benjamin Franklin’s typesetting stick? (No way of knowing; we ended up using it generically to dramatize the importance of printers in the Revolution.) I supervised the detec­tive work on other mysteries: Who was James Pike, the New Hampshire soldier who carved the symbol of the “Liberty Tree” on his powder horn? (He can be tracked through pension applications he filed as a veteran.) Who was the author of an unsigned diary who clearly was a wheelwright and who lived close enough to Worcester to go there and back in a day? (He is Jabez Briggs of Sutton, Mas­sachusetts, and he was tracked down through his diary entry for May 11, 1791, on which day his wife “had a son.”)

In establishing the historical context for objects, historians earned their keep. If the decorative arts curator identifies an object as a Duncan Phyfe chair, what can we say about it that fits the chair into the stream of artisan history? (A good deal, if we turn to the recent scholarship on the commercialization of the crafts in early nineteenth century.) Why have numerous girls’ samplers from the 1770s up to the 1830s survived? What does this tell us about women and the “domestic sphere?” (Linda Kerber, one of our scholar consultants, puzzled this out with us.) A half dozen engravings sym­bolically portraying America in female form lead to an important question: Is this the pattern for symbolism of the period or is the collection eccentric? (It is the pattern; Brother Jonathan, a male symbol, does not come in until about 1810 and Uncle Sam not until 1830.) Another piece of the jigsaw puzzle falls into place.

At key stages of the work on the exhibit, a set of scholar specialists—Linda Ker­ber, University of Iowa; Helen Tanner, Center for the Study of the American Indian, Newberry Library; Gary Wills, Northwestern University; John Kaminski and Richard Leffler, University of Wisconsin; and Fath Davis Ruffins and Donald Kloster, Smithsonian Institution—reviewed the scholarship.

Attitudes both of museums to curators and of academic historians to museum are undergoing a long overdue change. The Chicago Historical Society reversed a standing policy to display at the front of the ‘We the People” exhibit a panel crediting the curators—in my case with my affiliation with Northern Illinois University. The Society’s new policy states that “the attribution of creative and scholarly work is important to both the creators and the public.” Meanwhile major scholarly journals have decided to review museum exhibits. As David Thelen, editor of the Journal of American History, writes, “Museum reviews strike me as an essential feature for a journal of record that seeks to reflect the diverse ways historians practice their craft. More, they implicitly raise the central issue of audience that can free us from specialization by forcing reviewers to ask how past is introduce to present. If we could persuade our readers that it is valuable to consider how to introduce their/our subjects to nonspecialized, noncoerced (unlike freshman survey) audience, we might widen our understanding of our own subjects and of history generally in many ways.” Amen.

The rewards of being a museum curator go beyond the recognition of other scholars, welcome as that is. There is something very special about seeing viewers look at the results of scholarship and hearing their responses. A father lifts up a young son for a better look at an Indian ceremonial apron: “Yes, they were here first.” A black man in blue jeans stares at the depiction of Paul Cuffe, the African-American seaman who became a wealthy sea captain, an turns to his wife, “Did you know the were free blacks back then?” A man looks at the newspaper with the first printing of the Constitution and then, beside it, at the Bill of Rights: “I didn’t know there was a fight to get the Bill Rights into the Constitution.” Could it be that ordinary people seeing how ordinary people made history in another day will come away from We the People with a sense of their own capacity make history?