Why I love the LOC

From the always-incredible Library of Congress... The Prokudin-Gorskii Collection.

This photo was taken in 1909:

The Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection features color photographic surveys of the vast Russian Empire made between ca. 1905 and 1915.

Industriemuseum!

Really interesting post a couple days ago on The Uncataloged Museum about industrial heritage development in Europe: From Cotton to Culture: Changing the Face and Future of European Cities.

In said post I learned there's this amazing thing called the European Route of Industrial Heritage, a partnership among EU member states, industrial heritage museums, and academic institutions. The idea is to promote tourism that links diverse industrial sites by theme or region. Do the mining tour of Europe! Backpacks, anyone?

Seriously, I think this is a pretty exciting way to push industrial history toward greater relevance for visitors -- the ERIH situates what can often feel like very local history in an interconnected network of regional and international sites. If visitors (most of whom are probably nerds, obviously unlike myself...) are accessing these resources, there's potential here for engaging people with the interrelated historical experiences of work, and a deeper understanding of how the industrial past shapes the present.

Also, check out the photo gallery. These museums look like they run the gamut from traditional interpretive displays to huge, raw, tour-able factory sites.


Kinder im Museum. Also ein interessanter Museumsbesuch für "groß und klein"und nicht nur für Fachleute! Industriemuseum Brandenburg an der Havel.

The museum looks like it's basically a huge, partially operable steel mill. I love that these kids get to just hang out with rusty gears and apparently still-fiery blast furnaces. Hardhats!



Industriemuseum Brandenburg and der Havel.





Movie @ Work

Labor! Capital! Dynamic typography [for 1927]! Diabolical machinery! Revolution! Robots!

...and a [redacted!] incredible score.

If you haven't seen the new(ish), complete(ish) restoration of Metropolis, it's time. It's streaming on Netflix right now, so you have no excuse.

A-mazing.

rEvolve

Look what came across my desk(top) this morning: a delightful piece in the Lowell Sun about the fabulous Revolving Museum, moving to a new and improved location. Ok, so it's another art museum, but this is an art museum that was born 26 years ago inside twelve abandoned railroad cars, then shipped up to Lowell -- the very cradle of the American Industrial Revolution! -- eight years ago. It lived in the old Lowell Gas & Light Building, moved into the Massachusetts Mohair Plush Co. factory space, and has now found a new home in the former Appleton Mills. This art museum thrives on imagining creative adaptations in spaces built for a the more regimented world of traditional industry. It rEvolves.

Their (pretty cool) mission:

The Revolving Museum is an evolving laboratory of creative expression for people of all backgrounds, ages, and abilities who seek to experience the transformative power of art [emphasis mine]. Through public art, exhibitions, and educational programs we promote artistic exploration and appreciation, encourage community participation and growth, and provide opportunities for individual empowerment and collective change.

As the museum continues to transform itself, it in turn transforms these old industrial environments, as well as the perspectives of its artists and visitors alike.

In May I had the pleasure of seeing one of the Revolving Museum's public art project, a collection of "Immigrant Murals" created by a high-school aged student artists group in residence at the museum. Working with oral histories collected by the UMass Lowell Regional Economic and Social Development Department, the artists created visual interpretations of immigrant experiences -- past, present, and personal -- in a series of stunning panels. For example:




Revolving Museum. [detail]

Lowell is a city with an rich and ongoing immigration history, a history tied to the work and industry ever since the first group of thirty Irish canal workers arrived from Boston to the banks of the Merrimack River in 1821. These murals expressed a spectrum of celebration, pain, dislocation, and community in a way that was at once artistic and historically insightful. And by engaging local students in the investigation and creative process, the project forged connections between historical and contemporary communities -- and I bet they had fun doing it.


I highly recommend checking out the rest of the murals, and scenes from the process, here.

Back to the present: The Revolving is moving its operations over to the first floor of the massive Appleton (Cotton) Mills in downtown Lowell. The Appleton went belly-up about 75 years ago, and has since sat largely vacant. Today, several of the factory buildings house newly renovated condos, and others are currently undergoing construction. There's something irresistibly appealing about transforming these huge early-20th century factories from spaces of incredibly regimented, dangerous, impersonal mass-production to places where people live and -- in the case of the Revolving -- experiment, sling paint, perform, and create art with abandon.

But there's also the specter of 1,500 jobs lost when the Appleton shut down. People spent entire lifetimes working in those mills, only to eventually hear the machinery go silent and see it sold for scrap. I'd love to see the Revolving Museum take on a creative interpretation of the sometimes painful working history of their new location (300 Jackson St.)

I can't wait to visit, and wish them the best! And finally, a preview of the new space:

Revolving Museum.

Museum @ Wordle

Finally, I Wordle-d. It is awesome.

Yup, this pretty much sums it all up.

Bricks.

Bricks, bricks, everywhere. I live in an old brick mill, I work in an old brick mill, I live in a city built almost entirely of brick. So they're in my brain.

Yesterday when I started designing some posters for work, brick imagery began magically appearing on the page! Which got my thinking, why?

Bricks were the building material of choice for discerning mill owners in 19th century New England. Skilled bricklayers created massive textile factories using millions of small, compact red bricks.

Another brick in the wall. Sometimes I look at these old brick walls and see incredibly durable craftsmanship from an industrial age that was rapidly eroding other crafts. Sometimes I see postindustrial decay. Sometimes I see thousands of anonymous workers trapped inside two-foot thick brick walls for thirteen hours a day. Sometimes I see historic preservation and stunning architectural beauty. Breaking down walls, building them up.

I guess I'm just weirdly metaphoricized this morning. Liking the idea of building strong, sturdy walls from so many different pieces, but at the same time, loving the idea that We Can Do It is about to punch a big hole in that wall, at which point Smug Mill Girl can escape the patriarchy of the Lowell factory system! Yeah!

...Or maybe I need a change of scenery.

Come find Lowell Women's Week on Facebook, and visit in person in March!

I Want To Go To There, Part 2: Sloss Furnaces

From the front page of its website, Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark in Birmingham, Alabama doesn't look too promising in terms of progressive approaches to industrial and working history. "Sloss Furnaces with its web of pipes and tall smokestacks offers us a glimpse into the great industrial past of the South and our nation [emphasis mine]," it promises. Just another early 20th century iron plant/museum trumpeting an uncritical, impersonal view of the disconnected past?

No! Turns out, there's a good deal more interesting, experimental, and thoughtful stuff going on here. Or, at least, that's what I gather from their website and from the one person I know who's been there.

Sloss Furnace. Wikipedia.

Exhibit A: Painful Pasts
In telling the "Sloss Story," the museum appears not to shy away from discussion of rigid workforce segregation, as well as an exploration of the role of convict labor. This mitigates the heroism of a "great industrial past." I would, however, be interested in learning more about individual stories and what it was like to work there during different eras. Hmm, perhaps I need to actually go to Alabama to get this.

Exhibit B: Metal Arts
I think this is really neat. Sloss runs an extensive metal arts program, including courses, open studio access, outreach and education, and a youth apprenticeship program:

Sloss’s Metal Arts program is rooted in Birmingham’s historic connection to iron and steel. The city owes its existence to these metals and to the forming and processing industries that grew up around them. Although such industries are no longer the dominant forces they once were, they are still an important part of the city’s economic life and offer tremendous resources for the production of metal sculpture.

Instead of trying to recreate, resurrect, or simply mourn the industrial past, the Metal Arts program builds on it in new, (literally) creative, often fiery directions. It maintains a tangible human connection to the past, while injecting new life to a community and an old industrial site. Enjoy, below, some photos from the 2009 National Conference on Cast Iron Art, held at Sloss.


National Conference on Cast Iron Art 2009. Sloss Furnace.



Anyone wish the NEMA conference was a little more like this?

National Conference on Cast Iron Art 2009. Sloss Furnace.

I'm excited about the possibilities inherent in adapting historic work processes into creative, community-based artistic ventures like this one.

I want to go! The Mill City Museum

Ok, so I haven't been to Mill City Museum in Minneapolis (anyone?), but their website has me checking airfare. Between their website, Flickr, Facebook, and a couple reviews, I think this place looks pretty experimental and fun.

Here's how they describe themselves: "Built into the ruins of what was once the world’s largest flour mill, Mill City Museum is located on the historic Mississippi Riverfront. Here, visitors of all ages learn about the intertwined histories of the flour industry, the river, and the city of Minneapolis [emphasis mine]." Their mission? "Mill City Museum creates opportunities to discover the people and industries that built Minneapolis, transformed a region and influenced our world [emphasis mine]."

Three things here in these statements signal an unconventional, visitor-centric approach to industrial history:

1. "Creates opportunities to discover," rather than "educates visitors." The mission statement focuses the museum's educational mission on visitor-directed experiences.
2. "Intertwined histories" -- this is key. The museum's programming bears out this commitment to interpreting the flour industry's relationship to the city as a whole, past and present, rather than letting it stand falsely alone.
3. "People and industries." Good word order.

But wait! Don't buy that plane ticket yet. Based solely on their web presence, here are four more things, in no particular order, that seem promising:

1. The building It's industrial revival, with less nostalgia and more creativity. When the Washburn Mill was heavily damaged by fire in 1991, the Minnesota Historical Society (which runs the museum today) rebuilt the structure. The result, rather than a recreation of the old mill, was a unique hybrid of history, modern functionality, and striking architecture. Because of copyright, you'll have to head over to Flickr to check out pictures of concerts held in the museum's "Ruin Courtyard." http://www.flickr.com/photos/millcitymuseum/4889281582/lightbox/

Mill City Museum's "Ruin" Courtyard

2. The programming The museum has a wide variety of appealing programs, from concerts to tours to flour comparisons. I'm really interested in their "Greening the Riverfront Series," described as "a year-long series of programs highlighting how the Minneapolis riverfront has transformed from an industrial center to a locus for new ways of thinking about our relationship with nature." Events range from explorations of Native American art to demonstrations on cooking with local produce. I'd love to see more industrial museums talking about environmental issues and industry's effects on the landscape; these discussions have the potential to make history tangibly relevant to the present and future, without romanticizing its past.

3. The Baking Lab Is just a fun, fun idea, and might give visitors new perspectives on something otherwise familiar, even mundane. Also, in the spirit of full disclosure, I really like bread.

4. The artwork Fundamentally, this industrial history is really labor history. The museum hired local artists to create an series of 13 sculptures from wood salvaged from a neighboring mill, depicting workers and other individuals engaged in the history of Minneapolis' flour industry. Distributed around the museum, this is an imaginative way to integrate the stories of individuals and prompt visitors to reflect on the human experience. Definitely preferable to typical [creepy] mannequins.

Sculpture by Paul Wrench and Becky Schurmann. Mill City Museum.

So, anyone been there? Enthusiastic? Skeptical? Love it? Hate it? Ready for a roadtrip?

Corporate vs. Community History

I have a completely, tragically one-sided beef with the yet-to-open National Museum of Industrial History in Bethlehem, PA, as some of you may vaguely recall. It's a Smithsonian affiliate twelve years in the making, dogged by fundraising issues and the costs associated with renovating pieces of the now-defunct Bethlehem Steel plant. They're hoping to open by the end of next year. It's an amazing site, ambitious, and is intended to raise public interest in industrial history. I can't wait to visit. So what's my problem?

Let's start with the museum's President and CEO, who retired from the dying Bethlehem Steel Corp. as the VP of Public Affairs. He built a career, and now a second career in the museum field, on carefully crafting a public face for the company. Similar Steel executive backgrounds for most board members. Steve, I swear, it's not personal. I'm just wary of the constraints this arrangement has the potential to place on critical, multi-vocal interpration.

Second, here's how the Smithsonian website describes the NMIH: "The National Museum of Industrial History will tell the story of America's industrial achievements and accomplishments of its inventors, managers and workers, and preserve the record of industry's development and advancements from the mid 1800's to the present [Italics mine]." This is a classic progress narrative, and corresponds with the city's major economic redevelopment aims surrounding the steel plant. Incidentally, this includes a Sands casino. Further evidence is provided by the museum's own website: "We are building a museum about building America." Every single one of its eleven proposed permanent exhibits has the word "America" in the title. Industry (industrial capitalism?), it proclaims, is the foundation of our country. And machines, rather than human experiences, appear to be at the heart of the museum's conception of industry.

I could go on! (Shocking!) But...I'll spare you the rest. Suffice to say, I'm worried by the NMIH's corporate, top-down approach to industrial history. I'd like to see less PR-speak and more focus on worker experiences, the real contradictions of innovation, exploitation, and daily life, and the unsolved questions of astounding boom and devastating bust that are so apparent on the Bethlehem landscape. Also, maybe a little creative exploration of this landscape itself. I know this is easier said on a blog than done in an old steel mill.

  

Bethlehem Steel, 2002. Society for Industrial Archeology.



<>So, what's an alternative vision? The Steelworkers Archives, for one, is a more community-based approach to the Bethlehem Steel story. Founded by former steelworkers and other local residents in 2001 -- the same year Bethlehem Steel went bankrupt, and six years after it ended production in Pennsylvania -- the Archives has been active in gathering photographs, oral histories, and artifacts related to the experience of working in the local steel industry. Volunteers offer outreach educational programs. Its ultimate goal is "to create a permanent community center...for the preservation of the history of steelworkers, their rich heritage and diverse cultures, their struggles and accomplishments."

Like the National Museum of Industrial History, the Steelworkers Archives has a lot of pride in its interpretation of the past. However, the pride revealed in the archive's oral histories and interpretive materials is a more complex pride in community, work, the quality of steel produced, union achievements, of a shared experience and a desire to educate the next generation. There's also lots of frank discussion of danger, hardship, hazard, contentious labor relations, and the ambiguity of the future. It takes literally the idea of a museum/archive as a sustainable community center.

The big furnaces, that made a big impression on me. That’s like walking inside a volcano. I mean that’s the way it felt most of the time around that hot molten metal. I always tell my wife, I don’t worry about going to heaven, I’ve already been to hell, I worked at the steel company. -- Joe "The Hat" Wilfinger, Steelworkers Archives

And finally, allow me to leave you with a glimpse of the heavy industrial past:

Steelworker fishing in Bethlehem, PA, 1937. ExplorePAHistory.com. I have to wonder how many eyeballs that fish had.







 



Art!

In 1948, the Currier Museum (then Gallery) of Art in Manchester, NH commissioned Charles Sheeler to create two studies on the industrial landscape of that city. The Gallery's trustees would choose one, from which Sheeler would create a larger scale oil painting and the museum would purchase. Here were the choices:

Charles Sheeler, Amoskeag Canal, 1948. Wikipedia.

Charles Sheeler, Amoskeag Mill Yard #1, 1948. Currier Museum of Art.

Which one draws you in? Sheeler created these paintings from photographs he took in Manchester. The first painting depicts a realistic landscape based directly on a single photograph. The Currier's Trustees (spoiler alert!) liked this one, and had Sheeler create the oil painting from it. The second painting (my favorite) was based on a photomontage; Sheeler layered two photographic negatives and painted the intersections of the mill buildings, creatively using light and color to suggest the contours of a phantom landscape beyond them. You'll have to go to the museum to see the photomontage, currently on view along with the paintings in the Currier's fun and unusual new exhibition The Secret Life of Art (Closing January 9, 2011!).

I mention this artwork here because it gets experimental with interpreting the industrial landscape. According to the National Gallery exhibit, Sheeler explained his process thus: "The idea is based on having realized that when we look at any object in nature there is the memory of the object we have previously seen that carrys [sic] over as overtones on the present. I combine the immediate image with things previously seen." What does this have to do with industrial history museums? The contrast between the two above paintings is in my mind the difference between:

• Recreating a commemorative facsimile of a historic work environment, a more traditional and often restrictive approach; and 
• Creating a new interpretive environment that explores different layers of history and memory, a dynamic space to explore these historic "overtones on the present."

How the heck does a museum do that?! For further inspiration: the two studies Sheeler created for the Currier were actually pretty tame in terms of layering and perspective. A couple years later, he created this awesome painting:

Charles Sheeler, New England Irrelevancies, 1953. National Gallery of Art.

Based on this awesome photomontage:

Charles Sheeler, Study for Improvisation on a Mill Town, 1948. National Gallery of Art.

So again, how might this dynamic/wacky approach to a work/industry museum look like? I guess that's what this blog is for. Since we're already talking about art, here's one possibility:

MASS MoCA

The MASS MoCA is an exciting contemporary art museum in North Adams, MA, that has taken up residence in the huge, partially unrenovated historic Arnold Print Works/Sprague Electric Co. complex. To be honest, the MoCA probably gets a lot more visitors as a contemporary art museum that respects, preserves, and (very) creatively interprets this industrial space than it would as, say, the "Arnold Print Works Historical Museum." It's fun, dynamic, immersive. The contrast of layering creative exploration into the utilitarian industrial environment in delightful and unexpected ways is fascinating. 

As a visitor to the MoCA, you are distinctly aware of your surroundings as a 19th century factory space, and the museum has made historical information available. "Straight-up" industrial history museums might harness some of this dynamism by creating spaces where visitors can explore layers of the factory environment in a relatively non-directed, non-didactic way, introducing art installations to add new life and creative perspective, and beginning to speak about history as a constant evolution and reinterpretation, rather than a series of fixed moments or static ideals.

Getting Started, Getting Experimental

Note: this blog is an assignment for Museums and New Media, a fall 2010 course at Tufts University.


The history of work and industry is everywhere, and everywhere, it's unique. In recent decades, museums dedicated to 19th and 20th century coal mining, textile mills, steel plants, car manufacturing, railroads, and hundreds of other industries, have increasingly appeared on the cultural landscape. Is there one in your own back yard?

 

A century ago, the Colonial Revival in arts and architecture crafted a nostalgic interpretation of the past, an elite reaction against the perceived dislocations of modern industry, immigration, urbanization. Long story super short, lots of house museums were created. Today, we might talk about an "Industrial Revival," celebrating a vision of traditional industry through museums and the adaptive reuse of ex-factory spaces. Like the Colonial Revival, the "Industrial Revival" builds its own set narratives; it grapples against the dislocations of a postindustrial experience. This blog aims to look around these conventions toward experimental new approaches to interpreting the working past.              

 

Colonial Revival (Wikimedia Commons)/Industrial Revival? (National Park Service)

 Back to your local museum. Why does it exist? What is its main message? After working at one and visiting many over the past six years, I've come to think about museums of work and industry in terms of three main narratives that are conventionally used to answer these questions, but that I feel can be problematic:

 

 1. Commemoration narrative. "Here lies the XYZ Steel Works, dead and gone but not forgotten." Most museums incorporate this basic narrative to a certain extent; relying on it too heavily can lead to nostalgia and irrelevance. It clearly relegates the industry to the realm of past experience, but can also provide a healing sense of continuity in the face of change. See the Lackawanna Steel Plant Museum, which works to "preserve and document the memories of the newly-extinct steel industry."



2. Process narrative. "They don't make 'em like they used to." Most industrial museums also contain a component of explaining the production process. The Boott Cotton Mills Museum at Lowell National Historical Park (ok, this is where I work) has a demonstration weave room and exhibits detailing the main steps of making cloth. This narrative is often intruguing, but can also become very didactic. The Mill City Museum in Minneapolis gets a little more outside of the box with an interactive baking laboratory inside its historic flour mill.
 

3. Progress narrative. "In preserving the history of the once-innovative local widget industry, we can reclaim this spirit of Progress for this city as we forge ahead into the 21st century." Many cities suffering the loss of their traditional economies have seen historic preservation as a route to "revitalization." This narrative contains the positive impulse to make history relevant, but may simplify a complex, painful past for the sake of making it useful to one vision of the future.


Lewis Hine, Cleaner and Sweeper -- Spinning Dept.
of the American Linen Co., Fall River, Mass. (1916).
Library of Congress. Amazing photo, slightly more
subversive narrative.

  

Lewis Hine, Powerhouse Mechanic (1920). Wikimedia Commons. Amazing photo, pretty conventional
progress narrative.




Problem is, this narrative often wants to equate old industries with progress, innovation, power, ingenuity, awesomeness, the American spirit incarnate. Contrast this to, say, many of Lewis Hine's early 20th century photographs, which reflect the exploitative underpinnings of our nation's historic industries. The "Progress narrative" often restricts critical interpretations and multiple points of view that may in fact better serve future progress.



This blog identifies these existing narratives in order to look for alternatives in action. We'll explore the fringes of "Industrial Revival." I believe that our country's working past can play a vibrant role in our cultural present, but that in order to do so we need to break down a few walls, take our exhibits off the assembly line, and get experimental with labor heritage.

So, do you see these mainstream narratives in use? Are there others?