蜜桃传媒

Described by The Guardian as 鈥渁 slender, taut work of scholarship,鈥� The Museum: A Short History of Crisis and Resilience by Samuel J. Redman explores how museums in the U.S. have responded internally and externally to crisis. In this excerpt, Redman revisits a destructive fire that consumed the Smithsonian in 1865 and reveals what emerged from the ashes.

---

On a cold and clear afternoon in January 1865, a roaring fire swept through the Smithsonian Institution. The flames ripped through the building and charred the museum鈥檚 castle as dazed soldiers and worried citizens looked on. The ceiling caved in. Walls fell. Valuable objects inside were swallowed by flames and destroyed. Unique paintings depicting scenes from around the world and rare scientific objects were lost. 鈥淭he contributions of the Institution to science and art in this country have been most important,鈥� read the New York Times the following day, 鈥渁nd the destruction of so many of its fine collections will be viewed as a national calamity.鈥� The core of the building had been hollowed, gutted by fire and smoke. Without a doubt, the fire represented a nearly unprecedented cultural crisis in North America.

The flames at the Smithsonian can be read, at least in part, as an omen of things to come for museums in the United States. Beset by challenges ranging from pandemic and war to fire and economic uncertainty, museums have sought ways to emerge from crisis periods stronger than before, occasionally carving important new paths forward in the process. Hampered by various problems, museum leaders each responded differently to the challenges at hand.

Outside voices and important criticism have further prompted vital changes. As often as institutions have transformed, however, they also find themselves stubbornly embedded into a larger culture. Tensions emerged as cultural institutions that were so deeply committed to preservation were forced to confront changes. Blind spots and biases have at times led to critical mistakes. Museums, it seemed, could never fully separate themselves from the world in which they existed. Steady and principled leadership guided by clear vision, firm commitments to guiding missions, collaboration, prudent financial management, innovation, and adept disaster responses have all paid dividends for museums over the long run. Whenever the flames of crisis engulfed museums, uncertainty tended to surround the future, with fascinating and important developments often following these pivotal moments.

The Smithsonian, for example, was not destroyed by the fire that had devastated its building and many of its early collections. To this point, the castle had been packed with a mishmash of poorly selected and haphazardly preserved materials crowded into the same rooms that were also filled with many actual national treasures. After the fire, the museum began a long road to recovery. Perhaps the museum had even been weighed down by the many ghosts of its past. Legislators voted to support the Smithsonian through new government dollars. The museum rebuilt charred exhibit halls, redoubled its commitment to scientific publications, and unpacked boxes of new collections brought to Washington, DC, by the train carload. Within a few years, the museum was advancing well beyond where it had been at the time of the fire. By 1883, electric lights shined in the galleries, and the museum had grown to host twenty-eight curators and thirty additional scientific staff. It is estimated that the rapidly expanding collection already held nearly two and a half million objects. In 1897, the museum met growing demand by constructing new exhibit halls for visitors to explore. By 1900, more than 225,000 people visited the museum. The nineteenth-century Smithsonian, like many museums facing a crisis, managed to emerge stronger, although the best methods to move forward were not always clear to historical actors at the time. When the institution opened a large and popular new natural history museum on the National Mall in spring 1910, the destructive fire forty-five years earlier mostly served as a reminder to construct fireproof museum buildings. The history of museums in the United States, in no small part, is a story of crisis and response, death and rebirth, an evolution over time guided by and responding to larger trends in US and global society.

A crisis, at least according to my handy Merriam-Webster dictionary, is 鈥渁n unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending.鈥� We often think of a crisis as connected to impending doom rather than any sort of positive change鈥攖hink of expressions like financial crisis or energy crisis. But crisis is also linked to other kinds of change, such as a 鈥渢urning point for better or worse in an acute disease or fever鈥� (emphasis mine). A crisis, in this way, is more a moment of truth or an important crescendo than a dark path toward a certain calamity. [鈥�]

If museums have been historically and continue to be one of the most popular educational resources for the public in the United States, then how they have responded to past challenges matters a great deal in shaping our contemporary cultural landscape. Thinking about museums and crisis moments suggests something about what our priorities have been and how we might better respond to the unpredictable challenges ahead when considering the same or similar cultural institutions. It also offers insights into what people thought was worth preserving at the time and suggests something about the social and economic structures translating ideas into reality. [鈥�]

The experiences considered from our past offer clues that can help us learn from critical moments. Beginning with the flu pandemic coinciding with World War I, the pages to follow explore some of the many pitfalls facing US museums during the past century or more. Stretching through the Great Depression, World War II, and the many debates about museums and their futures in the second half of the twentieth century, this book argues that museums should more critically reflect on their histories to better address challenges they face in the present and prepare for others that may lie ahead in an uncertain future.

---

Samuel J. Redman is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums and Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology.