Today I am participating in the National Council of Public History’s Twitter Mini-Conference “(RE)ACTIVE PUBLIC HISTORY” – if you like to learn more about this Twitter Mini-con you can follow along on Twitter with the #NCPHactive hashtag.
15 tweets are not a lot, especially when we’re having these complicated discussions about public history, so I wanted to put my session here, with some expanded points, more details and tons of links for further reading if anyone is interested!
So here we go…
1. Hello everyone! My name is Lindsay Kernohan and I am a museum curator & public historian from Ontario, Canada. Today, I will be tweeting about “Writing on the Wall: Reconsidering the Historical Plaque.” (Note: Most examples are Canadian!) #NCPHactive
![[I snapped this picture while travelling in Curaçao. I thought it was hilarious.]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5aca7ea8697a9886599f2fef/1539962003502-EP9I9RXFKV1TYEHUUR0P/1.jpg)
[I snapped this picture while travelling in Curaçao. I thought it was hilarious.]
2. Social memory and public history have been at the forefront of many discussions in recent years, with problematic monuments are being identified and pulled down, museums (slowly) becoming more inclusive and repatriating objects back to their rightful owners. #NCPHactive
3. Less obvious in the midst of these discussions is the humble historical plaque. Is it time for a reconsideration? In this session, I do not pretend to have answers to all the questions I pose, but hope to encourage discussion and reflection on a few topics. #NCPHactive
[Aside: why is it that plaques don’t get as much attention? Personally, I think it is because they are so ubiquitous, they blended into the everyday. Also, as plaques are purely words-based, there is not the same level of interpretation interaction required with a visual monument or museum exhibit.]
4. Why does our society plaque things? Whether for education, commemoration or to glorify, most plaques ultimately are placed to mark something as “significant.” Which begs the question - who gets remembered & who gets forgotten – and who is making the decisions? #NCPHactive
[For more on this and a really entertaining read, check out James Loewen’s “Lies Across America.”]
5. How does this influence content? 1 example: Yves Yvon J. Pelletier has shown that the Historic Sites & Monuments Board of Canada operated “as a Victorian Gentleman’s Club” for its 1st 30 years & its British Imperial mindset heavily influenced the selection process. #NCPHactive
[For other analyses of the Board’s history, see C.J. Taylor’s Negotiating the Past: The Making of Canada’s Historic Parks and Sites, Veronica Strong-Boag’s Experts on Our Own Lives: Commemorating Canada at the Beginning of the 21st Century, as well as works by Dianne Dodd and Alan McCullough.]
6. Traditional plaques have been very exclusionary – stories of women, people of colour, LGBTQ+, Indigenous are rarely represented. If plaquing bestows “significance,” lack thereof embeds exclusion in the public landscape and in collective memory. #NCPHactive
7. Some plaques use offensive language & others distort historical fact. If a plaque misrepresents history or doesn’t include the viewpoints of those affected by the event or place, it is not a useful educational tool. An example of this is a recent case from Montreal #NCPHactive
8. In Aug 2018, 2 plaques that glorified the killing of an Iroquois chief were replaced from a Montreal bank. The reworded plaques STILL don’t include the Indigenous perspective on the historical event the plaques are meant to commemorate. #NCPHactive https://bit.ly/2S0jWDe
[More links about this story:
The really interesting thing about this story is that Michael Rice (who first complained about the offensive plaque in 1992!) didn’t want the original one taken down or reworded – he wanted another plaque put up next to the original plaque explaining the Iroquois perception of the historical event. A good example of way it is so important to this to the community!]
9. So why don’t we just add more plaques to fill in the gaps? For one thing, plaques are expensive – approx. $1100 CAN for a small brass plaque, a cost that will surely continue to rise, and has made many plaques the target of thieves looking to harvest the metal. #NCPHactive
[A few stories about how historical plaques are the target of thieves:
http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2018/06/13/war-memorial-plaques-cenotaph-brass-bronze-copper-theft/
https://www.thespec.com/news-story/8341164-bronze-plaques-are-history-in-age-of-metal-theft/
10. So cost is a barrier. If you do find the money to pay for one, the average amount of words that can fit a small plaque is 40 to 45, making it difficult to include nuance, context or complex narratives. #NCPHactive
11. With all that, can we say that historical plaques are accessible? Are they even relevant in a digital age? How can we fix the historical plaque? Let’s explore some real-world examples… #NCPHactive
12. Kamloops-based archaeologist Joanne Hammond is using photoshop to de-colonize historical plaques along British Columbia’s highways – read more about her awesome #rewriteBC project here:
https://bit.ly/2AhgbCz #NCPHactive
13. New projects aim to make plaques more accessible & relevant. The Hear, Here project provides site visitors with a phone # to call – at the other end of the line is a story or oral history to connect them with where they stand. #NCPHactive
[Hear, Here started in La Crosse, Wisconsin and has now made it’s way to Canada as the current public History class at Western University takes it on as its final project.
http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/news/2018/hear_here_dials_up_history_around_city.html
https://ncph.org/history-at-work/project-showcase-hear-here/ ]
14. As a member of a board that plaques historic sites in my hometown, I think about these themes and discussions A LOT and am always interested in new, innovative ideas of how to re-activate this traditional method of public history. #NCPHactive
[I am a member of the London Historic Site’s Committee, which is a sub-committee of the London Public Library Board. It should be stated that any opinions made in my presentation or in this post are mine and mine alone, and should not be seen as a position taken by the Historic Sites Committee or the London Public Library Board.
Learn more about the Historic Sites Committee here: http://www.londonpubliclibrary.ca/research/local-history/local-historic-sites ]
15. If you’ve like to read beyond these quick cliff notes, you can check out my blog, which explores a few of these ideas a little bit more & provides links to more examples & stories. Thank you to @ncph & the organizers for hosting this Twitter Mini-Con! #NCPHactive
Thank you to everyone who read my presentation and decided to stop by my website! I’m greatly looking forward to seeing the rest of the #NCPHactive presentations.