So What REALLY Happened?

That's my question after reading today's article.

#26 -- Melodrama, Pantomime or Portrayal? by Gaynor Kavanagh

This article brought up some interesting stuff. Some great points.

I think the thing that stuck with me the most is the curator's ability to distort the past through exhibition and reconstruction of locations/atmospheres in history. Primary and secondary source materials being gathered. The ones you want people to see, the message you want to get across.

It made me step back and think. Woah... so technically the curator has the potential to have a lot of influence over how I perceive the world and its past.

That's crazy!

Kavanagh says, "Even a poor museum exhibition can elicit some response from say a grandparent to a child or between children."

At first this bothered me, but then I read on.

Of course there could be curators who don't attempt to rigorously pursue actual truth and wish to fabricate a story of the past, but hopefully they are rare and wouldn't be hired in the first place. Kavanagh's point was that "there will always be a plurality of interpretation."

He says, "For example, a reconstruction of a 19th century farmhouse in a museum context cannot afford absolute recreation of life in such a dwelling for visitors." He goes on to explain that the knowledge of how life was for the people in the farmhouse can be presented in the exhibit, but the experience will never be perfectly recreated. Because interpretation is something that's so slippery, and also beautiful at the same time. No two takes on something will ever be exactly the same, so any reproduction of history or art will always be a fresh presentation.

Another quote by Kavanagh to further this point (can you tell I thought he was legit?): "This is what makes history so exciting. If offered as a challenging and thought-provoking subject it can prompt the visitor to question and challenge too. [And here's where the quote from earlier comes in] For however rigorously professional the approach, there will always be a plurality of interpretation."

Kavanagh concludes that it's good for history to be controversial, but that it should include a striving towards a "strong sense of memory and record," and that it does a museum no good to ignore that need.

But I will leave you with the first sentence of his conclusion, because I like it.

"History, whether in museums, books, television, programmes or site records, will never be beyond controversy. It should glory in this."

Boom. Don't stress about the lack of absolute truth, just accept it how it is! is kinda how I take that. Good advice to a girl who always wants to find absolute truth.

Til tomorrow!
J