Colonial Williamsburg and the practice of interpretive planning in American History Museums

Public Historian

Volumn 20, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 11-52

  Carson, Cary ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 62449126295     PISSN: 02723433     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3379773     Document Type: Review

References (64)

1. Tamara Jones, "Living History or Undying Racism?" Washington Post, October 11, 1994
2. Charrell Walters, Channel 12 News broadcast, Norfolk, Virginia, October 10, 1994
3. Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., Presence of the Past: A History of the Preservation Movement in the United States Before Williamsburg (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1965)
4. Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., Preservation Comes of Age, From Williamsburg to the National Trust, 1926-1949, 2 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981)
5. Walter Muir Whitehill, Independent Historical Societies (Boston: The Boston Athenaeum, 1962)
6. The familiar story is well told in Philip Kopper, Colonial Williamsburg (New York: Abrams, 1986), 136-209
7. and Hosmer, Preservation Comes of Age (vol. 1), 11-73
8. Raymond Rich Associates, "Draft Statement of Certain Guiding Principles for Colonial Williamsburg, Inc.," February 8, 1941
9. "Special and Periodic Events," July 25, 1941
10. "Draft Statement of Certain Guiding Principles," February 8, 1941. The reverence for authenticity at Colonial Williamsburg and, by implication, at other outdoor history museums is anatomized in Richard Handler and Eric Gable, The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997), 78-101
11. "Special and Periodic Events," July 25, 1941
12. "Conversation with Christy Matthews about the Recreated Estate Sale of Slaves at Wetherburn's Tavern on October 10, 1994," interview, September 25, 1997 (Colonial Williamsburg archive, Williamsburg, Va.). Matthews gives equal credit for the idea of the auction to Marcel Riddick, an interpreter who later moved to the outdoor history museum at Conner Prairie, Indiana
13. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 465-73
14. Barry Macintosh, The National Park Service Moves into Historical Interpretation," The Public Historian 9, no. 2 (Spring 1987): 51-63
15. All Chatelain references cited in Macintosh, "The National Park Service Moves into Historical Interpretation," 53-55
16. Others did. Frederick L. Rath, Jr., who began his own distinguished National Park Service career at Morristown National Historical Park in 1937, later remembered discovering there "a new concept of a national historical park ... a fresh approach to preservation practices and history education [my italics]. It was known as the Master Plan approach, and it brought together experts in a variety of fields" ("Local History and the New Deal" in Local History, National Heritage: Reflections on the History of AASLH [Nashville, Tenn.: American Association for State and Local History, 1991], 35)
17. Hosmer, Preservation Comes of Age (vol. 2), 866-952
18. Local History, National Heritage, 37-63
19. John Micklethvvait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Witch Doctors. Making Sense of the Management Gurus (New York: Random House, 1996), 95-113, 142-48
20. Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. Reconceiving Roles for Planning, Plans, Planners (New York: The Free Press, 1994)
21. Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957)
22. Edward P. Alexander, The Interpretation Program at Colonial Williamsburg (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1971)
23. Alexander, Interpretation Program, 14-21
24. J. Douglas Smith, position paper, "Colonial Williamsburg's Purpose," August 21, 1975 (Colonial Williamsburg archive, Williamsburg, Va.)
25. Peter N. Stearns, "The New Social History: An Overview," in James B. Gardner and George Rollie Adams, eds., Ordinary People and Everyday Life: Perspectives on the New Social History (Nashville, Tenn.: American Association for State and Local History, 1983), 3-21
26. Michael Kammen, ed., The Past Before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980)
27. Cary Carson, "Living Museums of Everyman's History," Harvard Magazine 83, no. 6 (July-August 1981): 22-32
28. Jay Anderson, Time Machines: The World of Living History (Nashville, Tenn.: American Association for State and Local History, 1984), 17-81
29. Warren Leon and Margaret Piatt, "Living History Museums," in Warren Leon and Roy Rosenzweig, eds., History Museums in the United States. A Critical Assessment (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 64-97
30. Cary Carson, "No End to Social History," Colonial Williamsburg Research Review 4, no. 2 (Summer 1993), 1, 3, 9
31. James Deetz, "The Reality of the Pilgrim Fathers," Natural History 78, no. 11 (November 1969): 32-44
32. Stephen Eddy Snow, Performing the Pilgrims. A Study of Ethnohistorical Role Playing at Plimoth Plantation (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993)
33. Old Sturbridge Village, NEH grant no. RO-18523, "Community in Change: Interpreting the New Social History in an Outdoor Museum," 1979
34. NEH grant no. RO-21701, "Tradition and Transformation: Rural Economic Life in Central New England, 1790-1850," 1987
35. Leon and Piatt, "Living History Museums," 65-71, 81-82
36. Jack Larkin, "What Time Is It? Why we re-create the New England of the 1830s," Old Sturbridge Visitor 37, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 10-11
37. Robert L. Plavnick, St. Mary's City: A Plan for the Preservation and Development of Maryland's First Capital (St. Mary's City, Md.: St. Mary's City Commission, 1970)
38. Carlisle H. Humelsine to Administrative Officers, memorandum, January 7, 1977
39. Suzanne B. Schell, "Self-Study: The National Endowment for the Humanities Reports on Its Special Grant Initiatives to State Historical Societies," History News 38, no. 10 (October 1983): 13-16
40. Kenneth Ames, "The Promise of Common Agenda," History News 44, no. 3 (May/June 1989): 8-12
41. Schell, "Self-Study," 15; William G. Swartchild, Jr., "How Shared Policy Making Can Work," Museum News 59, no. 6 (May/June 1981): 56-57, 82, 85
42. G. Rollie Adams, policy statement, "Exhibition Development at Strong Museum," February 25, 1993 (Strong Museum archive, Rochester, N.Y.)
43. National Park System Advisory Board, Humanities Review Committee, report by James O. Horton and Laura Feller, "Humanities and the National Parks: Adapting to Change," 1994 (History Division files, National Park Service, Washington, D.C.); Revision of the National Park Service's Thematic Framework ([Washington: National Park Service], 1996)
44. [David Dunatchik and Richard Kohen], Interpretive Planning. Interpretation and Visitor Services Guideline, NPS-6 (Washington: National Park Service, 1996)
45. [Connie Rudd and Joanne Hanley], The Road Ahead. A Strategy to Achieve Excellence in Interpretation and Education in the National Park Service, Northeast Region (Philadelphia, National Park Service, 1997)
46. [Cary Carson, Kevin Kelly, and Dennis O'Toole], Teaching History at Colonial Williamsburg ([Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg], 1985)
47. Handler and Gable, The New History in an Old Museum, 39, 96-7, 131-2
48. Cary Carson, "Lost in the Fun House: A Commentary on Anthropologists' First Contact with History Museums, Journal of American History 81, no. 1 (June 1994): 137-50, includes a description of the collaborative process followed in developing the latest plan. It also invited the anthropologists to come back for another look before their book went to press. They took a pass
49. Cary Carson, ed., Becoming Americans: Our Struggle To Be Both Free and Equal. A Plan of Thematic Interpretation (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1998)
50. The department of interpretive education prepared an accompanying primer for interpreters, The Challenge of Interpretation (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1996)
51. Randi Korn & Associates, report, "Evaluation of the Becoming Americans Theme and Choosing Revolution Story: Summary of Findings," November 1996
52. also Korn & Associates report on the summer experiment, "An Evaluation of the Becoming Americans Theme," September 1994 (Colonial Williamsburg archive, Williamsburg, Va.)
53. D. Stephen Elliott to Education Division Staff, memoranda and organization chart, September 2 and 16, 1997 (Colonial Williamsburg archive, Williamsburg, Va.)
54. First proposed in Cary Carson to Charles R. Longsworth, memorandum, "A New Way to Show the Historic Area to Visitors to Colonial Williamsburg," October 26, 1984 (Colonial Williamsburg archive, Williamsburg, Va.)
55. Colonial Williamsburg Journal 19, no. 3 (Spring 1997), special issue introducing a new research, collections, and conservation center
56. Cary Carson, "Colonial Williamsburg Builds New Research and Education Campus," Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Research Review 7 (1997): 1, 40
57. Teaching History (1985), 2
58. Richard Rabinowitz, "Story Time and Exhibit Time: Designing an Interpretive Historical Exhibit," Culturefront [New York Council for the Humanities] (Summer 1997): 57-65, 72, 95; Rabinowitz interview, April 2, 1997
59. Graham Hood, The Governor's Palace in Williamsburg. A Cultural History (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg, 1991)
60. Mark St. John Erickson, "Curious Englishman leaves respected mark in CW history," Newport News Daily Press, February 9, 1998
61. see Michlethwait and Wooldridge on CSC Index in Witch Doctors, 23-42
62. Harte-Hanks Market Research, quantitative report, "Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Profile," July 1997
63. Becoming Americans (1998), flyleaf
64. Monique Braxton, Channel 10 News broadcast, Norfolk, Virginia, October 10, 1994