Exhibiting Difficult Topics: Strategies for Content and Design

(Please note the following is an abbreviated version of the original paper that was written for a Tufts University museum studies graduate course: Proseminar in Interpretation with professor Cynthia Robinson, in the spring of 2018. Click here to download the full paper.)

After the 2016 election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States, museums began to respond to controversial legislation put forth by the new administration, as well as cultural tensions and public backlash arising from them. In response to Trump’s travel 2017 ban on several predominantly Muslim countries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art replaced multiple works of art on display with artwork by Muslim artists from the countries on Trump’s list. Furthermore, the Met added labels to these works stating that the pieces were created by artists from nations whose citizens are no longer allowed entry into the United States, and that the artworks were displayed to support the ideal of America as a free and welcoming nation. 1 Meanwhile, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College took a different approach to evoke a similar message. They covered or removed pieces of art that had been given to the museum by immigrants in order to illustrate the magnitude of the contributions that immigrants have made in the museum and to take a stand against banning any immigrant group.

These are responsive solutions to immediate conflicts, but how can museums devote more space and resources to topics that our country is grappling with? And in what ways can museums deploy discussions of difficult topics to encourage citizens to understand the darker histories which have given rise to these issues, and work to secure justice and equality today?

Defining Difficult Topics

Museum educators and interpreters, as well as educational theorists, have produced multiple scholarly articles and books which define what might be considered a “difficult” topic within museum exhibitions. Museum studies expert, Roger I. Simon, and museum education researcher, Jennifer Bonnell, from the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Education, contend that difficult exhibits are those that “[elicit] the burden of ‘negative emotions,’” such as guilt, shame, grief, anger, horror.” They cite particular situations in which these emotions might emerge, and they often depend on the individual’s relationship to the ideas presented: from feelings of complicity in one’s culture perpetrating violence against another, or the stress of a visitor identifying with the sufferers of oppression due to his or her own intimate experience with the same history or trauma. Based on these ideas, it becomes clear that the type of subjects that would bring up such anxious and tense feelings very often stem from “difficult histories.”

In her fundamental work on this subject, Julia Rose, Director of the West Baton Rouge Museum and museum interpreter, defines “difficult histories” as “histories of oppression, violence, and trauma,” and includes histories of war, genocide, slavery, disease, and racism. Most significantly, Rose points out that not only are these histories “hard to tell because of the pain and suffering experienced by the victims, but also because the histories, however long ago, continue to impact our lives today.” Often these histories involve issues we are still tackling with 6 in our contemporary world, such as the oppression of a particular culture in the past and the associated discrimination and marginalization of that population today. In America, for example, we are still dealing with the impact that our country’s history of slavery has had on our current social systems, including the racism and inequality which manifests throughout multiple levels of society and evolves into the contemporary issue of mass incarceration. Difficult exhibitions can bring these difficult histories to the forefront, particularly those histories that have been avoided or ignored.

Histories of subjugated populations are often eclipsed by the wider collective memories held by a dominant culture. Annie Anderson, Manager of Research and Public Programming for Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, acknowledges that difficult histories can disrupt a “master narrative,” and thus run the risk of upsetting the public and offending the memory of certain communities. Elevating the historical perspective and experience of an oppressed culture could run counter to what a visitor may have learned in school, or a relied-upon history supported by prevailing social and cultural narratives. This may cause resistance and anxiety. As a result, exhibiting difficult topics and histories can risk a deterrent to learning for some visitors, but they also simultaneously create a space for advocacy and inclusion of the marginalized.

 How then can museums present difficult topics ethically and responsibly? What strategies can museums use to provide a productive learning environment for their visitors, while also respecting authentic content, and, if the history or topic surrounds a marginalized population, respecting and honoring that particular culture?

Through researching recent exhibitions around the globe, a number of strategies for interpretation and display stand out: the use of personal narratives in exhibition content, the engaging of community involvement during exhibition planning, and the combining of factual evidence with reflective interpretation within exhibition design and display. These strategies work toward achieving the goal of interpreting difficult topics ethically and effectively in order to produce empathetic, educational, and transformative visitor experiences.

Personal Narratives in Exhibition Content and Interpretation

One of the most prevalent interpretation strategies that surfaces in exploring case studies of sensitive and difficult subjects is the use of personal stories and first-person accounts in the exhibition content. These personalized narratives were envisioned by French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas as a “face-to-face encounter” that occurs between the visitor and the subject represented, in which the visitor is able to understand the full human experience, or “personhood,” of another individual and respond with empathy. Julia Rose asserts that this is 10 accomplished through the use of “multidimensional representations,” which demonstrate the fully human nature of the subject’s life and experience by defining their relationships within society, family, and culture. This is in contrast to more one-dimensional descriptions of a 11 historic person that might refer only to their job or social position, ie. “slave” or “wife,” or provide only a name without any further story or context about the individual’s history. Personal narratives that provide a more complete story behind a name or title can lead the visitor to acknowledge the significance of another person’s life and trauma, and find a universal connection with another human being from a different time, culture, and circumstances, rather than seeing him or her as just the “other.”

Surviving: The Voices of Ravensbruck, Kulturen, Sweden.

An object-centered exhibition can accomplish this by highlighting the voices behind the objects. In 2006, the Kulturen, a history and culture museum in Sweden, opened an exhibition called Surviving: The Voices of Ravensbruck, which focuses on the experiences of women imprisoned at the Nazi concentration camp Ravensbruck in Germany. The exhibition consists of a variety of artifacts, from written recipes and poems on scraps of paper and miniature handwritten calendars, to small dolls made from remnants of smuggled fabric and a small cross made of metal bolts, all of which had been hidden by the women during their captivity. The exhibit explores these objects from the perspective of their creators, displaying them alongside quotes taken directly from interviews conducted with these now liberated women by the exhibition curator in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some artifacts are displayed in wall cases, with quotes from these interviews visible on the adjacent walls, while others are in drawers lining the exhibition wall, which visitors can open and examine more closely. Here, the direct quotations are placed as labels next to individual or collections of objects, prioritizing the women’s lived experience over the curatorial voice of the museum. These first person accounts give deeper meaning and significance to the artifacts, and allow visitors to have an intimate encounter with these women and their stories of imprisonment and survival.

Bonnell and Simon discuss the museum’s objectives and goals for this exhibition in an article for Museums and Society . They comment that the display and interpretation, oriented around objects and first-person narrative, places “emphasis on a connection across experience that is centered in feelings.” The individual stories are 13 multidimensional, typically describing how, why, and sometimes for whom these objects were crafted, and what they meant to these women. This creates powerful testimony and more complete identities of these survivors by focusing on how they were able to overcome the horrible reality of their situation through creating forbidden personal items.

Community Involvement in Exhibition Planning

When planning exhibitions revolving around difficult topics, it is important to take external stakeholders into account from the community, especially if the exhibit delves into social and cultural issues within that particular community or group. In Letting Go?: Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World, exhibition development consultant Kathleen McLean suggests, “Museums need to stretch beyond existing channels of communication and find ways to include visitors more interactively, even in the articulation of core questions. Besides conducting focus groups to ask visitors what they think about our ideas, we should be figuring out how we can bring them to the table as questions are posed and ideas developed.”

 Collaborating with community members early on in 29 planning process should be prioritized, especially with regards to potentially risky subjects, in order to identify what these communities want and need to see addressed within an exhibit that focuses on their stories.

All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50 , Oakland Museum of California.

In 2016, the Oakland Museum of California set out to create an exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party’s founding in Oakland, with the intention of tying this history to urgent contemporary issues as part of the museum’s larger mission. The exhibit was deeply resonant within the social climate of its opening in October of 30 that year, at which time the country was dealing with extremely high racial tensions stemming from multiple incidences of violence and police brutality against African Americans. The ending of police brutality was also central objective of the Black Panther Party, which made the topic potentially sensitive for former Party members and communities historically and currently affected by racial violence. According to Lisa Silberstein, head of experience development for 31 this exhibit, the OMCA “understood that the story of the Black Panther Party had not been told by a museum in a way that reflected the aims and intentions of of the organizations as a catalyst for social change.” So to present the topic in a way that honored these social justice objectives 32 and their continued relevance today, the museum reached out to the local community to include their perspectives and stories.

The museum primarily employed collaborative conversations with communities of external stakeholders at the start of their exhibition planning, and utilized those conversations, instead of curatorial choice alone, to drive the design and content of the exhibition. Silberstein specifies that the museum utilized “creative convening,” which invited subject matter experts such as former Party members and activists to the planning table to ask them what the museum would need to talk about in putting together an exhibit about the Black Panther Party. Another community engagement strategy was inspired by practices of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience: in a series of “listening circles,” the museum sat down with different groups of stakeholders- including internal staff, governing board members and community teens and young adults- during the planning process and discussed interpretation and design strategies for the exhibition that would engage audiences.

 During listening sessions, the Panther’s “Ten Points,” a list of the group’s ideals for their community, was read aloud, and received a strong response about the sense of relevance the text has today. Based directly on this experience, the exhibition team decided to display the full manifesto in large text on a prominent exhibit wall. Another design choice was 35 direct result of community input: the choice of whether and how to display a Klu Klux Klan robe from the museum’s collection within the exhibition. The exhibit team initially mounted the robe upright, and received backlash from staff members uncomfortable with the display. The team considered removing it from the exhibit all together, but former Party members still encouraged its inclusion because it helped illustrate the racism that had prompted the creation of the party. The museum ultimately chose to display the robe lying flat in a case, “crypt-like” according to Silberstein, who also described the intention of the display as a way to “acknowledge [the artifact’s] power but not glorify it.”

 A media installation ended the exhibition, in which former 37 Panthers as well as participants in the exhibition’s community dialogues, spoke about the legacy of the Party and issues the country is still wrestling with today. The OMCA’s community collaborations therefore also facilitated the use of first-person voices within the exhibition, layering both strategies together to create a fuller understanding of the themes surrounding the the Black Panther Party that continue to affect citizens today.

Silberstein details summative evaluation figures that led the museum to conclude that this exhibition was successful in engaging visitors. Timing and tracking found that dwell time in All Power to the People was significantly higher than general exhibit dwell time, and visitors were observed having conversations with one another within the space frequently. Exit interviews showed that most visitors learned something new from the exhibition as well as connected the Party’s cause with issues in today's society. Finding relevance within a difficult history and locating its effect on contemporary culture and social systems was achieved through community input that resulted in thoughtful, engaging and responsible interpretation and display within this exhibition.

Combining Authentic Objects and Reflective Interpretation in Exhibition Design

Authentic objects, whether in a historic site, a history museum, or an art museum, make history tangible for the visitor. Julia Rose coins this exhibition element as “The Real,” or the content of the stories that the exhibition presents, which include artifacts, images, numbers and other empirical evidence. The “Real” is the authentic physical or documented evidence generally used by museums to recount histories. It is the way in which this evidence is exhibited, chosen and then displayed, that presents a specific viewpoint and message. Design and content can work together to create a reflective and empathetic experience by presenting factual content combined with specialized interpretative techniques designed to elicit reflection. I define this exhibition organizational strategy as “reflective interpretation,” in which a difficult topic is interpreted for the visitor through use of artistic representations that reflect on the subject matter.

Legacy of Lynching: Confronting Racial Terror in America , Brooklyn Museum.

In 2017, the Brooklyn Museum partnered with the Equal Justice Initiative, a non profit activist organization committed to combating racial injustice in America, to present an exhibit centered around the history and contemporary legacy of terror lynching in America. Based upon years of research done by EJI founder Bryan Stevenson and his team, the EJI published a seminal report in 2015 on the proliferation of lynchings throughout the country in the years between the Civil War and World War II and their subsequent impact on race relations in America today. The Brooklyn Museum brought the content and information from this report into the physical exhibition space and juxtaposed it with contemporary artworks from the museum’s collection.

The EJI research and reporting was interpreted and displayed through an interactive digital map of geographical locations of lynchings throughout the country and informational video installations that featured Bryan Stevenson introducing and discussing topics explored in the exhibition. The interactive map, set at the beginning of the gallery, allowed visitors to touch a specific site where a lynching took place and learn more about that case. This format exemplifies a concept that Rose cites from writer and activist Susan Sontag as the “aggregate of anonymous victims,” in which the power of numbers acts as “empirical persuasion” to help visitors understand the scope and extent of violence and oppression inflicted upon a population. Viewing the widespread coverage on the map of documented lynchings is powerful visual and factual evidence of the history of terror lynching. This display also provides insight into individual cases and victims, who are no longer anonymous when the visitor actively engages with display.

The exhibition also features other media installations that present first-person stories from surviving family members of lynching victims. Viewing rooms within the exhibit space show films that feature testimony directly from these individuals about their personal connections with terror lynching, overlaid with images from family albums and collected old newspaper clippings. These digital and media elements are interspersed throughout the exhibition with selections from the Brooklyn Museum's collection of contemporary art by African American artists. Graphic portrayals of lynching have been intentionally omitted from this exhibition: the intent being, rather than focusing on violent depictions, to focus on personal narratives, and artistic reflections of the impact of that violence. The Guardian 's article on the exhibition quotes EJI founder Bryan Stevenson, who states, “ There haven’t been any exhibits that try to present the perspective, reflections, and responses to lynching by survivors and victims.” This becomes a central objective of the Legacy of Lynching exhibition, which emphasizes personal artist perspectives through reflective interpretation.

 Works of art that reflect and focus on the African American experience of this history act as reflective interpretation of the first-person stories, factual data, and historical narratives featured in the exhibition. According to assistant museum curator Sara Softness in the same article, “The artworks on view allude to trauma, loss and pain in non-explicit ways, offering personal, poetic and symbolic perspectives.” Poetic perspectives are woven into the exhibit design as well, with quotes from poets and writers displayed on the gallery walls. These design choices, in conjunction with content, enhance the reflective experience for the visitor and move toward eliciting an empathetic response without the use of spectacle or shock value associated with the display of violent images.

What’s Next?

In April of this year, in Montgomery, Alabama, the Equal Justice Initiative opened The National Museum for Peace and Justice, the first public memorial dedicated to victims of terror lynching, as well as an adjacent museum: The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. The mission of these sites is to present the darkest parts of America’s history, particularly those associated with racial oppression and violence. The Legacy Museum uses technology to the utmost affect to present personalized narratives in its displays. It uses holograms to depict captive slaves, who speak directly to the visitor in telling their stories, while other holograms feature the incarcerated today, displayed behind glass, who tell their stories when a visitor sits down at the glass and picks up a two-way phone, as if they were visiting someone in prison. Authentic content is displayed through artifacts, including one installation that displays jars of dirt collected from recorded sites of lynchings, as well as data-centric media and video displays. The museum also contains multiple works of contemporary fine art and video and film installations, the display of which utilizes reflective interpretation to facilitate the visitor’s awareness of past and present oppression and foster empathy with the communities and individuals affected by such trauma. EJI director Bryan Stevenson believes, “Artists help us understand aspects of the human struggle that are difficult to articulate with mere description… At the Legacy Museum, we want to employ every narrative tool that can deepen our commitment to human rights and human dignity.” The museum emphasizes personal stories 51 and utilizes reflective interpretation throughout all of its exhibits, and advances them to a new level. Through new technology, the visitor has an interactive experience with a historical character's story in the museum’s space. Artists’ interpretations of difficult topics are presented not only through contemporary collections, but through unique commissioned digital art, including a narrated and animated drawing film telling the story of slaves being brought to America.

Instances of new exhibitions and interpretations like those of the Legacy Museum illuminate the opportunities present within the museum community at large to address difficult topics and the difficult histories associated with them. They are hopeful signs of representing narratives authentically and honestly that have previously been shaped only by the dominant culture, voices of the oppressed now given voice and narrative of their own. This quote appears on the gallery walls of the Brooklyn Museum’s Legacy of Lynching exhibition, from novelist and social critic James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Perhaps by continuing to elevate and spotlight marginalized stories and difficult histories, and bring them to the forefront of history interpretation, museums can play a part in helping society address the issues that still plague us and divide us by encouraging empathy with and understanding of that which we have previously sought to avoid.

The first version of this paper was originally written for a Tufts University museum studies graduate course: Proseminar in Interpretation with professor Cynthia Robinson, in the spring of 2018.