Swigger 1
introduction--what kinds of
questions is this book asking?
to get a sense of how weird this museum is, read this
list
but Greenfield Village, the museum and other Ford attractions
had more than 1.8
million visitors in 2019 (compare to National Air and
Space Museum and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, each
with 7
million visitors)
what should a museum that is a whole village do?
is this the first theme park? (1929)
relatively
recent review --grad students please read
Ch. 1
what in Ford's biography led to his particular
idea about history?
- nostalgia for his childhood
- pacifism made him uninterested in military
history
- prejudices
- first collected things he liked or from his
past, then saw that as values he wanted to spread
what values did he
want visitors to learn?
- teaching a
lesson or nostalgic pride or pushing a particular idea of
how the past should be remembered
- wanting this
museum to make people better citizens
- his American
past
or "domesticating
the past as a marketable commodity" (David Lowenthal, The
Past is a Foreign Country)
Colonial
Revival: came into focus in the 1876 centennial, peaked
around 1920 as a reaction against non-white and
non-northern-European immigration. More about symbolism than
accuracy.
Industrial history museums:
- Conservatoire des Arts et
Metiers, Paris, 1794
- Science Museum, London, began
1857, own building 1919
- Deutches Museum, Munich,
Germany, 1906, but not in its own building until 1925
- Technisches Museum, Vienna,
1918
- Chicago Museum of Science and
Industry, 1933
village history museums
- costumed guides at the John Ward House in
Salem, MA, 1900
- Colonial Williamsburg fundraising started
1924, opened 1934, 1.2 million tickets sold in the late 1980s,
570,000 in 2016
- Greenfield Village construction began in 1926,
opened in 1929, Ford attractions together 1.8 million visitors
in 2019
- Old Sturbridge Village 1946, 274,000 visitors
in 2010
- Plimoth Plantation, 1947, around 340,000
annual visitors today