The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg

by Richard Handler, Eric Gable

The New History in an Old Museum is an exploration of "historical truth" as presented at Colonial Williamsburg. More than a detailed history of a museum and tourist attraction, it examines the packaging of American history, and consumerism and the manufacturing of cultural beliefs. Through extensive fieldwork—including numerous site visits, interviews with employees and visitors, and archival research—Richard Handler and Eric Gable illustrate how corporate sensibility blends with pedagogical principle in Colonial Williamsburg to blur the lines between education and entertainment, patriotism and revisionism.
During much of its existence, the "living museum" at Williamsburg has been considered a patriotic shrine, celebrating the upscale lifestyles of Virginia’s colonial-era elite. But in recent decades a new generation of social historians has injected a more populist and critical slant to the site’s narrative of nationhood. For example, in interactions with museum visitors, employees now relate stories about the experiences of African Americans and women, stories that several years ago did not enter into descriptions of life in Colonial Williamsburg. Handler and Gable focus on the way this public history is managed, as historians and administrators define historiographical policy and middle-level managers train and direct front-line staff to deliver this "product" to the public. They explore how visitors consume or modify what they hear and see, and reveal how interpreters and craftspeople resist or acquiesce in being managed. By deploying the voices of these various actors in a richly textured narrative, The New History in an Old Museum highlights the elements of cultural consensus that emerge from this cacophony of conflict and negotiation.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Grad School, Museums, American History, School, 20th Century

272 pages, Paperback

First published July 17, 1997

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is frustrating. The authors present themselves as dispassionate anthropologists, which excuses them from explaining their own beliefs or opinions, yet they have a clear and strong bias. Their basic claim - that Colonial Williamsburg's adherence to its corporate line made it challenging for them to really teach true social history - is reasonable, apparently supported by their research, and honestly, not that surprising. To claim that CW's interpretive strategy "destroys history" is extreme and requires more to support it than their opinion that only a critical, radical historiography has any worth. They mention a criticism of their work by a CW vice president that calls it "left-wing carping at the corporate hierarchy" and although I tend to fall on the liberal, academic side of things myself, the critic has a point. I read this book because I was interested in learning more about CW's issues, but this really reads more like a platform for the authors to belabor their foregone conclusion that CW, and by extension most history museums, are useless frauds. They describe several times how they held "training seminars" for interpretive staff, where they insisted that their methods were ineffective and wrong, and then gloat about how CW employees couldn't or wouldn't acknowledge the points they were making... come on. The authors do raise some important issues but they present them in such a way that they don't seem at all interested in whether the situation can or will be improved.

[Hillary Borders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for Public History Seminar

[Catherine Hutinett · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an older book so I can't be too mad, but their methods are dismissive of history and are too focused on reaching a neat answer for something that doesn't require one.

[Tim Milligan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't expecting a leftist critique of management policies, but they made some good points

[Barbie S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colonial Williamsburg in early 1990s trying to reinvent itself. Early “woke” museum.

[Kate O’Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who has never been to colonial williamsburg but grew up hearing about it, this book was interesting to palate. i think that if you are a museum scholar or living history nerd, this is perfect for you! otherwise, you may not get much out of it (its incredibly academic, BUT points for not having jargon!). i enjoyed the first half of the book, but chps 6-on were hard to make myself read

[Thomas Mackie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have been following the articles by Richard Handler and Erick Gable for some year now as a staff member in the museum community. There was some response by Dr. Carson of Colonial Williamsburg but I believe there needs to be more. This book, which reviews almost ten years of field research at CW, is anything but a neutral position. By their own admission in the final chapter, they claim that all anthropology is strictly Boasian Relativistic. It that expression that exposes what I believe to be their weakness in studying a museum of western culture. The definition of that theory is anti-western at its root. At first in early articles, I noticed the regular use of “colonial” in ways in which I was unfamiliar. I realized that they assume all western governments to be oppressive and the instigators of war. All cultures are equal but western. They completely lack a grasp of the power of popular myth in historical topics with which museums must deal. Museum scholars and historians do follow that they construct history and that history is not the actual past but a studied replica of what they think the past looked like. Not all efforts to do this are equal.
They have made good critical points about administration needing to be consistent. If a historic site glorifies the idea of democracy and fairness in their marketing then their personnel policies should follow that ideal too. Overall the treatment is not academically honest and of limited value in improving the field.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Read this for a college class. Pretty neat, if you're interested in CW.

[Meghan Davison · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read for anyone who has had the privilege of living next to Colonial Williamsburg.

[Michelle Davison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a good critique of the Colonial Williamsburg museum. Not may solutions are offered, however, and it's not clear how the museum would meet community expectations.

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

too critical but provides important information of the dissemination of history in public history sites

[Mackenzie Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Class prep.