Back to Tennessee

I've never been to Tennessee. I should probably go though, because I now know two great songs about going back to Tennessee. Whoa, man. Boy do I love having a blog...yeah, this has something to do with industrial history.


Of course, the Grateful Dead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7oNS-bDZqc

And, from her really, really good and brand new album The Harrow and the Harvest, Gillian Welch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRA3sQoCluo

This made me wonder what's so great about Tennessee, and then I found this: http://www.bemishistory.org/ Click it! Bemis, Tennessee (Bemis also being, weirdly, the most annoying of my childhood parental nicknames): Where Industry and Friendliness Blend Into Progress. Early 20th century southern cotton mill ideology at its most succinct!

Anyway, after my snotty northern socialist self got over that old-timey corporate line, I got to thinking about the thousands of very local industrial history sites around the country. The website isn't the slickest, but its grassroots community focus, pride, and content is apparent -- an online exhibition, local events, ways to contribute memories, conduct family research, and get involved in preservation. And that's an immediate audience connection that bigger, shinier museums sometimes struggle to capture.

Museum for Obeast Conservation Studies

Artist Rachel Herrick's "Museum for Obeast Conservation Studies" is a pretty unique contemporary art endeavor. It has nothing to do with industrial history, but puts a sharp lens on museums, among other things, and I feel like blogging about it.

From her website, "MOCS and my work with North American Obeasts satirize the social stigma around fatness through the legitimizing tropes of science."

I won't explain it much more than that...just go check out the website: http://www.obeasts.org/.Working alongside the unique satirizing of social stigma, the work is a smart, surreal reflection of the formal power of (slick, modern) museum convention and conservation narratives. The website is pretty uncanny...sharp, unsettling, clever, museum-y.

Physical exhibition on view at the Maine College of Art! "MOCS @ICA Portland," advertises the MOCS website. "Dang, this looks interesting, they must mean Portland, Oregon," I thought. Imagine my pleasant surprise when it turned out to be Maine! Exhibition closes June 12; as soon as my decrepit car gets fixed I'm schlepping up to Portland. Updates to follow.

Free stuff for when you don't have a budget: DIY clip art

Clip art is the worst! It's generic and cheesy. It's not cohesive -- start using it and next thing you know you've got ten images in ten different (cheesy) styles.

I won't go on. If you want to read a longer and more articulate rant against clipart, see Interpretation by Design: Why Clip Art is Evil.

But what's a museum kid to do? Your supervisor want a snappy poster for next month's family program! You don't have a budget! Clip art is free...colorful...tempting. I'll admit, I've done it.

As suggested in the aforementioned Interpretation by Design posting, making your own can be a great alternative. It takes a little more time -- second only to budgets in things you probably don't have...but it's fun, reusable, and in my possibly irrational opinion, totally worth it!

Ok, I'm a pretty terrible artist, but here's how I got my hands on some free, cohesive, non-generic, and pretty cute -- if I may say so -- images for a recent programming publication. Maybe this is obvious...but it took my a while to get it right:

1. Find some pictures of whatever you want on Google Image Search.
2. Print them out.
3. Draw over the important part of the image with a black Sharpie.
4. Put a blank piece of paper on top and trace your underlying Sharpie lines in pencil. 
5. Make any alterations and adjustments to your pencil-image.
6. Retrace over the pencil lines in Sharpie.
7. Put ony more blank piece of paper on top and trace your underlying Sharpie lines in Sharpie -- this creates a clean, pencil-free copy.
8. Find a coworker who has a scanner, and scan your clean, 3rd-generation Sharpie images from step 7.
9. Use 'em! (You can use a really basic free photo editor like MS Office Picture Manager or even...Word...to clean them up. With black and white line images I'd recommend upping the contrast as much as possible and setting the white background as the transparent color before you drop them into your publication.)

Results -- not exactly the work of a professional artiste, but a great alternative for interesting, professional-looking, kid/family-oriented publications:

Putting Visitors to Work

Museum at Work? Why not put visitors to work?

One of my most memorable participatory museum experiences ever was at Mystic Seaport. It's pretty simple, they make a bunch of visitors work together to raise the sails of a 19th century ship. A staff "chanteyman" sings a work song to keep the pace. You're actually standing on the ship, doing it.

The physical novelty of my experience as a visitor served to underscore the extreme historical routine-ness of it. For me, I realized, this was a total break from my normal rhythms; for sailors 150 years ago, it was the most basic, even monotonous rhythm of their lives at sea.

It's an effective interpretive program because it's a relatively simple, immersive, authentic, and cooperative activity. Strangers rely on one another. It's dramatic. The sails are big, and real, and put up a lot of resistance against the rough rope. Mystic's interpretive staff make it clear that you have to take it seriously, too -- everyone on the line has to plant their feet properly, pay attention to the rhythm of the song to know when to pull the rope, and place hand over hand correctly as they pull.

I really didn't want to be the one to mess up. It feels like there's really something at stake. Check it out: in this video they're raising a whale boat (I think), rather than the sail, but the environment, effort, and chantey are similar enough to give an impression:

Can other museums put visitors to work in a similarly safe but powerful way?

Trying Out

Is there any historic industry more dramatic, frightening, and fascinating than whaling?

No. Proof: Moby Dick. More proof: some amazing nighttime photos from the New Bedford Whaling Museum of "trying out." That's when, after taking a whale, the whaling ship becomes a fiery 24-hour factory dedicated to cutting it up and rendering the blubber. Allow Herman Melville to evoke the scene more elegantly, with my unnecessary emphasis added:

Here be it said that in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the crisp, shriveled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.

By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the carcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur- freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations.

And now, some eerie photos of this incredible, seafaring factory work.

And one close-up:

Exhibit: Vertical Urban Factory

A new exhibit at the Skyscraper Museum in NYC takes a unique, relevant approach to industrial history with Vertical Urban Factory:


Vertical Urban Factory features the innovative architectural design, structural engineering, and processing methods of significant factory buildings from the turn of the 20th century to the present. Now, over a century after the first large factories began to dominate our cities, the exhibition poses the question: Can factories present sustainable solutions for future self-sufficient cities?


An interesting reminder that factories were once fundamental to the pre-sprawl urban experience, and a potentially powerful platform for considering current realities and future possibilities.


 New York Times review here.

King Philip IV...Live!

And now, from the world of non-industrial museum news... Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvBbVA36y1U&feature=player_embedded&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1

From Improv Everywhere: For our latest mission we staged an unauthorized autograph signing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art with an actor who bears a striking resemblance to King Philip IV of Spain. Standing in front of the 400-year-old Velázquez painting, the "King" greeted museum patrons and offered free signed 8x10 photos.

The Met, not surprisingly, put a stop to this rather quickly. I think this is a rad, irreverent in-gallery experience that the Met should be begging these guys to do more often.

gothamist.com

Alex Levine, Photographer-Genius

My fabulously talented brother Alex "Wix" Levine took this incredible photograph, a stunning visual representation of a spectrum of museum visitors.

Someone's ready for the cafeteria.

Grumpy Old People, Alex Levine. All rights reserved.

Steampunk + Industrial History Museums =...Duh?!

Ok, article from Boston.com like a week ago: Citywide steampunk festival pays homage to Waltham's history

Did you know that International Steampunk City is the "secret identity" of Waltham, MA? Me neither! Anyway, May 6-8 the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation -- and the entire city of Waltham, apparently -- will be hosting a huge steampunk event.

Talk about getting experimental with industrial history! Awesome opportunity to delve into the aethetics of Victorian-era industry in new and imaginative ways, or catering to a very specialized subculture? Either way it seems like a pretty natural match. I'm super curious to see how this plays out for the CRMII, and psyched to venture down there in May...

NYT: Art and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Today in the New York Times: In Art, Recalling a Century Old-Tragedy

As the March 25 centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist approaches, artist and film maker Anthony Giacchino is using art to visualize and commemorate the 146 victims of the 1911 factory fire in an unconventional, directly engaged way:

"I just kept thinking about the number 146,” he said. “I would put names in front of the buildings, but it still did not give me a sense of it. Why not send letters? They’d probably come back. Then I’d be able to see what 146 looks like.”

Helped by Scott Frawley, a student at Fordham University, he compiled a list of addresses and wrote them on envelopes; for six unknown victims, he simply wrote “Unidentified Fire Victim.” Inside each was a short message — in case the address still existed and the current occupant opened the envelope — asking people to reflect on the tragedy, as well as a poem written by Morris Rosenfeld days after the fire.

Mr. Giacchino warned his letter carrier to expect a deluge of returned letters. So far, 130 have come back.

Mining, and Other Scary Industries: Fun for the Whole Family...?

Fun for the Whole Family: Welcome to the Black Hills Mining Museum, located in the mile-high city of Lead.

*** 

 Underground Exhibit

Our newest major exhibit opened in 2002. This re-creation of a big part of a miner's life will leave you smiling — and shaking your head in amazement! [World Mining Museum]

***

Welcome!

Join us for an unforgettable experience as we travel underground to explore the world’s oldest continuously operated anthracite coal mine! [No. 9 Coal Mine & Museum]

Do industrial museums have to have something inspiring, uplifting, or "entertaining" for their visitors?

A quick Monday morning Googling of "mining museum" revealed the above phrases from museum websites.

I have this thing where I get really bummed out when I think about coal mining. Maybe it's because I'm so completely removed in every way from the actual experience that it gives me the creeps -- the working conditions, psychological impact, corporate stuff, environmental impact, danger, health hazards, etc. I know that for plenty of people past and present it's just part of life, they deal.

Anyway: fun, exclamation points, unforgettable, amazement. These museums really want you to visit...and due to their subject matter probably aren't on every family's vacation itinerary. But the tone feels off. I'm picking on mines, but can industrial museums of all kinds connect to visitors emotionally without the "fun!!," while leaving them curious, empathetic, and active...rather than super depressed?

Check out the LOC's Lewis Hine Child Labor Committee Collection, subject heading coal miners. I find these to be some of the toughest historical photos ever taken to look at, and look in the eye.



 Trapper Boy, Turkey Knob Mine, Macdonald, W. Va. Boy had to stoop on account of low roof, photo taken more than a mile inside the mine. Witness E. N. Clopper. Location: MacDonald, West Virginia. Lewis Hine, 1908.

Views of Lawrence

Spent an awesome afternoon in Lawrence, Mass. yesterday. Lawrence is one of the most dramatic post-industrial landscapes I have ever seen, and home to the amazing Lawrence History Center. 100 years ago, Lawrence was the wool textile capital of the world and home to thousands of immigrant families trying to grab an incredibly elusive, often cruel piece of the (not-yet-coined) "American Dream" in the city's cavernous mills.

The mills -- which formed the basis for the city's entire economy -- began shutting down mid-century. Families continued coming from all around the world, particularly from Latin America in the past half-century, putting down new roots and making a life in this old city.

Today, Lawrence is still struggling tremendously with the economically devastating loss of its manufacturing sector. At the same time, there is incredible resiliance, community energy, and life among the often empty (and insanely dramatic) old brick factories. Every time I visit, I'm totally inspired by the History Center. Archive, community center, museum, gathering place, anchor -- this is one tiny non-profit with a big and growing reach in Lawrence. In a city that has seen more than its share of community division and economic dislocation, the Lawrence History Center uses history as a tool to connect people across languages, cultures, and experiences. I urge you to check them out.

Now, some pictures of old industrial stuff:

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.