Archives: Political Posters

In preparation for the upcoming final I recently finished reading Susan Tschabrum’s "Off the Wall and into a Drawer: Managing a Research Collection of Political Posters.” The article is a great introduction to dealing with graphic collections that do not fit securely into an archives collection policy (and contains a lot of information about cataloging and access challenges that I will include in my paper). Being about political posters specifically it also contained content about the social meaning of these posters that may be beyond my paper topic.

Tschabrum argued that because the people who create many political posters are advertising unpopular, controversial, and occasionally illegal activity, they offer invaluable insight to those groups. With marginalized groups, this is a huge advantage to studying political posters. My main concern with the article is that Tschabrum does not really discuss the negative social implications of political posters or the effects that this has on archives. The use of propaganda has a long history connected to political posters and complicates their meanings. This does not lessen the research value of the posters, but I think people should be careful when looking at this material. Since Tschabrum took on the job of promoting political posters, I understand why she emphasized the social responsibility to save political posters over their more tumultuous history.

Toward the end of the article Tschabrum stated, “Popular culture studies thrive on the careful consideration of the cultural detritus of industrial society – postcards, comic books, travel brochures, TV commercials, and so on – whose lowly status, fleeting nature, and/or ubiquity speak volumes about the social groups that made and used them.” (323) On one hand, this is a common defense of studying ephemeral-type material. However, since these are the types of material I enjoy studying, it is great to find the words coming from someone writing specifically about archives.

Reading

Tschabrun, Susan. "Off the Wall and into a Drawer: Managing a Research Collection of Political Posters," American Archivist 66 (Fall/Winter 2003): 303-324. 

Archives: Thinking About the Future

With the end of archives class approaching faster, our readings have taken a turn to the future. As an avid science fiction fan, I love contemplating the future. My historian side is equally interested in how past people did the same thing. Perusing Archives in the News I was delighted with the article “100 Year Old Time Capsule Opened In Oklahoma City.”

This particular time capsule contained a variety of documents and artifacts, not different from the types of things that museums and archives collect. Judging from the images the time capsule did a decent job protecting the material, probably due to being buried under concrete in a church basement and not in the great outdoors.

Though access is by far the most important purpose of archives, there is some truth, and a good deal of romance, to archivists needing to speculate about what people of the future will need.    One of the concerns with digital technologies in archives is the limited lifespan of different formats. In 1913, The Ladies Aid Society was aware enough of changing technologies to include an Edison Phonograph in the capsule with their recordings.

Most documents in archives were not created with the future in mind. Nor are most documents in archives meant for specific individuals, as are the letters from the time capsule. Archives continuously re-interpret their collections for researchers in the present. Sometimes archives users imagine that they are in a time capsule when the actuality is that the material they are researching have gone though many hands. A feeling of discovery and nostalgia are inherent in time capsules, but the research value of their contents is limited. Regardless, for archives thinking about how the field will develop, time capsules represent moments when people in the past thought about, and tried to develop solutions to the same thing.

Archives: Advocacy and Education

Last weekend I traveled to Washington and, within the slew of museum visits, found booths at the Air and Space Museum promoting the archives. Air and Space Museum Archives’ representatives had set up two tables close to the entrance of the building. 

One table promoted the collections. This table displayed selected documents and the folder and box from which the documents originated. The display exuded the feeling that the box is a treasure trove of interesting things, but did not highlight any one particular document. The second table promoted preservation and sought to educate visitors about how to take care of family papers. This table had a few posters on preservation and conservation and handouts. The handouts came in sleeves (nice touch to set a good example) and contained basic information about handling, storage, and environmental conditions.

Though I enjoyed the tables they did not seem to have a lot of traffic. With how chaotic the Air and Space Museum gets on a Saturday afternoon, the archives tables easily faded into the crowd. Getting people to look down at papers while their heads are looking up at the spaceships is a challenge. Being in a museum that focuses on visitors looking at things, I think some visitors may not have wanted to stop by a table where people are looking at them look at the stuff. Some type of permanent rotating exhibit could be more fitting with visitor expectations, but then it would not come with the same type of experience of being able to talk with the staff and grasp the documents.

Despite the challenges, this type of display is a good way to combine of advocating for the archives with educational outreach. Most successfully, this type of exhibition of archival material and outreach provided the museum visitors who stopped to look a chance to see the institution’s inner workings.

Reading Response: The Future of Material Culture

Future material culture studies could go on many paths, as this week’s readings attest. Whether it’s integrating material culture into scholarly articles, bringing theory to material culture, or taking the study of material culture outside of history, these readings show some possible paths.

Cary Carson’s “Material Culture History: The Scholarship Nobody Knows” reflected on the state of material culture studies. Carson points out how material culture scholars tend to import the theoretical foundations of their ideas. Carson places scholars of material culture within the larger umbrella of scholars of American history. Material culture studies has been an isolated field and I appreciate the idea of inclusion. From our past readings, Ulrich is a good example of this type of history: using material culture to tell history and not worrying about crossing disciplinary boundaries.

“The Gendered Environment of the Corporate Workplace, 1880-1930” Angel Kwolek-Folland provides an example of how traditional historical scholarship could integrate material culture studies. Kwolek-Folland concludes that the structures of office buildings reinforced domestic gender roles between male and female workers even when doing so went against the ideal work environment. The parallels between public work life and private family life shows how cultures operate in seemingly different spaces.

Devon Elliott et al.’s “New Old Things” questioned how historians could collaborate with other fields and find new, interdisciplinary ways to study material culture. This research utilized 3-d printers and model-making to replicate historic magic tricks. While I think that 3-d printing is a fad at the moment, I loved the way that this group approached a historical question about senses and communication. The idea that doing research can also be like playing, and might involve failure is powerful.

As much as I tried to give it a chance, Bill Brown’s “Commodity Nationalism and the Lost Object” did not do anything for me. On one hand, I think its great that high-theory people are getting into looking at material culture. On the other hand, the public historian in me despises Brown’s writing style. Brown studies the novelty collectible items that proliferated after 9/11 and relates these items to the issues of nationalized commodities. Brown’s sources are almost entirely theoreticians, rarely are they people who produce or consume the material in question.

One thing this weeks readings did was highlight the divide between academic historians and public historians who work outside of the academe. Carson emphasized that material culture scholars need to be involved in telling a national story. I believe this task is one that public historians dealing with material culture are fit to try. Reading Brown’s article, I get a sense that the theory which grounds much social and cultural history is narrow when considering the whole of human culture. “New Old Things” offers a good lesson for new material culture studies, namely that it may involve collaborating and looking outside of the theoretical base that history offers.


Readings

Brown, Bill. “Commodity Nationalism and the Lost Object,” in Hasselstein, et al., eds, The Pathos of Authenticity: American Passions of the Real, 33-52. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2010.

Carson, Cary. “Material Culture History: The Scholarship Nobody Knows” in American Material Culture: The Shape of the Field, 401-428. Knoxville: U. of Tennessee Press, 1997.

Elliott, Devon, Robert MacDougall, William J. Turkel, “New Old Things: Fabrication, Physical Computing, and Experiment in Historical Practice,” Canadian Journal of Communication 37, no.1 (April 2012): 121-128.

Kwolek-Folland, Angel. “The Gendered Environment of the Corporate Workplace, 1880-1930,” in Katherine Martinez and Kenneth L. Ames, eds. The Material Culture of Gender: The Gender of Material Culture, 157-179. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997.

Exhibit Caption, Final

Here is the final edited version of my exhibit caption:

This horn supposedly belonged to Edward Braddock, a British General in the French and Indian War. Robert Tempest acquired this horn after Braddock’s death in 1755. Engraving their names and adding metal fixtures, five generations of Tempests turned this horn into a canvas documenting their personal connection to colonial America. 

I kept to a straightforward, chronological history of the horn that reflects back to colonial America at the end. Referencing how the Tempests altered the horn and used it to connect them to the past brings in the commemorative aspects of the horn. (And, it's exactly 50 words. Yay!)

Archives: Power

Randall Jimerson’s “Embracing the Power of Archives” is a thought provoking reflection on the responsibilities of archives. Using metaphors of a temple, a prison, and a restaurant, Jimerson explains the different ways that people understand archives and the power that archives hold. The ample pop culture references made Jimerson a fun read, but more importantly, he manages to convey complex ideas with simple language.

On the rise of postmodern thought Jimerson states, “There is a fundamental, if unpleasant, truth in this postmodern critique. Unfortunately it is obscured in writings of many postmodernists by jargon, convoluted syntactical gyrations, and a good dose of claptrap.” (22) On one hand, I completely love this statement. On the other, I am tempted to analyze Jimerson’s idealistic suggestions in light of everyday archival practices.

Jimerson’s first suggestion is for archives to abandon the pretense of neutrality and objectivity. The ability to be purely objective is not possible. However, representing diverse segments of society does require that archivist not get too caught up with one political perspective. For Jimerson, the guise of objectivity hides political decisions, yet I feel like embracing the politics could very well lead to the same situation.

The benefit of acknowledging biases is that it becomes easier for society to hold archive accountable. As an ideal, archival accountability sounds great. In practice, what does it mean to hold an institution accountable? There are many answers. Accountability could mean having open board meetings, letting people have a say in collecting practices, or it could influence staff procedures.

Probably the most crucial of Jimerson’s suggestions is for archivists to recognize that that they hold power and are responsible to society. An aspect of archival power missing from this article is that people need to learn about archival practices for any of these suggestions to stick. If people think that archives are supposed to keep everything and archivist know that this is not practical financially or for users, Jimerson’s suggestions could cause more strife than most archives can deal with.

Reading

Jimerson, Randall. “Embracing the Power of Archives,” American Archivist 69, no. 1 (Spring - Summer, 2006): 19-32.

Exhibit Caption Selections

Having made all the selections, there were a few things that stood out. Universally, I want the caption to tell me something that I cannot say about the object from looking at it. This might be one of those ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ things, but I try to point those moments out in the explanations. I also want the caption to tell me something about the object’s background: when it was made, who made it, or where it came from. Because all of our objects commemorate different things and were made in different times for different reasons this is especially important.

Chelsea
2. A Collector’s Item
During the Bicentennial boom, manufacturers produced America-themed items to market to the patriotic public of the mid-1970s. This McCormick Distilling Company decanter belonged to a set of seven Revolutionary War figurines called the Patriot Series, including: Betsy Ross, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson.

This caption tells me where and when the decanter originated. Also, knowing that this is just one of the set and seeing the list of who else got a decanter makes me imagine what those others look like.

Stephen
2. This commemorative block from the HMS Minden, the ship where Francis Scott Key was believed to have composed The Star Spangled Banner was a high status commemorative object. President Lincoln was known to have had a cane made of the same material.

I like the way that this caption immediately identifies with the object and lets the reader know the object was once part of a ship. The detail about Lincoln is novel and gives readers the impression of how significant this type of object is to people.

Lyell
3.  The Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, engraved on this badge worn at a 1941 Elks Lodge convention, took on increasingly symbolic roles leading up to the country’s participation in World War II. Fittingly, the badge eventually entered the collection of the late Manfred Anson, an escapee from Nazi Germany who cherished the values associated with these symbols of freedom.

This caption ties itself together nicely. I like how it goes from symbols-of-freedom, pre-war, during war, then back to symbols-of-freedom. The information related to the collector gives me background I would never get just looking at the object.

Kelsey
1.  This commemorative flag resembled miniature flags sold at Independence Hall in 1898 by Betsy Ross’s granddaughters.  The miniature flags sold at Independence Hall helped raise donations for the preservation of the American Flag house, where it is believed that Betsy Ross created the first American flag during the Revolutionary War. This commemorative flag celebrated the Betsy Ross story and that moment in American women’s history.

I was really torn with this one. I liked #3 and how it references the bicentennial, but ended up choosing this one because I would never get the Betsy Ross connection on my own. I like the way the back-story is more narrative-based. Women are also lacking in all of our objects so we need this one to represent.

Sharron
1.  Taking a drink from this porcelain gem was not even a remote consideration in the 18th century.  This commemorative pitcher was a physical way of memoralizing American Independence.  Crafted in North Staffforshire, England almost exclusively to meet American demand, this symbolic pitcher celebrates both American Independence and the brotherly bond between America’s first President, George Washington and his French protégé Marquis de Lafayette – a bond that lasted until Washington’s death in 1799.

I chose this object because it covers where the object was created. The irony of England manufacturing American goods is not overstated, but also is clear for people who read it and gives them something to muse over while looking at the pitcher.