E NIHWHHIIWNHllllllNlHllililllHflWWWII

   

472

I a

[3‘]

 

LIBRARY
Michigan State
Universny

 

 

 

This is to certify that the
thesis entitled

IN PLACE OF MEMORY:
MUSEUMS AND HISTORIC RESOURCES
AS DISTINCT PLACE TYPES

presented by

DENICE BLAIR LEACH

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for the

MA. degree in American Studies

 

m C]. meg’li’f

‘ ‘ Major Professor’s Signature 0

July 31, 2007

 

Date

MSU is an afirmative-action, equal-opportunity employer

..-—.-.-.-‘-.—-n-.----l-.—-.-- -.-.-.-.o a o

 

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DAIEDUE

DAIEDUE

DAIEDUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6/07 p:lClRC/DaleDue.indd-p.1

 

IN PLACE OF MEMORY:
MUSEUMS AND HISTORIC RESOURCES AS DISTINCT PLACE TYPES

By

Denice Blair Leach

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
American Studies

2007

ABSTRACT

IN PLACE OF MEMORY:
MUSEUMS AND HISTORIC RESOURCES AS DISTINCT PLACE TYPES

By
Denice Blair Leach

Museums and historic resources help people to gain a sense of the past that is
intimately connected to place and the processes of memory. However, the literature does
not clearly define them at their most fundamental level as places. This thesis presents the
argument that museums and historic resources exist as two distinct manifestations of
place that embody fundamental concepts of place and memory in substantially different
ways. It provides descriptions of the spatial identities of museums and historic resources
by connecting latent information in the literature to a theoretical construct termed the
“Four Contextual Domains,” which illuminates what occurs between people, objects, and
memory in the intimate relationship of place. Characteristics particular to museum place
and historic place are used to establish descriptions for these two distinct place types,
emphasizing how and why they are different and suggesting implications for research and

professional practice.

Copyright by
DENICE BLAIR LEACH
2007

To Dave Leach, for helping to make it all possible,

and to my mother Kay Cirino, who believes in the power of education.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks goes to Dr. Kris Morrissey, who has been advisor, teacher, boss,
and most of all, mentor. Thank you for giving me more opportunities to learn and grow
than I ever imagined. Dr. Ken Waltzer and Dr. Kenneth Haltman not only worked with
me as members of my committee but also provided inspiration for many of the ideas
presented here. Dr. Susan Sleeper-Smith always encouraged me to cast my intellectual
net as widely as possible. Thanks also to the Michigan State University American
Studies Program and my fellow students for supporting interdisciplinary, often “off-the-
beaten-track” inquiry. My colleagues at the Michigan State University Museum and the
Michigan Historic Preservation Network were interested and supportive during the
process of researching and writing. Above all, I offer deepest gratitude to my family for
being patient colaborers, willing sounding boards, and completely indispensable allies

through everything.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................... vii

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1
Definitions of Museum Place and Historic Place ........................................ 4
Methodology .................................................................................. 4
The Relevance of This Study ............................................................... 7

CHAPTER 1

PLACE AND MEMORY ....................................................................... 9
What is Place? ................................................................................. 9
What is Memory? .............................................................................. 13

CHAPTER 2

READING THE CODES OF MEMORY PLACES ......................................... 17
The Code of Museum Place ................................................................. 18
The Code of Historic Place .................................................................. 24

CHAPTER 3

A THEORY FOR UNCOVERING THE SUPERCODE ................................... 31
The Origin Domain ........................................................................... 34
The Creation Domain ......................................................................... 37
The Display Domain .......................................................................... 42
The Experiencer-Object Domain ........................................................... 47

CHAPTER 4

DESCRIBING TWO DISTINCT TYPES OF PLACE ...................................... 52
Distinctions Related to the Origin Domain ............................................... 53
Distinctions Related to the Creation Domain ............................................. 58
Distinctions Related to the Display Domain .............................................. 61
Distinctions Related to the Experiencer-Object Domain ................................ 68

CONCLUSION ................................................................................... 73

REFERENCES .................................................................................... 79

vi

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1. The four contextual domains (p. 6)

FIGURE 2. A comparison of the two place codes (p. 29)

FIGURE 3. The intimate atmosphere of the creation domain (p. 38)

FIGURE 4. Museum place and historic place related to the origin domain (p. 57)
FIGURE 5. Museum place and historic place related to the creation domain (p. 58)
FIGURE 6. Museum place and historic place related to the display domain (p. 67)

FIGURE 7. Museum place and historic place related to the experiencer-object domain
(19- 71)

FIGURE 8. Summary of how museum place and historic place relate to the four domains
(p. 72)

FIGURE 9. Museum place may occur within historic place (p. 75)
FIGURE 10. Historic place may occur within museum place (p. 75)

FIGURE 11. Intersections between historic place and museum place may exist (p. 76)

vii

INTRODUCTION

Place is a given in human life. Much has been written about place: the meaning
of place, the “sense” of place, place connection, and the loss of unique places in the
landscape. Despite its centrality to human life, it is sometimes difficult to define place
and to describe just what place is. Place, as a concept, has been debated since antiquity.
People buy, sell, and exchange place; they experience it and make it their own. Place is
where we’re from and where we’re going. Often, it defines us. Place forms our
environments and grounds us to the earth. In its role as a constant, place is a natural
central point for exercising the processes of memory and gaining a sense of the past.

The need to encounter the past in place seems to lead naturally to museums and
historic resources. In the United States, museums of all kinds and historic resources are a
formative presence.l Estimates by the Institute of Musetun and Library Services suggest
that around 17,500 museums were operating in the United States in 2005 (American
Association of Museums, 2007). Historic resources, including buildings, ruins,
landscapes, battlefields, public monuments, and designated historic areas, are readily
identified as manifestations of memory in place. The National Park Service administers
over 80,000 National Register properties, including more than 2,400 National Historic
Landmarks (National Park Service, 2007). The National Historic Preservation Act of
1966 provided that each state create its own Historic Preservation Office; and all states,
the District of Columbia, and U. S. territories have offices that maintain their own lists of

historic resources. Local governments ofien define historic places through landmark

 

' In the following study, “museum” refers to physical, “bricks and mortar” museum institutions of all types.
Though many of the principles explored below may be applicable to virtual museums in online
environments, these types of connections will not specifically be made here.

designation and the creation of historic districts. Outside of governmental channels,
citizens often informally designate places in their communities as important to the people
who live there. The bond between places and the exercise of human memory and its
continual construction and reconstruction is well established.

As physical places dedicated to connecting people with memories of the past,
museums and historic resources perform many functions in society. In these places,
people get information, learn, participate in recreational activities, and take advantage of
opportunities to reflect and speak out. However, there seems to be something more to the
“place” of museums and historic resources, something intangible that begs to be
identified. Most fundamentally, museums and historic resources are places of memory:
places created by memory, places that create memory, and places that encourage people
to develop a sense of pastness through memory. Memory is not a static object from the
past that can be “recuperated” at will, but rather a process that is the result of individual
or collective searching in the realm that exists between historical events and our
representations of them in memory (Huyssen, 1995, p. 3). Huyssen asserted, “The past is
not simply there in memory, but it must be articulated to become memory” (p. 3). As
elements in this articulation process, museums and historic resources become what Ernst
(2000, p. 25) called “flow-through and transformer station[s],” channeling potent forces
for creating, cultivating, and shaping memory. Place, the constant link to the physical
world, provides the backdrop and stimuli for this pursuit.

Despite these connections to place, some of the most obvious questions about
museums and historic resources and their identities as place have not been asked. In

much of the museum studies and cultural resource management literature, basic questions

about place and space are rarely addressed. Most of the literature about museums and
even historic resources do not have “place” or “space” listed in the index. Many sources
focus on the function of these places; for example, much is made of how they serve
populations, their uses, and their importance. However, in essence, everyone is talking
around the their spatial characteristics as place. Information about place is often nested
within other discussion but not articulated as a primary subject. As a result, there is no
clear description in the literature of what museums and historic resources are at their most
fundamental level as place.

This lack of foundational information and attention to the nature of place has
blurred the lines between museums and historic resources as kinds of place. Much of the
academic and professional literature counts institutions like historic sites and battlefields
as “museums” and essentially treats them as offshoots of the museum realm. This
situation often causes professionals in the cultural resource management and museum
fields to treat both types of place as if they were largely the same, when in fact they have
their own identities and characteristics as place that should be acknowledged. Without a
clear knowledge of the differences between museums and historic resources, place-
specific factors cannot appropriately be addressed.

The main argument of this thesis is that museums and historic resources exist as
two distinct manifestations of place that embody fundamental concepts of memory and
place in substantially different ways. To begin, I examine literature in the fields of
museum studies and cultural resource management and extract unarticulated information
about museums and historic resources as place from the literature. Descriptions of the

categories I have termed museum place and historic place are established using this

information. Finally, museum place and historic place are compared, creating images of

museums and historic resources as distinct place types.

Definitions of Museum Place and Historic Place

Museums include much more than the architectural footprint of the museum, and
historic resources are not only the geographical sites of historic buildings or events.
Because this study involves original descriptions of distinct place types, I believe it is
necessary to designate new categories that acknowledge both the tangible and intangible
characteristics of museums and historic resources. The terms museum place and historic
place go beyond traditional definitions.

Museum place is the union of physical place (including museum buildings,
objects, and exhibits) with the intangible “place” created within the walls of museums by
the articulation of memories. Historic place is defined as any physical location that
becomes “historic” in the memories of individuals or groups, with or without human-
made objects connected to it. Historic place combines the physical properties of places
with all of the elusive properties that people feel in places: a combination of physical

sensory perception, mental and emotional connection, and the magnetism of memory.

Methodology
One of the primary goals of this thesis is examining the museum studies and
cultural resource management literature from the 19705 to the present for information
about the characteristics of museums and historic resources as place. To accomplish this
goal, some method for approaching the literature is necessary. In The Production of

Space, Henri Lefebvre (1974/ 1991) argued that signs in existing space can be read like

signs in literary texts. He suggested that it is possible to apply principles of semiology to
spaces to read these “messages” (p. 7).

Terms of everyday discourse serve to distinguish, but not to isolate, particular

spaces, and in general to describe a social space. They correspond to a specific

use of that space, and hence to spatial practice that they express and constitute.

Their interrelationships are ordered in a specific way. (p. 16)

Lefebvre posited that reading the messages of space will “enable us, on the basis of the
words themselves and the operations that are performed upon them, to construct a spatial
code” (p. 16, emphasis in original).

Following Lefebvre’s example of discerning codes of place, I will use a detailed
review of the literature relating to this subject to outline spatial codes for museums and
historic resources. Discovering and analyzing the codes of museums and historic
resources will provide some answers to questions about what is known about them as
places and their characteristics as place. The information that will lead to answers for
these questions are not readily found together; instead, they must be culled from diverse
sources. Once compiled and connected, these ideas and concepts will reveal a more
complete picture of what museum place and historic place are as distinct place types.

While identifying the codes behind space is useful, Lefebvre suggests that this
process should be pushed a step further. In his work discussed above, Lefebvre was
interested in finding a “supercode” or “code of codes” that would allow him “to trace the
coming-into-being and disappearance of coding/decodings,” in essence, to discover how
and why the codes came to exist as they did (pp. 17-18). Lefebvre was attempting to get
at what gave rise to codes of space, that is, their geneses. Applying his idea to this study,

I seek to discover what factors give the codes of museum place and historic place their

structure and substance.

As part of this project, I develop a theoretical construct for examining concepts of
place and memory manifested in objects and places. This emerging construct features a
series of four “realms” of physical and virtual place based on principles of place and
memory studies. The system illuminates what occurs between people, objects/sites, and
memory in the intimate relationship of place. Identified as the “Four Contextual
Domains,” the realms include the origin domain, creation domain, display domain, and
the experiencer-object domain, describing both physical (tangible) and virtual
(intangible) places (Figure l). The four domains will serve as a means to discuss some of
the things that give these place codes their structure and substance and to identify
possible geneses of the codes of museum place and historic place, by examining the roots

of each codes’ elements in the domains.

Physical Place Virtual Place

Ill

 

, OrIgIn ’ Creation
" Domain ' Domain

7 . Object /

Place

 

_ Experiencer-
PM“! ' “ Object

 

 

 

Figure l. The four contextual domains

Because this study is by nature interdisciplinary, it relies on literature from a
number of different fields, including texts by geographers, environmental sociologists,
and architects in which concepts of space and place are discussed. Works in material
culture, art history, memory studies, and psychology illuminate this literature, as one of
my main contentions is that “place” is not merely synonymous with the architectural or
even the physical but is also something intangible. Bringing ideas from contemporary
and historical literature together will support this assertion. It is important to note that
although there are many universal concepts evident herein, especially concerning how
human beings experience place, the scope of this paper is limited to Western ideas and

concepts, primarily as developed in the United States.

The Relevance of This Study

As discussed above, the literature falls short in providing satisfactory descriptions
of museums and historic resources as unique types of place. Although latent information
is present, it is spread over too many different sources and is not easily accessible to
readers, frustrating the efforts of those who seek this information. It appears that the
definitive books about museums and historic resources as types of place are yet to be
written. As a result, most scholars and professional practitioners have yet to consider the
importance of distinct types of place in relation to the work they do. An understanding of
these differences may influence research and professional practices that hinge upon
concepts of place. Practice in the areas of conservation, curatorial work, exhibition,
education and programming, visitor studies, and institutional operations may change if
professionals find that addressing place-specific differences will improve visitors’

experiences.

For example, a museum exhibit designer might ask, “How does the ‘place’ we are
creating reflect or not reflect the visitors who will experience it? Will they feel
comfortable with the type of place we create, or will they be alienated by it? Will this
place make sense spatially to people in terms of what they already know from absorbing
spatial cues in their environments? How will this place help people to articulate
memories of the past?” The historic site manager may ask the same types of questions,
but the questions emerge from a thought process centered on an entirely different type of
place, which possibly will produce very different answers. When critical distinctions
between museum place and historic place are not acknowledged and addressed, important
opportunities for improving professional practice and visitor learning may be lost.

This thesis answers some questions and opens up many others for discussion. It
attempts to fill some of the gaps in the literature but really does more to raise awareness
about the need for a new segment of museum studies and cultural resource management
literature that specifically addresses issues of place. The attempt here to create
descriptions of museum place and historic place is certainly not exhaustive. The
differences between museum place and historic place that become apparent through this
analysis are often not as sharp as they first appear. There are many shades of gray and
points of potential overlap. Can historic place ever be part of museum place and vice
versa? Might there be places of interaction within the four contextual domains, creating
intercontextuality? By way of acknowledging these and other possibilities and
necessarily limiting the scope of this project, I am framing this thesis as a starting point
for a line of thinking about the characteristics of museum place and historic place and

suggesting that this work be a catalyst for further discussion and research.

CHAPTER ONE

PLACE AND MEMORY

Two concepts are key to this thesis: place and memory. The descriptions of
museum place and historic place rely heavily on these concepts. However, the meanings
of place and memory have both long been contested. Before beginning an investigation
into the codes of museum place and historic place involving memory and place, it is first
necessary to state firmly what is meant by these terms. The following chapter establishes
the vocabulary that will be used in this thesis and provides a brief background in the
theoretical foundations of place and memory that will be interpreted and applied to this

discussion.

What is Place?

Attempts to define space and place have continued throughout human history.
Today, the two words are often used interchangeably, but historically, the terms space
and place have not always been synonymous nor their definitions fully agreed upon.
Contemporary scholars most often use these terms foremost to describe phenomena of
human beings existing in and interacting with a physical plane. This is evident in current
literature, and in this thesis, the terms space and place are employed in the same way.

On what are our current notions of place based? Ancient scholars such as
Leucippus (5th c. B.C.E.), Democritus (5th c. B.C.E.), and Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E.)
made the distinction between place and space by arguing that there is a difference
between a void and that which may arise within a void, leading later thinkers to conclude

that places must come from somewhere (Casey, 1997). Plato described space as a

container or “receptacle.”2 Aristotle refined this idea of space as a container, while
characterizing place as something that surrounds the body, making a distinction between
place, which remains motionless, and that which moves: things.3 Human beings exist as
things in places and move within places, which in turn are part of space itself. Casey
described how these ancient concepts eventually led to the specific categories of infinite
“space” and specific “place,” which he asserts were firmly entrenched in Western thought
by the Renaissance. In the following chapters, the terms space and place will be defined
as follows: space, the infinite bounds of the universe, and place, specifically defined,
bounded locations within space.

Scholars have continued to explore and stretch the meanings of space and place.
During the late I960S and early 19705 in the fields of cultural geography, environmental
psychology, history, memory studies, and other disciplines concerned with space and
place, changes in ideas about what place means and how human beings relate to place
became more prominent (Hubbard, Kitchin, & Valentine, 2004). Although these
treatments of the topic of place are greatly varied, certain recurring themes find their way
into contemporary literature on place, for example, place as shaped by human meaning
making and interaction with place, place as object, and place as the embodiment of

memory. These common ideas, based on the scholarship of place, will help to identify

 

2 In the Timaeus, Plato wrote, “In the same way that which is going to receive properly and uniformly all
the likenesses of the intelligible and eternal thing must itself be devoid of all character. Therefore we must
not call the mother and receptacle of visible and sensible thing either earth or air or fire or water, nor yet
any of their compounds or components; but we shall not be wrong if we describe it as invisible and
forrnless, all-embracing, possessed in a most puzzling way of intelligibility, yet very hard to grasp” (51a)
(Plato, 1965, p. 69).

3 Aristotle argued, “Just, in fact, as the vessel is transportable place, so place is a non-portable vessel. So
when what is within a thing which is moved, is moved and changes its place, as a boat on a river, what
contains plays the part of a vessel rather than that of place. Place on the other hand is rather what is
motionless: so it is rather the whole river that is place, because as a whole it is motionless. Hence we
conclude that the innermost motionless boundary of what contains is place” (Aristotle, 2000, Book lV.4).

10

place-related signs within the museum studies and cultural resource management
literature, without which it would be impossible to begin reading the codes or identifying
a supercode for museum place and historic place.

One crucial point is that we cannot escape the landscape of place, because place is
related to every factor that affects human life. Place plays a key role in the way we
experience life. This thesis begins with the supposition that place is physically and
psychologically essential to humans. As Relph (1976, p. 141) asserted, human beings

have “deep psychological and existential ties” to place, to which they may often be
oblivious. Concluding his discussion of Edmund Husserl’s ideas on the relationship
between body and place, Casey (1997, p. 226) contended, “A placeless world is as
unthinkable as a bodiless self site,” suggesting that places and people are inextricably
intertwined. These ties are something unavoidable, as Martin Heidegger declared in
Building Dwelling Thinking (1951/1971). He observed that “dwelling,” by which in one
context he means human existence, is synonymous with being. Heidegger suggested,
“The way in which you are and I am, the manner in which we humans are on the earth, is
Buan, dwelling. To be a human being means to be on the earth as a mortal. It means to
dwell” (p. 147, emphasis in original). Dwelling — being human — requires that one be
emplaced and thus that there be places in which this process can occur.

But how is place created or defined within infinite space? One way is through
human meaning making in space. Human beings cannot help existing, and they also
cannot help making meaning in the places they inhabit. In place, Heidegger contended the

existence of things “shapes space” and “causes it to mean” (1951/1971, p. 5). Yi-Fu

ll

Tuan’s (1977) distinction between “space” and “place” also rests on meaning making; for
him, space becomes “place” for individuals only through the personal ability to
distinguish the boundaries of a given location, mentally and physically, from other
locations. The mental and physical work that creates place for human beings is the
driving force behind the making of meaning in place or what Walter (1988, p. 21) called
“topistic reality,” which describes the data that come from “sensory perceptions, moral
judgments, passions, feelings, ideas, and orientations” through which people shape places
and vice versa. Thus, places are a reflection of the people and forces that make them.
The making of meaning in place over time is what gives places their identities.
Input of the data that Walter describes, like the creation of memory, is perpetual in
places. Every new generation perceives and creates place in its own way. Every society
produces its own places; controlling defined place legitimizes a society’s existence as a
separate entity with power (Lefebvre, 1974/ 1991). Thus, place can accurately be
described as a “chameleon concept,” because place means different things at different
times to different people (Davis, 1999, p. 238). Places consist of what Walsh (1992, p.
152) called “time marks,” which are the “subjective recognition” of “elements in the
environment, both humanly and naturally constructed. ..[that] make time ‘visible.’” As
these marks and the ways in which they are perceived change, the ways people approach,
move through, and exist in place changes also (Leach, 1999). So then, the places in space
upon which our bodies rest are the sum of unavoidable emplacement in the physical
realm, the cache of human memory, and the meaning made of these factors by people.

However, with everything in places that is dependant on human interaction,

memory, and making of meaning, do places have unique qualities independent of anything

12

human? If there were no people on earth, would place still exist as the “motionless

something” that contains the physical environment within infinite space as Aristotle
described? Although this question may be argued from many different perspectives, it
makes sense here to concentrate on the definition of place as delineated by human
memory and meaning making. Viewed in this way, places can be perceived with the
mind and physical senses, as much of the literature outlined above suggests. Places are
carved out of infinite space through human design, much as objects are shaped out of
infinite matter. Because of this shared characteristic between objects and places, it is
possible to think of place as an “object” that can be analyzed using material culture
methods. Making place an object does not take anything away from arguments about the

self-existence of places; it just makes it possible to focus on certain aspects of place.

What is Memory?

Looking to the past means looking to memory. Place is often described as it relates
to human memory, both individual and collective. Without memory, place is impossible,
because we would be unable to distinguish one location from another. But what is
memory? Halbwachs (1925/ 1992, p. 183) defined memory as “a fiamework made out of
notions that serve as landmarks for us and that refer exclusively to the past” and as “a
rational activity that takes its point of departure in the conditions in which the society at
the moment finds itself, in other words, in the present.” In both definitions, a framework
created by society is necessary for memory to exist. Halbwachs suggested that
individuals remember because they are prompted to do so by other people and things in
the environments and that “no memory is possible outside frameworks used by people

living in society to determine and retrieve their recollections” (p. 43). Thus, if one

13

accepts this definition of memory, who and what exists in a person’s environment is key
to what and how she or he will remember.

Memory, in this sense, may belong to individuals or groups. The memory of
groups is often referred to as “collective memory.” Collective memory is not simply an

aggregate of individuals’ memories that together make up a group’s memory. Instead,

 

groups create their own frameworks of landmarks with which individuals interact and t
shape over time (Halbwachs, 1925/ 1992). Halbwachs’ concept of memory as a series of k

landmarks also implies movement during a process, in this case, between the landmarks

that refer us to the past. Huyssen (1995) described the act of memory as a process of L

individual or collective searching (French, recherche) in the realm that exists between
historical events and our representations of them in memory. The memory process
shuttles human beings back and forth between present and past, constantly building and
rebuilding relationships between the two. Working continually in and through our social
relationships, shared memories draw individuals and groups into a reciprocal relationship
where individuals receive memory cues from society and societies, in turn, reinforce the
remembrances we seek.

No matter what the reason, the desire to link with memory usually leads first to
the most tangible and familiar forms. In material objects, people often believe they can
readily access memories significant to their heritage. They treat things as virtual “keys”
for accessing knowledge of the past. The authenticity, or perceived authenticity, of the
object is central to its power to connect the viewer or possessor with the past. According
to Huyssen (1995, p. 33), only genuine artifacts are imbued with this power, because they

possess what he calls an “aura” of enchantment associated with their relationship to

14

history and status as repositories of memory. He argues that human beings position
objects in sharp contrast with the transparent and fleeting images offered by modernity,
essentially personally orchestrating and then falling under their own spell of object
enchantment. In many ways, genuine objects provide a material reality that can act as a
powerful guide and corrective for memories.

Like objects, many scholars argue that place is the embodiment of memory. Place
is not merely a “trigger” for prompting memory; instead place is where memories are
constructed and reconstructed. The tangible nature of physical places creates dwelling
places for memory: Nora’s (1989) lieux de mémoire (“realms of memory”), including
ideas recorded in oral or written form, physical objects and locations, and rituals. Some
scholars insist that place is created only by the experiences and memories of the people
that inhabit and “live” a place, infusing it with their memories — the only process that
creates genuine place (Davis, 1999; Del Real, 2004; Woessner, 2005). Specific
memories of specific people create place as it exists. In his discussion related to José
Marti’s ideas about North American place, inhabitation, and imperialism, Del Real (p.
203) remarked, “For Marti, memory is tied to place, but only as an active participant, as
an ongoing narrative. Memory acquires meaning when it engages space; and only then
does it transform it into place.” Del Real characterized place as a union of lived
experience and memory. This connection to memory and living people makes place into

something that continuously evolves, as Woessner (p. 152) suggested: “Unlike the
thoroughly planned space of the engineer, the space of memory is never closed; it can
never be fully mapped or demarcated. Instead, it is always open, like memory itself, to

revisions.”

15

Like authentic objects, places have a power, an affective quality related to being
physically close to the site where events occurred. When a person is present in such a
place, they often become emotionally influenced by the physical presence of the artifact —
Huyssen’s “enchantment” at work. The individual’s physical location helps to shape the
type of remembrance that occurs in that place. For example, the town of Gettysburg
existed long before the battle of 1863, but its physical spatial qualities and identity were
transformed by the events that occurred there, making it now impossible to separate the
place from the event. The genuine physical sensory feedback from the environment one
experiences while in the place cannot be replicated elsewhere, and this coupling of
physical and emotional experiences affect how memory is acquired and shaped in
particular places and the sense of pastness that is ultimately achieved.

The relevance of memory to places and objects is indisputable, for without
memory we could not remember and understand what an object is, where it came from,
or how to use it. Similarly, we could not make sense of the world, because the divisions
of the world that we call places are created by and continue to exist in human memory.
The attempt in the next chapter to extract codes of museum place and historic place from

the literature reveals this codependence of the concepts of place and memory.

16

CHAPTER TWO

READING THE CODES OF MEMORY PLACES

Might it not be a good idea, therefore, first to make an inventory of them [the

signs], and then try to ascertain what paradigm gives them their meaning, what

syntax governs their organization? (Lefebvre, 1974/1991, p. 16)

Henri Lefebvre discussed the possibility of discovering codes consisting of the
“signs” that allow place to be read like a text and to have their messages revealed. If one
were to perform a “close reading” of a place, might it be possible to uncover enough of
the individual signs necessary to illuminate a working code of that place? Although not
always apparent or found in obvious places, codes of place, like codes of memory, exist.
Petrov (1989) surmised that memory connects us to our own cultures and pasts and that
we are connected through our customs, traditions, and folklore, whether or not we choose
to remember. Even when apparently forgotten, the signs of memory shape culture and
forge connections to the past. Similarly, the signs of place, even if unacknowledged,
have the potential to reveal a code with connections to history and present understanding.

Concepts in the literature that consistently appear over time become signs, and the
signs assembled together provide codes. Literature on museums and historic resources
that provide close readings of place (although sometimes inadvertently) reveal the codes.
To find these codes, this chapter involves a search for signs in this literature. The time
span covered by this search will necessarily be limited. In the 19605 and 705, a shift
occurred when scholars in a variety of fields began to concern themselves less with space

and place as a geographical fact and more about the production and meanings of place

(Hubbard, Kitchin, & Valentine, 2004). Evidence of this shifi is seen in the literature of

17

museums and historic resources, indicating that reflections of the shift affected
philosophy and practice in these disciplines, as will be seen below. Because this change
reflects the body of ideas that shaped museum place and historic place as they exist in the
present, the literature examined here for the signs of place will be limited to that
published between 1960 and 2007, except in some cases where historical comparisons are

made.

The Code of Museum Place

In most of the literature about museums, the focus is not on place but rather on the
description of museums physically, organizationally, or functionally. Many latent
connections to place exist there but not articulated. One of the problems is the lack of a
fundamental description of what the museum is as place. For example, museum place is
related to the exhibition of objects, but it is not merely about the display of objects.
Museum place is related to the architectural, but it is only partially about a built
environment. Further, the history of museums is long. With all its complexity, how can a
satisfactory picture of museum place be created? The following review of museum
studies, cultural resource management, and material culture literature will produce a
description of museum place.

A significant portion of the museum place signs reveals memory as central
concept. Human memory, especially collective memory, and meaning making have a
great influence on how all places are perceived and experienced. No matter what the

identity of a place, people still seem to recognize that there is human agency and memory

behind the delineation of locations in the environment. Maleuvre (1999, p. 71)

18

envisioned a “space of memory” in museums, in which objects separated from genuine
place and existence survive as images of reality. Radley (1991, pp. 66-67), writing about
the physical space of museums, concluded, “Perhaps more than anything else, however,
museums are expressions of the ways in which societies represent their own, and others’
pasts to themselves.” Glassberg (1996, p. 17) illuminated this connection between
representations of the past, places, and memory in his study of public history and
memory: “Historical consciousness and place consciousness are inextricably intertwined;
we attach histories to places, and the environmental value we attach to a place comes
largely through the memories and historical associations we have with it.” Davis (1999)
believed that traditional museums (defined in contrast to ecomuseums, which are
typically very connected to the memories of the people who live in the area near an
ecomuseum) can never capture the elusive qualities of place unless it is connected to
collective memory. He asserted, “The essence of place lies beyond the museum, in the
environment itself, and is defined by the individuals and the communities who live there”
(p. 21).

In reading the signs in the literature, one also finds that museum place is primarily
related to the presence of objects. That the object is paramount is reflected in the fact
that museum place is largely about to the accommodation of objects. Historically,
museums did not come into existence through the process of someone building a structure
and then looking for objects to fill it. From the Renaissance onward, the “notion of
museums” originated with people who collected objects (Ritchie, 1994, p. 8). Individual
collectors brought their objects together in collections, which were sometimes displayed

to others — the “cabinets of curiosities” of old. The presence of objects in one location as

19

a collection or set of collections assembled by and for people is what makes a museum.
Although the form and function of museums has changed over time, the basic connection

to objects has not (Coleman, 1950; Dana, 1999; Goode, 1896; Smith, 1917). By

definition, museums make a “unique contribution to the public by collecting, preserving,

and interpreting the things of this world” (American Association of Museums, 2000).

Every museum, no matter what type, has some kind of “object” on which it centers.
Museum place as an artificial or inauthentic place is another recurring sign. Many

authors make this observation, including Hein (2000, pp. 7-8), who asserted, “Museum

 

objects occupy a fictional space that is controlled by the museum.” She argued that those L
in power create the space and thus have the ability to mold it into any image they choose.
So-called fictional museum place is supposed to be contrived and separated from the real,
much like the “imagineered” places of Walt Disney and others (Francaviglia, 1995). Del
Real (2004) echoed this conclusion in commenting that museums disconnected from the
authentic memory of people whom the museum is designed to serve perpetuates the
existence of a type of place that does not accurately reflect the memories of the people
who inhabit it. In his discussion of a study of the preferences of visitors regarding the
desire to learn about a historic location through a museum or historic place, Walsh (1992,
p. 161) indicated that museums are disconnected from real place and that the study
revealed “the desire to actually be in a place, and experience it first hand, as well as an
obvious dissatisfaction with the potential of most contemporary museums to facilitate a

sense of place.”4

 

4 Walsh based this conclusion on Nick J. Merriman’s 1988 study from his unpublished doctoral
dissertation (University of Cambridge), The role of the past in contemporary society, with special
reference to archaeology and museums.

20

Museum place, as a created environment in contrast to a supposedly more
authentic place like a geographical location, often fails to impart the sense of place, based
in part on its perception as a spatial tabula rasa. Maleuvre (1999, p. 75) claimed in his

discussion of art museums, “The museum represents the absence of a place and thus best

suits the historical caesura of the work of art.” Based on the concepts of the concrete
expressions of place and space outlined above, the absence of place he described is not
possible. Equally impractical is Lee’s (2002) definition of museum place as a center of
objective place and subjective (interpreted) space, a distinction which allows for certain
spaces within the museum to remain untouched by interpretation but is impossible when
one considers that the whole of museum place is always orchestrated and thus
“interpreted” on some level.

One of the most obvious signs in the museum literature concerns museum place
as a built environment. These signs are a reflection of the tangible meanings of place that
most people readily identify and understand as place. Although easily confused with the
function of museum buildings, identifying museum place as a built environment within
the code means recognizing that different types of built place were created during
different periods in history. From ancient times museums were thought to be the “realm
of the Muses” (Wittlin, 1949; Anderson, 2004), which is a familiar phrase and concept in
museum studies literature. However, with few exceptions, the focus was usually on the
Muses themselves rather than on the idea of a realm — a “place” to meet the Muses — yet
the connection to place is there. Over time, museums changed from contemplative study
areas to storehouses of monetary and cultural wealth. Dana (1917/2004) drew a sharp

distinction between a storehouse and a true museum environment (a place of education

21

and connection to the past), arguing that the history of museums as storehouses of wealth
is what created the problems affecting the museum field in the 19105. For Dana, the
spatial difference between the two was not so much one of function as one of expectation
behind the use of place. Wittlin, who wrote about museums in the post—World War Two
era, described museum place as the sum of the galleries, closets, cabinets, and
repositories contained in the museum building, but a subtle shift in the character of
museum place is also evident in her writing, making museums seem less about the
material storage of objects and more about the ability of people to encounter objects.
This is the contemporary purpose of most museums, as indicated by the American
Association of Museums’ Code of Ethics (2007).

The built environment of museums also reflects a unique union with objects.
Radley (1991, p. 69) creates an interesting mental image with his description of the
interconnected nature of museum place and object: “The building and its contents are of
the same form; the artefacts are not so much in the building as of it; the building is not so
much a container as the connective tissue of the displays.” In some ways, the object itself
“owns” or controls the place in which it is displayed, as Maleuvre (1999, p. 56)
contended, “To some degree, the space in which art is experienced belongs to the work of
art.” The relationship between museum content (objects) and container (building) is
further illuminated by Ritchie (1994, p. 8), who suggested a reciprocal influence between
place and object, observing, “The nature of the collections subsequently conditioned the
physical and spatial qualities of the buildings in which to house them.” Museum place
provides a location to bring people together with objects; it has been suggested that

museum place serves as a temple, a shopping or browsing environment, or a forum

22

(Anderson, 2004; Cameron, 2004; Lee, 2002; Radley, 1991; Schoken, 2006). Others
assert that the museum built environment has become an object or artifact in its own
right, converting concepts of the spatial into something comparable to the material (Lee,
2002; Merkel, 2002).

Other museum place signs characterize museum place as a function of the
intangible. It is a site of encounter with objects, people, and memory that often
transcends the physical. Museum place has the potential to shape person and place
reciprocally, as Lord (2005, p. 23) expressed, “It [museum space] is a kinesthetic
experience, during which our mere movement seems to change the space, and the place
somehow changes us.” The ability of museum place to adopt the functions of other kinds
of place is explored by Archibald (2004). He envisioned museum place becoming a
central, common place in local communities — “the new town square” — offering people
tangible reminders of the communal past and a gathering place. Kirschenblatt-Gimblett
(1998, p. 132) suggested that museum place is a travel “surrogate,” allowing people to
use museum place as a virtual portal for otherwise impossible journeys.

These signs of museum place gleaned from the literature of museums may not be
exhaustive, but they provide a close reading of museum place. Assembling the signs
together will facilitate the process of looking for a supercode to explain the genesis of the
museum place code. However, finding signs of museum place accomplishes only half
the goal set at the beginning of this thesis; an analysis of historic place remains. If
descriptions of museum place are difficult to make, what about historic place? Since
historic place is truly “place” in the geographical sense, does that make it easier to

define? In some respects, it is. Information about historic place exists in the literature of

23

many different disciplines, including public history, cultural resource management,
historic preservation, cultural geography, architectural history, archeology, and
anthropology. Therefore, identifying the signs of historic place will require examining a

broad section of literature.

The Code of Historic Place

Human memory is essential to the process of describing historic place. As with
museum place, and place in general, memory plays a central role in defining place and
place recognition. Historic place functions as a canvas of memory containing images of
symbolism and meaning. Mires (1999) observed that meanings evolve over time through
connection with memory. As described in Chapter One, people look to the landscape for
connections to the past, connections that may only be made through memory. Lowenthal
(1985, p. 8) suggested, “People flock to historic sites to share recall of the familiar,
communal recollection enhancing personal reminiscence.” Being in the specific place
where events occurred can have effects upon memory, with complex results. As
Halbwachs (1925/1992) asserted, memories of place and our experience in places tend to
be invented compositions of various recollections. Over time and distance, the accuracy
of memory can become suspect. For instance, the memory of one’s childhood home and
neighborhood often seem to be vividly imprinted upon the mind. Sometimes in
physically retuming to the place, one finds that things do not appear as remembered or
that certain details are skewed in the memory. In returning, place can act as a
“corrective” for memory, reconciling the true spatial and physical realities with the
constructed memory. The connection of memory and place are strong and relate to the

issues of tangibility and accessibility previously described. Historic place offers the same

24

type of corrective for memory, even if one is separated from these place memories by
distance or time. Experienced together with memory, historic place provides a means to
know the past, as Lowenthal (p. 249) advised, “Memory, history, and relies offer routes
to the past best traversed in combination.”

Obviously, historic place is genuine (i.e. real, tangible) physical place. That
historic place is genuine place is not generally disputed. For most of the writers who
discuss historic place, this is an underlying assumption. Many use terms such as “sense
of place” and “place connection” to describe what they mean by a connection to genuine
place. If defined as genuine place, any physical location is technically “historic place” by
virtue of its connection with human history and memory, even if that history is not known
(Basso, 1996).

It is knowledge of the history connected with places, that is, memory, that gives
places significance in the minds of human beings. The signs of historic place indicate
that it is created by designation. Designation defines the area of place considered historic
and marks it as something separate from non-historic place. Places only become
significant because people believe they are significant. Significant sites are the product
of social interactions that eventually produce either consensus or resignation to an
outcome, similar to the factors that affect the creation of collective memory. Halbwachs
(1925/1992, p. 40) argued that the collective frameworks “reconstruct an image of the
past, which agrees with the predominant thoughts of the society.” However, predominant
thought is not universal thought, and place designation is as political and contested as
memory. Deciding the significance of a place may create tensions between dominant and

minority members of a society, causing disagreement about what places should be

25

considered significant and why. Additionally, historic places can be refashioned,
interpreted, rebuilt, and re-imagined over time.

The value of historic places, including structures and landscapes, is coupled with a
sense of genuineness and significance not found in places that are merely reconstructions
(Fitch, 1990; Milligan, 2007). Historic resources have an “essence” that people attempt
to replicate through artificial means, in a search for the past (Francaviglia, 1995). The
desire to recreate genuine place reflects the need of humans to feel connected to their
place landscapes, as described above, particularly those that provide continuity with the
past. Lowenthal (1985, p. 248) asserted, “Artifacts are at once past and present,”
allowing their pedigree of age to speak for their authenticity. This authenticity grants
historic place a power of the genuine that other places do not have, a power similar to the
“aura” of enchantment that Huyssen (1995, p. 33) identified in authentic artifacts
associated with their relationship to history and status as repositories of memory. Moore
(1997) championed the need for authentic place in the heritage experience, suggesting
that if three factors are present — real objects, interacted with in their real context, and in
the presence of real people — this offers the highest degree of authenticity or connection
to people and their memories. Genuine place appears to fulfill much of this need to
connect with “the real.”

The process of designating a place as authentic and significant depends largely on
what group forces are driving the designation. A designation process may be formal or
informal. Formal designation involves official processes through government agencies,
from the local to the international level. Examples include World Heritage Sites, the

National Register of Historic Places (United States), National Historic Landmarks, and

26

state and local historic registers (Weible, I984; Milligan 2007). Other types of
designation result through grassroots efforts, involving local citizen groups or individuals
who transform a place into historic place by virtue of their belief in its historic
significance. These often appear as neighborhood designations (Hayden, 1984) or
spontaneous memorials (Everett, 2002; Kroslowitz, in press). Being designated by any
process sets historic place apart from other places, but the question of who gets to make
choices is always present; outcomes are often more positive for one group than for others
(Del Real, 2004; Shackel, 2001; Walkowitz & Knauer, 2004).

Another significant set of signs in the literature indicates that historic place is a
tangible connection to the intangible past. As physical place, historic place creates a link
to the past in which people can emplace themselves. In the 19505, Tilden (1957/ 1977, p.
3) called the American landscape “a vast preservation of shrines and treasures in which
may be seen and enjoyed the story of our natural and man-made heritage.” People
recognize that the past is permanently recorded on the landscape and tend to look for it
there (Datel, 1985; Glassberg, 1996). Trachtenberg’s (1965) study of the Brooklyn
Bridge showed how objects and places (the bridge functions as both) serve alternately as
symbolic monuments to the past and something to be experienced as part of
contemporary life, demonstrating that tangible connections between past and present
occupy our everyday landscapes. Following a 1994 survey, Rosenzweig and Thelen
(1998, p. 105) reported that people who responded to the survey said they “trusted history
museums and historic sites because they transported visitors straight back to the times

when people had used the artifacts on display or occupied the places where ‘history’ had

27

”5 Historic place is a physical environment in which visitors can situate

been made.
themselves and experience the spatial settings that people in the past experienced
(Donnelly, 2002). This feeling of connection to the past through experience of the
physical, such as historic place, has been described as a “transcendental experience”
(Cameron & Gatewood, 2000, p. 110), which relates to Huyssen’s enchantment discussed
above. The nature of place as environmental constants and the unavoidable emplacement
of human beings in it makes searching for the past in place a natural human pursuit.
Objects may disintegrate over time and cultures change, but place is our most ready and
ever-present connection to that which came before.

A final set of signs reveals the notion that historic place may be experienced as an
“object.” Although physical places are significantly different from objects in many ways,
some scholars have opened the door to thinking about place in an objective sense. This
makes it possible for historic place to function at times as an artifact and at others as a
physical location, an argument also advanced by Schlereth (1980). Lee (2002, p. iv)
developed the concept of “museum-as-object” in her study of museums. She argued,

A museum is a human-made object that carries material, physical, objective

characteristics of a place; it is a location that is ‘stable’ and ‘just being there.’

Therefore, the museum as an object, the physical aspects of a museum, is a place

— or a set of places. (pp. 43-44)

Applying this logic, a place may reasonably be considered an object because of the
characteristics it shares with objects. Lawrence and Low (1990) made the important

point that people express socio-cultural factors in built forms. They suggested that built

objects embody beliefs about race, class, gender, and cultural relations, which may be

 

5 Rosenzweig and Thelen based this conclusion on a 1994 survey of 1,500 people in the United
States. The authors found that the majority of respondents were involved in some way in learning
history and that they believed this experience to be a personally useful pursuit.

28

“read” through material culture methods. Relating this concept to historic sites, these
ideas imply that the historic environment contains latent information about the past,
embodied in the very fabric and spatial design of buildings, and by extension, the
locations they occupy. It is possible then for place to be examined physically, much as an
object would be, to reveal this latent information. Because of its unique characteristics of
tangibility and intangibility, historic place should probably not be considered an object all
the time, but objectification may be considered a valid means to explore, study, and
understand historic place.

From the literature examined above, a rudimentary group of signs was created
that together establish a framework of code for museum place and historic place. Figure

2 provides a comparison of the main elements of the codes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Museum Place Historic Place
Strong connection to memory Strong connection to memory
Created by collection of objects Created by designation of place
Artificial or inauthentic place Authentic, physical place
A built environment Place that may be experienced as “object”
A function of the intangible A tangible connection to the intangible

 

 

Figure 2. A comparison of the two place codes

These codes reveal much about the different characteristics of museum place and
historic place. Primarily, they reveal the interdependent nature of memory, people, and
objects in both types of place. The codes emphasize the ways in which objects and

places are dependent upon the memory systems of human beings for meaning. However,

29

this elucidation of the codes still does not provide any sense of how or why these codes
came to be what they are. They include no unifying construct to articulate what the fact
that these signs appear in the literature means. Ultimately, they are mere descriptors,
which provide nothing to explain why museum place and historic place exist as they do.
The primary purpose of this project, as stated at the outset, is first to describe
museum place and historic place as places and second to compare their identities as two
distinct types of place. Clearly, the codes extracted from the literature cannot do this
alone. In order to begin pulling together all this information from the codes and to create
descriptions of museum place and historic place, it is necessary to find a construct within
which to discuss these subjects. Lefebvre (1974/1991) modeled using theory as
something through which to examine the rise, role, and the demise of codes. As part of
this project, I have developed an emerging theoretical construct of context from which to
consider the multiple relationships among people, memory, objects, and places. The
following chapter outlines this construct, which will be used as a tool to explore how and

why museum place and historic place are distinct place types.

30

CHAPTER THREE

A THEORY FOR UNCOVERING THE SUPERCODE

If indeed spatial codes have existed, each characterizing a particular spatial/social
practice, and if these codifications have been produced along with the space
corresponding to them, then the job of theory is to elucidate their rise, their role,
and their demise. (Lefebvre, 1974/1991, p. 17, emphasis in original)

Within space, human beings designate and define places, and these individual
pieces of the world become saturated with the meaning that people create. Place and
meaning together generate context. In searching for common threads in the literatures
described in the last chapter, one of the central common points that museum place and
historic place share is their relationship to place- and object-related contexts. This shared
underlying theme makes it possible to examine the codes of museum place and historic
place from the single construct of context, to make comparisons based on this
commonality, and to identify possible geneses of these two kinds of place.

The construct of context is commonly used to describe the physical setting that
objects occupy and in which people experience them. It makes sense to think of context
as geographic, such as a historic site or a museum gallery. Things are either native to
these places or not, making it possible to use this method of classification as a way of
discerning whether objects are “in” or “out” of context. Thus, art historians can
characterize the works of American artists as out of context when they are exhibited, say
in Europe (F attal & Salus, 2004). Historic preservationists have described moving
buildings out of their original geographic contexts as an undesirable but sometimes

necessary means of saving them (Fitch, 1990). In many ways, context is synonymous

with physical, geographic place.

31

This application of context is well established in the fields of museum studies and
cultural resource management, but is geographic place the limit to the concept of context
in thinking about objects and historic resources? Certainly, as described above, context
can be geographic place. However, the settings in which meaning is made by human
beings can extend far beyond the geographic. In her discussion of museums and
anthropological terms, Cruikshank (1992, p. 7) acknowledged, “The notion of context
continues to be troublesome in anthropology. It is no longer sufficient to be sensitive to
the setting and situation in which an object is collected or a story is heard. We have also
to understand its continuing life.” Similarly, Lawrence-Lightfoot (1997) suggested,

By context, I mean the setting—physical, geographic, temporal, historical, cultural,
aesthetic—within which the action takes place. Context becomes the framework,
the reference point, the map, the ecological sphere; it is used to place people and
action in time and space and as a resource for understanding what they say and do.

(p. 41)
Here, the definition of context becomes much more flexible, moving beyond the physical
into the realm of the intangible. The setting for “action” may refer to something in the
past, such as geographic origin, or something in the present, including personal
interaction of a museum visitor with an object. As the idea of context develops into a
more complex notion, it becomes apparent that context can exist in various forms and on
multiple planes.

Understanding context is central to discovering the geneses of the museum place
and historic place codes. Chandra and Daniel (2000) described the importance of context
knowledge in understanding works of art, especially the critical element of seeing beyond

the physical. They proposed a process of “ReCognizing,” which is “the act of

32

cognitively restructuring one’s thinking, getting to know a previously known thing in new
ways or an unknown thing, like a work of art, in multiple ways,” including “go[ing]
beyond the physical knowing or comprehending to gain a contextual knowing that is
constructed by time and place” (p. 8). In his discussion of material culture methods,
Prown (2000, p. 12) asserted, “Artifacts, like other historical events, do not just happen;
they are the results of causes. There are reasons why an object comes into existence in a
particular configuration.” Similarly, places “do not just happen”; the things, people, and
events that shape them create multiple contexts in which places exist and from which
they may be considered.

Below, the concept of context is employed to describe “Four Contextual Domains”
of physical and virtual place where interactions between people and objects/sites occur
(see Figure 1). The domains suggest ways in which people perceive the physical settings
and intangible realms that objects and sites occupy, creating the origin domain, creation
domain, display domain, and the experiencer—object domain. Based on theory and
methods from a variety of disciplines, including cultural geography, material culture, art
history, museum studies, and phenomenology, the four contextual domains offer a
construct from which to consider the codes of museum place and historic place. The
domains also illuminate known points of comparison between museum place and historic
place and suggest new ideas about their identities as embodiments of the physical and
intangible.

The four contextual domains discussed here are presented as an emerging
theoretical construct. In their role as theory, the domains provide a system through which

to explain the rise of the codes, as described by Lefebvre. As such, the four domains are

33

capable of crossing disciplines and are applicable to more than just the analysis of
museum place and historic place. The flexible nature of the four domains allows them to
be useful in elucidating codes for institutions of other types, perhaps libraries, for
example. It may be possible to apply the domains to any physical setting where people
engage with objects. Further, it is feasible to substitute “place” for “object” in any of the
domains and retain the sense of the domains. Potential exists for this construct to be

revised or added to when further research is conducted.

The Origin Domain

On the most fundamental level, as described above, context is about geography,
since contexts are places. As Casey (1997, p. 76) asserted, “Places punctuate a world and
serve to specify it [a world].” We ascribe meaning to places, just as we ascribe meaning
to everything else that surrounds us. Further, the need to connect person, object, and
place is deep-seated. The questions people ask about the objects they encounter are
usually first, “What is it?” and second, “Where did it come from?” In the broadest sense,
knowing what surrounded the object or place at its creation is determinative, shaping how
people approach and understand the thing in question. The connection, often latent,
between physical things and the environments that gave rise to them, is fundamental to
the concept of context.

The origin domain is defined as the geographic or cultural environment in which
an object was created, built, or in the case of places, designated as having a particular
meaning, through either formal or informal means. This is the most common application
of the idea of context; for example, an artifact that came from Erie, Pennsylvania

originated in that context. The division of objects into categories of origin domain is

34

typical in the museum and cultural resource management fields. If an object is described
as being viewed anywhere outside its place of origin, it is outside its context. This is
evident in many of the publicity materials published by art museums to describe
programs and exhibits. The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin
opened a new permanent exhibit in 2006 called America/Americas, which attempted to
illustrate how Latin American and American works reflect “European ideas of
abstraction” and to show “the first attempts to apply these to a specifically American
context” (Blanton Museum of Art, 2006). Similarly, the practice of listing geographic
origin in museum accession records and on interpretative labels is almost universal in
Western museum practice.

The origin domain can create socio-cultural connections in geographic place to
the legacies of the peoples of that place and of what surrounded the object at the time of
its making. Essentially, the origin domain exposes the framework of cultural experience
in which an object was created, including the whole collection of thoughts, feelings,
beliefs, and memories of the culture or society that created it. In many ways,
categorizing things according to their origin domain sets the stage for experiencing the
geographic and cultural meanings of objects. The origin domain aids in understanding
the object’s significance. Knowing about the origin domain of an art object facilitates
understanding its meaning. In his discussion of Navajo art, Zolbrod (1987) argued that it
is difficult if not impossible to know art objects without knowing the culture behind
them. Although a person may be able to appreciate and know an object to a certain

extent by experiencing it only aesthetically or by making inferences from the object’s

35

composition, informed viewers can frame their object interaction with knowledge of the
geographic or cultural context of a work.

Further, knowledge of the origin domain forces people to broaden their thinking
outside their own experience. Though Prown (1988, p. 26) correctly concluded,
“Because of cultural perspective, it is impossible to respond to and interpret the object in
exactly the same way as did the fabricating society, or any other society that may have
been exposed to and reacted to the object during its history and peregrinations,”
knowledge of the origin domain makes it necessary for the individual at least to consider a
broader context. Because many objects that people encounter come from somewhere
outside their own “worlds” — geographic, chronological, social — the origin domain forces
people to consider objects as something outside and separate from their own selflrood
experiences. The object is foreign and creates an inside/outside dichotomy that affects
the way people view their relationships to the objects around them, relationships that are
important to personal interpretation and understanding.

The importance of the origin domain to the understanding of objects has been
continually debated. Two enduring arguments on this topic come from Georg W. F.
Hegel and Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremére de Quincy, who differed sharply in their
assessment of the origin domain’s importance (Maleuvre, 1999). Although they refer
chiefly to art objects in their respective discussions of context, Hegel and Quatremere’s
conclusions are applicable to other types of objects/places. Quatremere concluded that an
object separated from its origin domain is “as good as dead” (Maleuvre, p. 26). For him,

experiencing the object in its origin domain was critical to understanding it, and this

understanding was difficult or impossible outside of the object’s place of origin. In

36

contrast, Hegel considered the origin domain as “merely incidental,” a “product of the
mind” that was created around the object and does not affect the object as it exists in the
present (Maleuvre, pp. 26-27). Hegel characterized the relation of art object to its origin
as a “reflexive connection, rather than a natural one,” demonstrated by the inability of
people to do more than look back to the setting from which the object came, instead of
directly experiencing it in the present (Maleuvre, p. 27, emphasis in original).

No matter what side one takes in this debate, the origin domain remains an
essential part of the history of the object/place. Hegel discounted the importance of this
history in the present, yet the fact that people know that history exists demands that it
be considered in relation to the object. Quatremére de Quincy’s position that an object
cannot be understood outside its origin domain is as thought provoking an argument as
Hegel’s. Certainly, understanding created within the origin domain is different from that
created outside it, but this fact just underscores the need to differentiate between the types
of knowledge created in both places. It seems that a middle-of—the-road approach, which
acknowledges both the limitations of people to encounter the past in places and supports

the definite need to attempt to do so, helps to define the role of the origin domain in

experiencing objects and places.

The Creation Domain
During the creative process, the creator (defined as the maker, artist, or builder)
intimately engages with the object being created. In doing so, she or he creates an
intimate context that surrounds the object, which may be envisioned a5 a virtual “place”

or “world” fashioned by the very act of creation: the creation domain. Existing solely

37

between the maker and object, the creation domain consists not only of physical place
and intimate contact but also of the ideas and experiences manifested in the object
(Figure 3). In this domain, the object’s existence flows from the creator and the object
answers the act of creation with a physicality that reflects the creator’s intentions. As the
process of creation continues, the object begins to be capable of a type of “response,” a
capacity born of its own existence independent of the maker. While the maker of an
object is actively creating, the creation domain is generated between person and object,
creating a unique atmosphere of context formed by the movement of ideas from the

maker to the object.

 

Figure 3. The intimate atmosphere of the creation domain

During the process of creation, the creator makes an object that is a unique
expression of his or her intent. Intent is often described as the design or purpose behind
the performance of an act, such as the creation of an object. The purposes of the creator
are made known within the creation domain. In Hamblen’s (1984, p. 20) discussion of
perceiving art, she suggested that intent is a collection of “learned behaviors, values, and
attitudes that shape artistic perceptions,” which in turn “constitute expectations that

define what is chosen for articulation by artists.” The ideas, beliefs, and desires of the

38

creator cause the object to be shaped in a certain manner. The creation domain provides
a physical and mental location for the expression of this intent.

How much control, however, does the maker have over intent? On some levels,
the creator may directly purpose intent in their works. For example, Lovell (2005)
described portraits of wealthy American colonials painted in the 17705-805. Painters like
Benjamin West, Charles Willson Peale, and John Singleton Copley created private
portraits of individuals of which the primary intent for production was clear: to celebrate
an inheritance, marriage, or other significant life event. These portraits reflect additional
aspects of the artists’ intent also, those as lofty as creating a masterful work or as
mundane as making money. What is revealed later as intent may have been unknown to
the maker during the creation process. Can creators fully know what their intent is when
making objects? Nemerov (2006) considered N. C. Wyeth’s intent in his painting The
Wreck of the “Covenant. ” He suggested that the issues driving Wyeth in the production
of this work and thus shaping his intent “remained largely invisible to him even as they
determined the appearance of his picture” (p. 7). Nemerov believed that much of artists’
intent is often subconscious and therefore unknown to makers. It is also possible that
intent context “evolves, multiplies, or changes over time,” as Odegaard suggested (1995,
p. 189). Removed from the process of creation, one can only speculate about the intent
context of objects through the process of art historical research, material culture methods,
or direct personal experience with objects.

Whether or not the creator is aware of intent during the making of an object,
intent nevertheless remains permanently “in” the object, because when the creation

process is complete, the object retains evidence of its former location in the creation

39

 

domain. That objects are capable of reflecting this experience is expressed by Prown

(1988) in his discussion of material culture methods. He asserted,

The underlying premise is that objects made or modified by man reflect,
consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, the beliefs of the individuals
who made, commissioned, purchased, or used them and, by extension, the beliefs
of the larger society to which they belonged [italics added]. (p. 18)

In Prown’s assessment, there is trace evidence in the object of the maker’s intent.
Recalling Brown’s (2003) notion that ideas are embodied in things, it follows that
something of the maker’s ideas during the creative process survives in the object and that
it may be discerned from studying the object. The ideas and beliefs of the creator imbued
in the creation domain form an atmosphere that surrounds and informs the object and
remains as an integral part of it. The creator’s ideas become a set of “contextual cues”
that forges a link to these ideas, and through them, the memory of the creation domain
(Middleton & Brown, 2005, p. 140).

The object, present during the process of creation with the maker, bears upon it
some traces, not only of intent, but also of the biographical or psychological background
of the maker. The creation domain also allows for expression of the creator’s sense of
self, which may be evident in the object. By “listening” to the object “tell” what it knows
about its creator (Prown, 1988, 2000; Schlereth, 1980), it may be possible to shed light
upon the person of the creator. When the creator is known, biographical information
about the maker may provide knowledge about the reasons an object was fashioned the
way it was. Conclusions reached through such methods can be revealing. The very
closed and completed nature of the creation domain makes examination of the object for
information about the maker an exciting prospect, for in many cases (such as objects

from antiquity), the object is the only remaining participant from the creation domain.

40

One historic resource, a log cabin from Grand Island, Michigan in Lake Superior,
most likely built by fur traders in the early nineteenth century, illustrates this
relationship.’ Though the rough-hewn logs, as a physical material, may not be conceived
of as “American,” the spatial boundaries created by the joining of these logs by the maker
in that time and place provided a place that was to be used in a particularly American
way. Fur traders designed the building to meet their unique needs as they engaged in
their daily work in the northern environment. Although the building was used for
different purposes later, the original spatial memories created by the maker remain in the
structure and is perceptible to those who enter the cabin, by placing their bodies within
that space and experiencing the context physically.

The creation domain also provides the beginning of a “biography” for the object, a
concept that Kopytoff (1986) explored. He suggested that objects have personal histories
attached to their beings as much as do people. Kopytoff concluded, “It seems to me that
we can profitably ask the same range and kinds of cultural questions [about types of
biographies and what successful biographies are] to arrive at biographies of things” (p.
66). Silverstone (1994) elaborated upon this concept, illustrating the process.

Objects have biographies. They move through a world of public and private

arenas, and in and out of the world of goods and commodities. Born in a factory,

an artist’s studio or a craftsman’s workshop, they may end up on a scrap-heap, on a

mantelpiece, or in the glass case of a museum: now on display, now hidden in the

bowels of our and others’ domesticity. (p. 163)

Assessing the object may reveal something about it and its creator. A5 Kopytoff further

asserted, “Biographies of things can make salient what might otherwise remain obscure”

(p. 67). The creation domain activates this process.

 

' This cabin is part of the collection of the Michigan State University Museum in East Lansing,
Michigan. The cabin was disassembled, transported, and reassembled in the museum in the late
19605.

41

Once the process of creation is complete and the object leaves the maker’s hands,
the creation domain, as a place, may only be connected to the present through memories.
The newly separated object and the creator become free to be emplaced in other contexts;
they are no longer part of the creative atmosphere. Still, much of the artist’s intent
remains with the object, and it surrounds the object and gives it meaning. It becomes as
much a part of the work as — and as inseparable from — the canvas, wood, or stone used in
fabrication. Even though the creation domain is a virtual and ephemeral place, observing
the object provides a window into the time and location where both the object and the
maker existed together. People experiencing the object may connect to the traces of this
domain and in essence “visit” this virtual place though interpretation, personal reflection,

and material culture or art historical methods.

The Display Domain

The display domain is the physical setting in which an object exists. Any place an
object occupies is technically a display domain, for example, a tin can on the side of the
road is “displayed” in its setting. This domain defines the relationship of objects to the
physical world that surrounds them. Display domains range from the intimate (a home
where family photographs sit atop a piano) to the public (museums, monuments and other
structures, or boundaries that set apart a specific spatial area). Because it is impossible
for human beings to separate objects from the physical settings in which they appear, the
display domain is central to the construction of place. In the museum studies and cultural
resource management fields, the display domain most often refers to settings specifically
designed to facilitate the presentation of objects, such as a museum exhibit or historic

site. In this discussion, the display domain will refer to the “place” created by the formal,

42

deliberate display of objects in a specific setting and the people who become part of the
this context through association with the objects. It is important to stress that issues
surrounding the mechanics or design of displays will not be addressed here but rather just
ideas about the characteristics of the display domain.

The display domain fashions realities for the object, and such realities may
become layers or strata of reality that change over time for an object (Oberhardt, 2001;
Schlereth, 1980). Schlereth explained that artifacts contain layers of symbolism and
meaning that reflect the history of the built environment. Schlereth emphasized that the
historic home has two histories of equal importance: historic existence as a residence and
contemporary existence as a museum. Similarly, biographies of objects include the
history of display domains in which an object has been a part. Display domains become
part of the history of the object and continue to be a part of it as long as the object exists.

These realities are not limited to the characteristics of physical display, such as
the design or appearance of a museum exhibit. When an object is exhibited within the
confines of the display domain, a relationship is established between the object and space
that transcends the tangible in many ways. Since both the object and the display domain
are physical “things” located together in a particular time and place, they should both
have the power to act on each other in a reciprocal creation of realities. Two enduring
questions enter here: What specifically is created by the existence of a display domain?
What about the issues of authenticity and inauthenticity of display domains?

Many would argue that the display domain creates an artificial environment,

because the display domain, by its very definition, involves people constructing an

43

environment for the presentation of objects. Hein (2000, p. 8) characterized the museum
display place as “a fictional space” and further surmised,
In the museum, these objects acquire an artificial value and effectively lose some
of their original attributes. Detached from their place in the physical world, they
inevitably undergo supraphysical alterations. They are enclosed in a framework
of new meanings, associated with other museum objects, whose relation to the
natural world, like their own, has become contingent and conjectural. (p. 25)
This process is similar to Davis’ (1999, p. 16) description Van Mensch’s definition of T
musealization, which means “the process of conserving, documenting and interpreting

objects or specimens” and “the selection and removal of an object from its original

context and its transfer to a museum [that] involves a change in meaning (or actual

 

identity) for that object.” This relates directly to the inevitable privileging of objects and
places involved in the creation of display domains and the power of display held by those
who control display, which affects meaning (Pekarik, 2002).

This change of meaning is not necessarily limited to objects in a museum display
domain. Even objects displayed in their own origin domains, such as in historic places,
are subject to the same identity and meaning changes to which Hein and Davis referred.
Davis (1999) argued that musealization can occur within any display space, including in
situ resources such as buildings and sites. One reason for this is the change in people’s
perceptions of objects that occurs over time, to which Hegel’s argument above about the
origin domain refers. Maleuvre (1999) contended,

To be historical, an object must have seceded from time: it cannot be one with its
temporal becoming. The historical object is therefore one that belongs neither to
its original setting—from which it has been singled out—nor to the present—in which
it resists assimilation. (pp. 58-59)

The idea that art in the museum is no longer authentic implies that art outside the

museum enjoyed a truer, more immanent connection with history and culture.
This view ratifies an idealist notion of history whereby history is thought to be a

44

substratum existing prior to the work of art, or a predetermined sphere wherein
the work of art is placed at birth. Thus a given work of art is said to ‘fit’ in its
historical context as in a natural essence. For both sorts of museum detractors, this
notion confirms the thesis that artworks must be reintegrated into a setting akin to
their ‘original’ circumstances. (p. 3)
Applying these ideas of inevitable changes in objects and the changes in social realities
and the memories of people that result from historical change, any display domain,
including the origin domain, can be considered inauthentic or fictitious.

The nature of the display domain, albeit fictitious, greatly affects people’s
experience with the objects presented within it. With such ability to affect the perception
of objects within its confines, the display domain becomes what Karp (1991, p. 14) called
an “apparatus of power” that “can serve masters other than the aesthetic and cultural
interests of the producers and appreciators of art.” Both museums and historic resources,
as producers of display domains, exercise this power. Pekarik (2002) addressed the
question of power in museums by asking who decides which objects get emphasized in
museums, essentially asking, “What becomes iconic and why?” Historically, historic
resources have also exercised power over display domains, involving both of objects and
place, often linked to “belief in the emotional and didactic power of historic sites” to
teach and influence belief (Ricketts, 1996, p. 25). Although changes have been occurring
in recent decades to balance the power relationships in places of memory, such as
museums and historic resources (Archibald, 2004; Bunch, 2007; Hindmarsh, 2007), the
clear distinction between “dominate memories (or a mainstream collective
consciousness)” and “alternative (usually subordinate) memories” (Kammen, 1991, p. 9)

is often most clearly evident in the display domain. What is displayed and how indicates

the possession and exercise of power. Although it is not the purpose here to delineate

45

how and why powers are exercised in museums and historic resources, it is sufficient to
note that power creates the display domain.

By extension, people interacting within and experiencing the display domain are
subject to that power to a certain degree. Viewers of objects, as part of the display
domain, actively create a segment of the reality in which the objects exist. People
contribute to the display context by their presence, actions, memories, and thoughts
within place. Yet, the ability of people to control this domain often overwhelms the
presence of objects and the ability of people to experience different domains through it.
This is especially evident in the ways in which Western people have been culturally
instructed to behave in the display domain. People often experience what Alpers (1991)
called the “museum effect,” which is a way of viewing and interacting with objects in a
museum context. This involves numerous factors, including the particular things within
the display domain that viewers are conditioned to notice, social behavior within
galleries, and “appropriate” relationships to objects. This power of the display domain
often overwhelms the physical presence of objects and the other domains that surround it.

Because of this power, the display domain becomes a broker of context, that is, a
connection maker or mediator between the creator, object, displayer, and the people who
ultimately see the object in the display domain. In such a position, this domain connects
these participants together, by providing a physical place for interactions in the display
domain that makes Ieaming about the other contexts more accessible to the viewer, for
example, the origin and creation domains. Although the creator is most likely absent
when the viewers interact with an object in a display domain, there is still something of

the creator in the traces of creation domain that remain with the object. Similarly, the

46

origin domain also has an influence on the object and how it appears as part of the
display domain. In many ways, the display domain becomes a true “collaboration,” as

Vogel (1991, p. 191) characterized art exhibitions.

The Experiencer-Object Domain
Every object is part of different contexts throughout its existence: the origin

domain, the creation domain, and some type of display domain. In their interactions with
objects, people perceive objects mentally and physically, in situations ranging from the
individual to the social. Individual interaction with an object, with a person relating to
the object one-on-one, creates an interface particular to a single viewer and a single
object in a specific time and place. I have termed this place of interaction the
experiencer-object domain. As long as this interaction continues, this virtual place — the
experiencer-object domain — is sustained between the two. The intimacy of this space is
key; it exists only for the individual and the object involved in the relationship (see
Figure 3). Other objects, people, and even the physical setting surrounding the viewer
and object are still part of the physical context of the scene (that is, the display domain),
but they may become less important to the understanding of the object for the time a
person is engaged in the experiencer-object domain. Group or social encounters with
objects are made up of multiple single engagements with the objects. People first
experience a thing individually and then compare their experiences of mind and body
with that of others.

The relationship between person and object in the experiencer-object domain is first
a physical one, based upon sensory perception. Walter (1988, p. 2) depicted the modern

disconnect from sensing the environment, including the objects in it, as “a balanced

47

experience of intellect, common sense, feeling, and imagination.” He argued that ancient
peoples were (and modern children are) more adept at allowing the experiences of body
(i.e., what is seen, smelled, tasted, touched, heard) to connect with the experiences of the
mind and creating an “integrity of experience” than modern adults, who often feel
reluctant to consider seriously what is felt by the body (p. 3). The fact that this is

occurring is sometimes unknown to the person engaged with an object, as King (2003, p. I"
93, emphasis in original) described engagement with places: “Places are felt in ways we

don't entirely understand, and some of them may actually have unusual power to affect

 

our nervous systems.” Learning how to participate more fully in object exploration with E
the senses is central to many art and museum education programs (Sirlin & Margolis,
1985; Visual Understanding in Education, 2001).

Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty emphasized the importance of the body in
the relationship of person to object. He suggested that people experience the object
world through their bodies and that experience and objective thought are both based on
physical interactions with objects. In his treatise on phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty
(1945/ 1962) discussed the primacy of the body in encountering objects. Envisioning the
body as the critical connection point between people and things, he asserted, “I become
involved with things with my body, they co-exist with me as an incarnate subject” (p.
185). He further reasoned that whatever is experienced by the mind is first experienced
by the body, observing, “It is through my body that I go to the world, and tactile
experience occurs ‘ahead’ of me, and is not centered in me. It is not I who touch, it is my
body” (p. 316). The body acts as an advance agent of the mind, the first part of the

person that interacts with an object. He contended, “The thing is constituted in the hold

48

which my body takes upon it” (p. 320). Thus, according to Merleau-Ponty, all that we
perceive objects to be comes through our senses, and much of the object’s constitution
depends upon this perception.

What one perceives through the senses then becomes input to the mind. Once the
mind translates what the body perceives into thought, the process of interpretation begins:
The object makes meaning for the viewer, and the viewer invests meaning in the object If

(Brown, 2003). At this point begins a process of give-and-take between person and

'G E“. h

object. It is reciprocal, with the person Ieaming from the object and the object in turn

offering new information (often from the other three domains) to be perceived through

 

’l‘v In; I

the body and interpreted by the mind. The individual’s interpretation of the object’s
meaning, though it can be informed and shaped by outside interpretation and education,
should always be considered valid.

Together, physical and mental sensing both contribute to the building of the
experiencer-object domain, or environment, which exists as its own “place” and includes
all the things in that environment. Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) visualized a “horizon”
that surrounds objects, which fades into the background the closer one looks at a
particular object within an environment. He reasoned, “1 direct my gaze upon a sector of
the landscape, which comes to life and is disclosed, while the other objects recede into
the periphery and become dormant, while, however, not ceasing to be there” (p. 68).
Thus, one may envision the experiencer—object domain as an intimate place, consisting of
this landscape and horizon and created by the object and person, for the purpose of
exchanging ideas. For as long as someone remains engaged with an object, the

experiencer-object domain continues to exist for that person and that object alone, in a

49

place similar to the atmosphere of the creation domain (see Figure 3).

Although it may metaphorically be considered a place, the experiencer-object
domain is also an action: the act of participation of person and object in a process of
engagement with each other. The experiencer-object domain is an environment of active
involvement. Neither experiencer nor art is passive in this connection. Each has the
power to “act” on the other. When someone encounters an object, that object r
immediately becomes part of the reality and sphere of space around the experiencer.
People both interact with and act upon the objects with which they come into contact.

They can touch objects, physically change or move them, and fashion the display domain

 

LI”

in which the objects exist. People’s prior experience and the interaction they have with
objects/places affect the shape that this experiencer-obj ect reality takes.

Objects also appear to have some form of power to act upon people. Although
they do not have the ability to act with purpose and decision as living things do,
Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton (1981, p. 16) astutely observed, “The material
objects we use are not just tools we can pick up and discard at our convenience; they
constitute the framework of experience that gives order to our otherwise shapeless
selves.” The notion that objects create an environmental framework or context around
people gives objects a certain type of agency. In this capacity, the object becomes a
“possessor” of value and meaning reflected in the environment created by display, a
characterization Greenblatt (1991, p. 52) made of museum objects. For example, a
painting is invested with various meanings and values, including aesthetic beauty, its
representative nature of a certain style of art, or the insurance value ascribed to the work.

With their power to become part of the environmental framework around people, objects

50

have certain powers to shape the experience that humans have in an environment, and in
effect, “contain” them within it. With the experiencer and the object each possessing
degrees of power, the process of interaction becomes a reciprocal relationship between
two empowered parties: the experiencer and the object.

The intimate individual encounter in the experiencer-object domain extends in
some ways to the collective experience of groups engaging with the same object.
Although the personal place-world of this domain cannot be shared directly with others,
the memory of it may. Constructed as memories, the experiences that occur in this
context have the potential to work constantly in and through our social relationships, as
Halbwachs (1925/1992) suggested, creating shared memories that draw individuals and
groups into a collective framework that supports a reciprocal process in which individuals
receive memory cues from others. This process in turn reinforces personal remembrance.
Aspects of sharing individual experiences with objects in group settings, including
museums and historic resources, have been explored by Davis (1999), Falk and Dierking
(1992, 2000), Gurian (2004), and Lee (2002).

The contextual domains discussed above provide four categories of place that
outline types of place in the human environment and the relationships to objects within
them. As specific physical and virtual places, these domains seem to hold keys to why
museum place and historic place exist and function as they do. In the next chapter, the
four contextual domains will be used as a unifying theoretical construct to explain the
geneses of the codes of museum place and historic place in the literature and to arrive at

basic descriptions of these two place types.

51

 

CHAPTER FOUR

DESCRIBING TWO DISTINCT TYPES OF PLACE

I shall attempt to trace the coming-into-being and disappearance of codings/
decodings. My aim will be to highlight contents — i.e. the social (spatial)
practices inherent to the forms under consideration. (Lefebvre, 1974/1991, p. 18,
emphasis in original)

The four contextual domains provide a construct for examining the relationships
between people, places, objects, and human memory. Place may also be considered an
“object,” in the sense that place, in its physicality, may be experienced through the senses
and material culture methods. As such, place possesses the unique double quality of
being both place and object. Museum place and historic place exist as real places in real
time, even though they consist of both tangible and intangible elements. The four
contextual domains provide descriptions of physical and virtual places that result when
people encounter objects and places. As such, they create a useful construct to organize
the elements of the museum place and historic place codes. The contextual domains’
distinct qualities, evident in the environments of museum place and historic place, help to
account for the geneses of the individual elements of the codes as outlined above.

Several factors validate the use of the contextual domain construct to explain why
the codes of museum place and historic place arose as they did. One is the unifying
power of the domains. Since places and objects may belong to each of the four domains
at different points in time and to more than one simultaneously, the domains construct

allows elements of the codes to be considered from multiple vantage points. Second, the

strong connection to memory expressed in the codes of museum place and historic place

52

 

further supports using a theory that allows the examination of concepts of place, object,
and memory together. The domains demonstrate how connections to memory are made
in museum place and historic place. Finally, this construct contains a shared vocabulary
useful for comparing these two types of place. Examining the codes within the four
contextual domains will contribute to explaining how most people have understood
museum place and historic place historically and will suggest how important it is to

understand the distinctions between the two types of place.

 

Distinctions Related to the Origin Domain

The codes of museum place and historic place have their geneses in the type of -'
connections they have to the origin domain. One of the primary functions of physical
place is as the origin domain, the geographic or cultural environment in which an object
was created, built, or in the case of places, designated as having particular meaning
through either formal or informal means. The code reveals that historic place is genuine,
physical place; thus, historic place can unquestionably act as an origin domain. The
presence of objects produced elsewhere creates much of what is museum place, although
it is partially about a built environment. Accordingly, museum place does not usually
function as a site or origin domain.l

One reason for this is that museum place is not established only by the
designation of place within the landscape of space, as happens with physical places. One
part of the code indicates that museum place is primarily related to the presence of

objects. However, I suggest that museum place is related more to the memory embodied

 

' In some cases, museum place can be an origin domain. For example, installation art or art
created within museum place counts museum place as its origin.

53

in those objects than the objects themselves. Thus, museum place is a specially created
and bounded niche within space and time that, when demarcated, becomes what is defined
as museum place. Objects united with human memory in this fashion establish what Hein

(2000, p. viii) called a “collections of collections — momentary worlds comprising the
matter of prior worlds.” The memory embodied in these transported objects is the
memory of places other than museum place. The “place-world” of museum place does
not exist outside of this matrix of people, objects, and memory. People and objects create
this place and charge it with energy through their articulation of memory.

In its intangibility, museum place shares characteristics with other types of place,
including the connection to memory, human meaning making, and fluid boundaries
between the concepts of place and object. It shares many qualities with physical place,
but its partially intangible nature causes it to embody a different “sense of place” than
what a geographic place does. Although the creation of museum place is wholly and
genuinely the creation of a type of place, it is not origin place. For example, where does
object-based museum place begin and end? What happens to museum place when the
objects within it are removed? These types of questions illustrate some of the critical
differences between physical place and museum place as origin domains.

The code also indicates that museum place is perceived to be artificial or
inauthentic place. This perception is related to the fact that museum place is not an origin
domain. As described above, museum place consists largely of objects removed from
their origin domains. The people and objects involved in the creation of museum place
are all temporal, thus, museum place also has an air of temporality. Geographic places

never cease to exist; places will always be the same places they have been geographically

54

speaking, because they are specific points in physical space. Museum place, in contrast,
is mostly temporal — constantly constructed and deconstructed by the movement of
people and objects within it. If the relationship between the objects, people, and memory
is dissolved, then much of museum place ceases to exist, because it occurs only within
the boundaries of what exists as “the museum.” The temporal, non-physical place
aspects of museum place account for this perception of inauthenticity or artificiality.

Further, certain genuine elements of physical place that can exist in an origin
domain cannot exist in museum place. Again, since museum place is created by the
union of people, objects, and memory in a place, the features of the environment that is
fashioned does not include many of the tangible features of an origin place. Although it
is in part a built environment, museum place does not have people whose culture is
rooted “inside” this place, such as a city like Chicago. Neither is museum place an origin
place for people: No one is ever “from” XYZ Museum. Thus, museum place remains a
reflection of the cultures and peoples outside that created the objects within the museum.
Hence, museum place is missing many of the aspects of dimensionality that impart
authenticity and tangibility to physical origin places.

Historic place, in contrast, consisting partially of tangible historic resources and
the intangibles of place, stands in a different relationship to the origin domain. As
physical place, historic place may serve as the origin domain for objects. Because many
times these objects remain in historic place instead of being transported like museum
objects, the memory in the objects of historic place is that of the origin domain, not
somewhere else. Maleuvre (1999) argued that an object being located in the origin

domain makes no difference in its relationship to the ability of people to recall memories

55

because the origin domain is always a reflection of contemporary experience. However,
memory of the origin place, no matter how distorted by time, still exists within this
domain. As Petrov (1999) observed, there is always something in present culture that can
connect us to the past, and being physically located in the origin domain gives people the
opportunity to articulate memories that might not otherwise be articulated. The place of
historic place, if considered as an “object” to be experienced through the physical senses
and material culture methods, is also self-located in the origin domain of historic place.

It can never be extracted from its origin domain; doing this is impossible.

Because historic place is created by designation on the spatial landscape, historic
place is perceived to have the authenticity of the origin domain. The signs in the code
indicate that there appears to be something more genuine about places constructed by the
consent of people who live in the landscape than places constructed in a set-apart place
like museum place. Although many scholars have commented on the need to connect
museums with the memories of the local people whom the museums serve, this is many
times not the purpose of museums. What is inside — the museum place of the museum —
may have no immediate connection to the memories of the people who visit. In addition,
museum place can go anywhere and establish itself as place. For example, the whole
collection of a museum and the people who connect with it through memory could be
transported to another city and be reassembled, without the complete loss of museum
place. This is not the case with physical place. (Consider the loss of origin context and
“sense of place” destroyed when historic buildings are removed to new locations, e. g.

Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan or Skansen in Stockholm, Sweden.)

56

Despite historic place’s identity as an origin domain, historic place is as
constantly constructed and deconstructed as museum place. The memory that it
embodies is not static. Many groups contribute to the meaning of place, but historic
place is not always connected with the memory of all the people who surround a historic
resource. The memory of a dominant culture often covers over the memory of others in
place (Del Real, 2004; Lord, 2005, Miller, 2006). The “layers” to which Schlereth
(1980) referred may be obscured by the imposition of hegemonic memory over time.
Although origin domains, as physical place, will never cease being sites of memory
stratification, perhaps Archibald’s (2004, p. 70) recommendation for museums that they
facilitate the creation of “a new story, a single story that acknowledges the contributions
of us all” is equally applicable as a possible means to preserve access to information that
will help people to articulate memory in origin domains.

The relationships that museum place and historic place have to the origin domain
are a primary factor that accounts for the distinctions between these two types of place

evident in the codes (Figure 4). The clear differences in museum place and historic

 

 

 

 

MUSEUM - - HISTORIC
PLACE _ i _[ Origin Domain ]__ = — PLACE

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4. Museum place and historic place related to the origin domain

place, as they relate to this domain, uncover place-specific memory factors that should be
addressed in professional practice. Experiencing the origin domain through memory only

(as happens in museum place) and experiencing it first-hand though immediate physical

57

and mental contact (as occurs in historic place) generates two separate types of memory
events for visitors. Perceiving something of the origin domain sets up contexts within
which to approach, experience, and make decisions about place. In either type of place,
visitors create ways to connect what they find in the origin domain with what they find in
themselves and their own memories; however, the connections appear to have different
facets in the different environments. Although determining what these facets are is not
part of this project, examining museum place and historic place in the light of the origin
domain not only explains much of the codes of place but also simultaneously

demonstrates the distinctiveness of these two place types.

Distinctions Related to the Creation Domain
The codes of museum place and historic place relate less to the creation domain
simply because of this domain’s nature (Figure 5). No physical place can ever become a
creation domain. It is a virtual place that exists only between the object/place and the
creator and only for as long as the process of creation continues. However, the codes
reveal links between the existence of museum place and historic place and the ability to
cultivate knowledge of the creation domain as manifested in the memory of objects and

people.

MUSEUM . . HISTORIC
k . —.—¢—|

Figure 5. Museum place and historic place related to the creation domain

 

 

 

 

58

The presence of objects in museums, as indicated in the code of museum place,
makes the creation domain a constant presence. An object’s ability to reveal information

about the creator and the creative process remains permanently in the object, and the
centrality of objects in museum place the makes the residual intent and creator biography
in the object more accessible. Further, the continuing biography of the object found
within it serves as a tool, making it possible to move human memory toward the creation
domain through experiencing the presence of the object — one of the cornerstones of
material culture study (Prown, 2000).

The museum place and historic place codes, however, reveal confusion between
the separate categories of the physical origin domain and the virtual creation domain,
which affected the codes’ geneses. Where may this confusion have originated? First,
authenticity is a primary element in both the codes of museum place and historic place.
Museum visitors are often geographically or culturally distanced from both the origin and
creation domains. A large part of revealing anything of the creation domain relates to
inferring information directly from the object and the creator, a process often alleged to
be more difficult by the presence of the object in a place other than the origin domain.
Thus, the removal of an object from the origin domain can contribute to museum place’s
perceived inauthenticity, supposedly interfering with the process of discovering the
creator’s intent behind the objects within a museum.

However, the creation domain is an entirely separate thing from the origin
domain. The authenticity or inauthenticity of a place cannot affect the memory that was
exchanged during the process of creation. This is forever fixed in the object and in the

mind of the maker. Understanding the creator’s intent and exchange of ideas that

59

occurred between maker and object is not entirely dependent on knowledge of the origin
domain. For example, consider a Nuer immigrant from East Africa creating a traditional
object in Minneapolis, Minnesota. How does the origin domain (Minneapolis) affect
what occurs in the creation domain? At times, it may be more important to recognize the
creator’s relationship to the origin domain than information about the domain itself.

If experiencing the memory of the creation domain is conceived of as a function
of physical neamess to the object/place (as in the investigatory practices of many material
culture methods), then this may explain the reasoning behind concepts of authenticity and
tangibility in the development of the codes. If close proximity to authentic objects helps
to facilitate access to the creation domain, then museum place’s essential connection to
objects makes this possible. Historic place’s identity as a tangible connection to the
intangible also aids this connection. Nevertheless, is there a difference between the
neamess to objects one may achieve in museum place and historic place?

In most of museum place, objects are present but largely inaccessible to
perception by the senses other than sight. During the creation process of historic place,
the creator fashions a physical object that “contains” place (such as a building or
monument) or designates a spatial area as particular: an enclosure within infinite space.
This action creates a physical place meant to be experienced and understood in a certain
way. Unlike most museum place, historic place may often, but not always, provide a
more intimate association with the creation domain. Connections between elements of
authenticity, tangibility, and physical perception and the creation domain reveal the
importance of memory to this context. When the presence of the origin and creation

domains intersect, the memories connected with them may generate two planes of

60

memory connection in a single object or place. It is entirely possible that an object or
place will have entirely dissimilar authenticities in the origin and creation domains,

making it necessary to exercise caution in educational interpretation.

Distinctions Related to the Display Domain
The codes of museum place and historic place are deeply connected to the display
domain. Characteristics of each place show that they embody the elements of this
domain differently. These differences related to the display domain help to define the

distinct natures of museum place and historic place. In identifying these relationships to

 

the display domain, possible geneses of the two codes are also identified. L57

Within the museum, objects serve as the substance or raw material for the display
domain. As discussed earlier, this domain creates realities for the objects that define
museum place, but they also create realities for the people who View the objects. Without
objects, there can be no fashioning of environments for the presentation of objects that
exist within museum place. The process of bringing objects together to make museum
place invariably creates the display domain. Objects separated from the origin domain
must exist anew in the display domain, as Hein (2000, p. 25) described them, “enclosed
in a framework of new meanings, associated with other museum objects.” Without these
frameworks or environments, there can be no engagement, no education, no
understanding. Thus, when professionals discuss the importance of the presence of
objects in the museum, it is not only that museum place cannot exist without them, but
also that everything else that happens in the museum hinges upon them.

Describing a world created chiefly by the grouping of objects together with

memory, the code leads to a characterization of museum place as inauthentic. Why is

61

this true? If museum place is inauthentic, is the display domain that results from its
creation also inauthentic by extension? The separation of objects from their origin
domains and their new identities in the display domain often helps to give museum place
an artificial, orchestrated feel. The whole of museum place is a designed place, planned
to be a certain way by certain people, and the nature of the museum display domain
makes it seem like less of a “real” environment. In some ways, the inauthenticity of the
display domain as manifested in museum place is, as Hein suggested, a building of a new,
authentic reality for the objects in that time and place. However, the display domain is
certainly a tangible element of museum place, which creates a reality that may be sensed
physically. This reality then, no matter how allegedly inauthentic, must be genuine place.
Therefore, to state without qualification that museum place is inauthentic is incorrect.
This lack of clarity in the museum code results from the lack of articulation of the precise
shades of meaning that the vocabulary of place studies provides.

However, if one defines authenticity as hinging upon power relationships and
hegemony that relay display information, the display domain may be judged inauthentic.
Because objects are trapped into a cycle of having to “be” what the display domain
makes them seem to be within the confines of the museum, the same factors that affected
the origin domain, including the designation of memories and objects as significant,
surface again here. The fact that objects chosen to be part of the display domain in
museums must be chosen by someone, possessing a particular set of individual memories
and making decisions on behalf of a group possessing a collective memory, the display
domain may not authentically represent the collective memories of the publics whose

encounter with museum place makes them a critical part of this place-world. Since

62

human memory is a key building block of place, museum place cannot be formed without
memory. Whose memory that may be is a pressing question, one addressed better
elsewhere, but it is enough to recognize that connection to the memory articulation
process contributes to perceptions of inauthenticity in the display domain.

The code also emphasizes the character of museum place as a built environment,
and nowhere is this more evident than in the display domain. The built environment
creates the physical aspect of museum place and simultaneously generates the display
domain; therefore, the form of the museum building greatly affects the characteristics of
the display domain. Museum buildings do function as containers or surrounders of
objects, recalling the ideas of Plato and Aristotle presented earlier concerning place as
receptacle or something that demarcated within infinite space that does not move.
Perhaps a better idea would be to think of place moving and enveloping objects, as Casey
(1997) explained Husserl’s ideas about the orientation of the body to what surrounds it.
He summarized, “[The body] is the stable center of the entire perceptual field, which
pivots around it” (p. 218). Considering the museum building’s action in creating place,
rather than just its identity as place shifts the function of the built environment from noun
to verb — museum “building” in the sense that museum place is constructed by the
presence of the built environment, much like historic place exists because of a
constructed environment. This idea illuminates Radley’s (1991, p. 69) notion that the
museum building functions as “the connective tissue of the displays,” which is suggestive
of an organic process, ongoing and continuing as long as museum place exists.

Within this organic process, the display domain within museum place is a

function of the intangible as the code indicates, bringing objects and the memories

63

contained within this domain into contact with people’s memories. If museum place,
including the built environment, is a continuing action, then museum place is constantly
evolving. This invites the inclusion of new objects, memories, and people into the
display domain. Are these new things then subject to the effects of museualization in this
domain as Davis (1999) described? Yes, since they are removed from the origin domain
and emplaced in the display domain, objects are experienced as they relate to their
existence as part of museum place. However, the “change in meaning (or actual
identity)” that happens, as Davis asserted (p. 16), is mediated by an understanding of the
object in each of the four contextual domains, since objects belong to more than one
domain simultaneously. Because the display domain as it exists in museum place arises
only as objects and human memory work in concert to form a place where meaning and
connection can be made, connection to memory is very strong in the display domain.
This dependency cements the importance of the memories present in objects and the
personal individual and collective memories that objects help people to articulate through
contact in museum place.

Historic place has a similar but not identical relationship to the display domain.
The genuine, physical place aspect of historic place seems to function as the main
variable between museum place and historic place. As discussed earlier, museum place
is genuine place, although in many ways, it is not physical place. The tangible and
intangible aspects of place together become an object-place, able to be experienced by
people through facets of the display domain. Does historic place’s existence as tangible
place alone account for the elements found in the code of historic place and their relation

to memory?

64

For historic resources, place not only creates the environment for the display
domain, place itself is the raw material of the domain. As defined above, the display
domain refers to the “place” created by the formal, deliberate display of objects in a
specific setting and the displayers of objects who become part of the context through
association with the object. By virtue of being physical place, historic resources
(including historic sites, landscapes, battlefields, and memorial sites) are themselves
display domains, that is, they are the physical settings in which objects exist. Historic
place acts as its own display domain, just as it functions as its own origin domain.
Historic place is not “made” by “someone”; instead, it is carved out of existing space,
borrowed from the finite spatial boundaries of our world. In essence, the creation of
historic place, and thus its display domain, is accomplished through processes that often
seem removed from human acts of fabrication. No matter how it is defined or
designated, historic place will always be physical place. In contrast, what is museum
place today may not be museum place tomorrow.

Historic place, because of this enduring relation to its display domain, often
appears to be more authentic than museum place. However, the physical nature of
historic place does not mean there is no deliberate fashioning of the display domain there.
Acts of designation, as described above, involve collective memory and creative
reconstruction and power relationships between groups. Further, places, through the very
act of designation within space, become invested with meaning through connections to
human memory. Davis (1999, pp. 16-17) argued that even “in situ preservation is
musealization,” in other words, as soon as a site is designated and preserved, it takes on

new meaning and identity through designation and the resulting relationships with things

65

in and around the site. As with museum place in the display domain, there is a difference
between the authenticity of place and the authenticity of what is exhibited, interpreted, or
occurring in place. In many ways, historic place is as inauthentic as museum place is
often thought to be. Whether the people who experience historic place recognize this
distinction is something that may certainly affect interpretation and education efforts.

The code reveals that historic place is a tangible connection to the intangible.
Much of this element of the code relates to the ability of the display domain to be
involved in the processes of memory articulation. With or without objects in the display
domain, historic resources allow people to connect to memories (individual and
collective) fused to physical places that have spatial qualities often perceived as existing
perpetually. Much of what people feel in places — the “sense” or “power” of place — is
this connection to place-grounded memory. Place memory bestows a unique continuity
of physical existence in place, an intimate bond to others who have occupied the exact
same place at another time. The Lincoln Home National Historic Site, the house that
belonged to Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois, is one such connection point. It
seems impossible to imagine disengaging the collective memory of Lincoln’s person
from this physical location. Only here can one stand in Lincoln’s parlor and approximate
experiencing the space as he may have. Historic place offers intangible place experiences
in the display domain.

Conversely, the inability to connect to memory in the display domain of historic
place may be what has been described as a “rootlessness” caused by “the weakening of
distinct and diverse experiences and identities of places” (Relph, 1976), a phenomenon

also called placelessness. A5 modern people have become less grounded to their places

66

in general, they have also become separated from their historic and memorial landscapes,
and thus, the memories contained in these places (Archibald, 2004; Huyssen, 1995). The
display domain offers a channel to activities of memory, yet many people are not
equipped to recognize this opportunity through experience with connecting to place.
They feel what Relph calls “outsideness,” even in their own places. Relph observed, “To
be inside a place is to belong to it and to identify with it, and the more profoundly inside
you are the stronger is this identity with place” (p. 49). Problems with rootlessness may
also be caused by the degree of “insideness” that people feel in a particular place. For
example, members of a minority ethnic group may believe that their memories are not
part of the display domain of a historic resource and may feel no connection to that place.
Historic place as display domain mediates the connections to memory, yet connection is
dependent upon the relationship to intangible elements of this domain.

Thus, it appears that the codes of museum place and historic place arose in part
because of characteristics related to the display domain. Both function as display
domains (Figure 6) but in different ways and with different characteristics. Much of the
construction of the codes depends on this identity, especially since the physicality of the
two place environments is what is normally most readily accessible to the people who

experience museum place and historic place.

 

 

 

MUSEUM - - HISTORIC
PLACE __ = _[ Display Domain ]._ = _ PLACE

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 6. Museum place and historic place related to the display domain

67

Distinctions Related to the Experiencer—Object Domain

The experiencer-object domain is a virtual place where all the intangibles of place
come together, making it the nucleus and possibly the ultimate purpose for encountering
museums and historic resources. Elements of both the museum place and historic place
codes reinforce the centrality of intimate engagement with objects, without which the
meanings of the other domains would be largely lost. The experiencer-object domain by
its very definition depends upon the presence of the object or place and the memories
embodied within and surrounding it. This process is linked to the one-on—one
engagement of an individual with individual objects or places within the experiencer-
object domain. The codes of museum place and historic place required this dependence
on intimacy to develop as they did. Without interactions with objects and places, it is
impossible for human beings to create mental order of the physical settings that surround
them.

The codes both stress connection to memory though objects, and the experiencer-
object domain creates a unique atmosphere for linking to existing memories and creating
new memories. Because this process is highly individual, the means through which
people experience memory is varied. However, there are some commonalities. Sensory
perception, as Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) described, affords opportunities for people to
enter a place where person and object truly become co-actors in the making of meaning
and the creation of personal understanding. In this domain, feelings of connection,

appreciation, or even aversion related to the object may arise as the object is admitted into

the memory. No matter what a person eventually decides an object means for him or her,

the person engaged with the object responds to the level of authenticity and meaning

68

perceived by that individual alone. All of these impressions, for better or worse, live on
in the memories of individuals.

The museum place environment is partially a built environment, as the code
indicates. Objects are contained within the boundaries of the museum building. Museum
place came to be thought of as strongly related to its identity as a built environment
because this factor, above all, makes it possible for objects to come together — in a place.
The existence of the built museum makes it possible to house objects, which in turn
makes the generation of museum place possible, and on this, the experiencer-object
domain is dependent. Still, because of its dependency on the object, the focus in museum
place is naturally on the object, not place.

But the physical separation of people from objects in museum place, as discussed
in the section about the display domain, is also a concern here, because museum place
serves to facilitate the experiencer-object domain. Separation from objects, which limits
the ability of visitors to encounter objects physically through their senses, affects the
function of museum place as a location for the experiencer-object domain. Additionally,
if people feel a lack of connection to memory or perceive inauthenticity in museum place,
i.e., a mental or physical separation or divide (Davis, 1999; Huyssen, 1995), then this
may gravely affect individual engagement with objects in the experiencer-obj ect domain.
The engagement of individuals with particular objects within this domain “place” may
serve as an impetus for museum practitioners and researchers to put more emphasis on
place.

Historic place is similar to museum place in that it functions as a facilitator of the

experiencer-object domain. In contrast, however, the code of historic place emphasizes

69

historic place as a tangible connection to the intangible. This seems to be related to the
“object-ness” of historic place itself, as opposed to the object-based place of museum
place. The object-place becomes an artifact that is enterable, allowing visitors not only to
experience the place though intangible memory connections but also through the
emplacement of their bodies completely within the place, in essence enveloping
themselves with the object-place. Although people may come close to objects in museum
place, it is much more likely that greater physical closeness to objects is felt in historic
place. Immersion within the object-place allows people to experience it, literally, from
the inside out.2 This degree of intimacy with the object makes historic place distinct in
relation to the experiencer-object domain. That historic place allows this type of
intimacy is a key point in explaining the rise of the code.

However, physical closeness does not guarantee emotional closeness or memory
connection to an object, as discussed above in the section on the creation domain. The
code’s emphasis on the creation of historic place by designation relies on elements of
power. Historic place may often be perceived as more authentic than museum place
because evidence of power is less visible or obvious in historic place. In the genuine
physical place of historic place, visitors may enter the experiencer-object domain
accompanied by assumptions created by their own reactions to the power dynamics of
memories present in the historic location. In another scenario, visitors may be

discouraged from entering the experiencer-object domain for greater lengths of time

 

2 Haptic sensing or perception in place may enhance this immersion. O’Neill (2001, pp. 3-4) defined haptic
sensing as “a holistic way of understanding three-dimensional space” which is “used to describe the various
sensibilities of the body to its position in the physical environment and to its own condition. . ..It involves
the integration of many senses, such as touch, positional awareness, balance, sound, movement, and the
memory of previous experiences.” Piaget and Inhelder (1963), Gibson (1966), and Bloomer and Moore
(1977) discuss haptic sensing.

70

because they feel alienated by statements of power inherent in the historic place.
Museum place and historic place both serve as facilitators of the experiencer-

object domain, yet the code developed in different ways in response (Figure 7). The

MUSEUM , EXWMncembjec, i HISTORIC
PLACE — 46 Domain _ PLACE

Figure 7. Museum place and historic place related to the experiencer-object domain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

elements of authenticity, object and object-place characteristics, and object sensing
change depending on the environment in which they are experienced, whether in museum
place or historic place. The codes depend on the identity of place as the experiencer-
object domain, and their development reflects this.

The codes of museum place and historic place make it clear that these two places
are distinct. In working through the codes to identify their possible geneses, it seems that
the relationships of museum place and historic place to the four contextual domains
explains many of these differences. When the ways in which these two types of place
relate to the contextual domains are viewed together, it is obvious that the main
difference between these places is that historic place functions as origin place while
museum place does not (Figure 8). Although this is the primary distinction between the
two places, the reasons for this are more complicated than it initially appears. Degrees of
“neamess” to the memory of the creation domain and personal connection to the
object/place in the experiencer-object domain are all linked to elements of the codes and
help to explain why the codes arose as they did. Beliefs about authenticity and the ability

to sense the object are also factors.

71

 

 

 

 

/ Origin Domain

i =

¢/.\¢

Display Domain

HISTORIC
PLACE

 

 

 

 

   

Exporloncer-
Object Domain

Figure 8. Summary of how museum place and historic place relate to the four domains

This examination of signs and the compilation of codes and supercodes from
recent and contemporary museum studies and cultural resource management literature
indicate that determining the differences between museum place and historic place is
fundamental to improving understanding of how museums and historic resources are
managed and shared with the public. Place and its relationships to human memory and
objects in the domains are central to human life and existence in our spatial environment.
That these codes of place arose because of intimate connections to human spatial realties
in the physical and virtual domains seems plausible. Promoting a deep connection to
place and meaningful encounters of people with place in museums and historic resources

seems necessary as a TCSUII.

72

CONCLUSION

Simply put, the formative presence of museums and historic resources in the United
States makes a better understanding of these places imperative. The initial discussion of
place and memory shows how fundamentally important these concepts are to human
beings. The tangible and intangible natures of museum place and historic place create
multi-dimensional place-worlds that millions of visitors encounter every day.1 It is clear
that visitors do not inhabit a static museum or historic resource context consisting of the
physical environment alone. Instead, they live in a complex, layered atmosphere made up
of physical and virtual places. All visitors to museums or historic resources bring with
them their sensitivities to place-based needs, concerns, and experiences, whether or not
anyone realizes it. The sensory feedback from the environment one experiences in place,
along with the physical and emotional experiences of memory construction and
reconstruction, shapes Ieaming, connection with objects, and ultimately, the sense of
pastness that is achieved in museum place and historic place. For people working in the
fields of museums and cultural resource management, the potential for improving or
changing practice based on these factors is too great to be ignored.

The main argument of this thesis was that museums and historic resources exist as
two distinct manifestations of place that embody fundamental concepts of memory and
place in substantially different ways. Through Lefebvre’s method of discerning codes of

place by examining the collection of elements extracted from the literature, rudimentary

 

1 Lake, Snell & Perry’s 1999 study found that 2.3 million visits are made to museums in the United States
every day (American Association of Museums, 2007).

73

codes for museum place and historic place were established. They revealed the
interdependent nature of memory, people, and objects in the processes of meaning
making. The “Four Contextual Domains” suggested ways people perceive the physical
and virtual places they experience. Considered together with the domains, the codes
revealed relationships, consistencies and inconsistencies, and unique characteristics that
offered explanations about why the codes arose as they did in the literature, and through
influence, how they affect professional practice. Strong relations to memory, creation by
collection of objects or designation of place, issues surrounding authenticity, degrees of
“object-ness,” and connections to tangibility are all evident in the codes. Distinctions
related to each domain illuminated known points of comparison and revealed new areas
where contrast could be seen. This demonstrated that the main difference between the
two types of place is the relationship to origin place: Historic place functions as origin
place while museum place does not. Other important differences, though often not as
apparent, cement the idea that these two types of places are distinct.

However, the lines between museum place and historic place may not be as sharp as
they appear in this analysis. The descriptions established here are the beginning of a line
of thinking about the characteristics of these two types of place. There are opportunities
for considering ideas such as museum place within historic place (Figure 9), historic place
within museum place (Figure 10), and intersections between the two (Figure 11). For
instance, how does one explain the “place” of certain locations, such as Colonial
Williamsburg, where historic place and museum place are layered together? The
distinctions related to the four contextual domains as outlined above contain the potential

for fruitful future analysis and debate.

74

   
    
 

Historic Place

Museum Place

Figure 9. Museum place may occur within historic place

   
    
 

Museum Place

Historic Place

Figure 10. Historic place may occur within museum place

75

Museum Place Historic Place

 

Figure 11. Intersections between museum place and historic place may exist

Making distinctions between museum place and historic place has potential for
changing the way researchers and practitioners approach various areas in the field. For
example, a one-size-fits-all pedagogy may not suit learners in both a museum and a
historic resource when concerns about Ieaming in place and connection to place are
considered. Further, new literatures may have to be developed, specifically addressing
place, such as the practical needs of educators at historic resources. Museum exhibit
teams may need to move beyond the idea that “place” means the physical dimensions of
the gallery. Executive directors at historic homes may find it necessary to supplement
traditional tours with opportunities for visitors to engage with place one-on-one within
the experiencer-object domain, by encouraging time for quiet reflection in place and
allowing visitors to touch the surfaces of building materials, as permitted within
curatorial limits.

This analysis answered many questions about the nature of museums and historic
resources as places and filled some of the gaps in the literature. The comparison of

museum place and historic place codes illustrated that these two types of place are

76

distinct and have their own specific characteristics worthy of study and consideration.
Yet, this close reading of place made possible through examining the literature is
certainly not the final word on the descriptions of museums and historic resources as
place types. The history of the debates surrounding place and memory briefly described
in Chapter One served to establish the fact that there are no final answers about place.
What the descriptions of museum place and historic place provided above helps to show
is that human conceptions of place and memory are constantly evolving and that they
exist in many different forms. Thus, as there is no one unchallengeable definition of
place or memory, the descriptions of museums and historic places are also subject to
change. As physical places dedicated to connecting people with memories of the past,
museums and historic resources are constantly evolving and with them, ideas about how
people construct memories and experience places.

Possibilities for investigating the differences identified between physical and virtual
place more deeply opens up new opportunities for applying this research to digital places
created by technology, such as online and virtual 3-D environments. It may be that
characteristics of museum place and historic place manifest themselves in some way
within digital space, perhaps paralleling what happens in physical space. The idea that
museum place and historic place may somehow be “mobile” to some degree is intriguing
as well; how do the factors of place in the origin, creation, display, and experiencer-
object domains relate to this possibility within “cyber-place”? Living as we do in an
information age, concerns about the authenticity of place will likely continue to come
under repeated scrutiny as people struggle to translate the realities of physical place into

digital place.

77

In conclusion, the relevance of place and memory to museums and historic
resources is indisputable, since it is largely through place and memory that we make
sense of the world. Fostering deep connections to place through museum place and
historic place will create continuity with what already happens naturally as people
experience other types of place in their worlds. Connection and continuity invites the
inclusion of new people, objects, and memories into places of memory, creating new and

exciting possibilities for making the most of our human spatial “givens.”

78

REFERENCES

Alpers, S. (1991). The museum as a way of seeing. In I. Karp & S. D. Lavine (Eds),
Exhibiting cultures: The poetics and politics of museum display (pp.25-32).
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

American Association of Museums. (2000). Code of ethics for museums. Washington,
DC: Author. Retrieved January 14, 2007, from http://www.aam-us.org/museum
resources/ethics/coe.cfm

American Association of Museums. (2007). Museums FAQ. Washington, DC: Author.
Retrieved July 24, 2007, from http://www.aam-us.org/aboutmuseums/abc.cfm

Anderson, G. (2004). Reinventing the museum: Historical and contemporary perspectives
on the paradigm shift. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Archibald, R. (2004). The new town square: Museums and communities in transition.
Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Aristotle. (2000). Physics. The Internet Classics Archive. Daniel C. Stevenson, Web
Atomics. Retrieved April 30, 2007, from http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/
physics.4.iv.html

Basso, K. H. (1996). Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the Western
Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Blanton Museum of Art. (2006). Blanton to integrate Latin American, American works in
permanent collection installation. Austin, TX: Author. Retrieved October 10,
2006, from http://blantonmuseum.org/works_of_art/exhibitions/america_
americas/curators_comments.cfin

Bloomer, K. C., & Moore, C. W. (1977). Body, memory, and architecture. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.

Brown, B. (2003). A sense of things: The object matter of American literature. University
of Chicago Press.

Bunch, L. (2007). Embracing ambiguity: The challenge of interpreting Afiican American
history in museums. Museums & Social Issues, 2(1), 45-56.

Cameron, C. M., & Gatewood, J. B. (2000). Excursions into the un-remembered past:

What people want from visits to historical sites. The Public Historian, 22(3), 107-
127.

79

Cameron, D. F. (1971/2004). The museum, a temple, or the Forum? In G. Anderson
(Ed.), Reinventing the museum: historical and contemporary perspectives on the
paradigm shift (pp. 61-73). Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Casey, E. S. (1997). The fate of place: A philosophical history. Berkeley: University of
California Press.

Chanda, J ., & Daniel, V. (2000). Recognizing works of art: The essences of contextual
understanding. Art Education, 53(2), 6-1 1.

Coleman, L. V. (1950). Museum building, Vol. I: A planning study. Washington, DC:
American Association of Museums.

Cruikshank, J. (1992). Oral tradition and material culture: Multiplying meanings of
“Words” and “Things.” Anthropology Today, 8(3), 5-9.

Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Rochberg-Halton, E. (1981). The meaning of things: Domestic
symbols and the self. Cambridge University Press.

Dana, J. C. (1917/2004). The gloom of the museum. In G. Anderson (Ed.), Reinventing
the museum: Historical and contemporary perspectives on the paradigm shift (pp.
13-29). Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Dana, J. C. (1999). The new museum: Selected writings. Newark, NJ: Newark Museum
Association.

Datel, R. E. (1985). Preservation and a sense of orientation for American cities.
Geographical Review, 75(2), 125-141.

Davis, P. (1999). Ecomuseums: A sense of place. New York: Leicester University Press.

Del Real, P. (2004). “Nuestra America”: Territory and place. Radical History Review,
89(Spring), 199-205.

Donnelly, J. F. (2002). Interpreting historic house museums. Walnut Creek, CA:
AltaMira Press.

Ernst, W. (2000). Archi(ve)textures of museology. Stanford University Press.

Everett, H. J. (2002). Roadside Crosses in Contemporary Memorial Culture. Denton:
University of North Texas.

F alk, J. H., & Dierking, L. D. (1992). The museum experience. Washington, DC:
Whalesback Books.

80

Falk, J. H., & Dierking, L. D. (2000). Learning from museums: Visitor experiences and
the making of meaning. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Fattal, L. F., & Salus, C. (2004). Out-of-context: American artists abroad (Vol. 8).
Westport, CT: Praeger.

Fitch, J. M. (1990). Historic preservation: Curatorial management of the built world.
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

Francaviglia, R. (1995). History after Disney: The significance of “imagineered”
historical places. The Public Historian, 1 7(4), 69-74.

Gibson, J. J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin.

Glassberg, D. (1996). Public history and the study of memory. The Public Historian,
18(2), 7-23.
Goode, G. B. (1896). On the classifications of museums. Science, 3(57), 154-161.

Greenblatt, S. (1991). Resonance and wonder. In I. Karp & S. D. Lavine (Eds),
Exhibiting cultures: The poetics and politics of museum display (pp. 42-56).
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

Gurian, E. H. (2004). What is the meaning of the object of this exercise? A meandering
exploration of the many meanings of objects in museums. In G. Anderson (Ed.),

Reinventing the museum: historical and contemporary perspectives on the
paradigm shift (pp. 269-283). Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Halbwachs, M. (1925/ 1992). On collective memory (L. A. Coser, Trans). University of
Chicago Press.

Hamblen, K. A. (1984). Artistic perception as a function of learned expectations. Art
Education, 37(3), 20—25.

Hayden, D. (1984). Placemaking, preservation and urban history. Journal of
Architectural Education, 41(3), 45-51.

Heidegger, M. (1951/1971). Poetry, language, thought (A. Hofstadter, Trans). New
York: Harper & Row.

Hein, H. S. (2000). The museum in transition: A philosophical perspective. Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Hindmarsh, J. H. (2007). A way forward: The remaking of New Zealand museums.
Museums & Social Issues, 2(1), 89-102.

81

Hubbard, P., Kitchin, R., & Valentine, G. (2004). Editor’s introduction. In P. Hubbard, R.
Kitchin, & G. Valentine (Eds), Key thinkers on space and place (pp. 1-15).
London: Sage.

Huyssen, A. (1995). Twilight memories: Marking time in a culture of amnesia. New
York: Routledge.

Kammen, M. G. (1991). Mystic chords of memory: The transformation of tradition in
American culture. New York: Knopf.

Karp, I. (1991). Culture and representation. In I. Karp & S. D. Lavine (Eds), Exhibiting
cultures: The poetics and politics of museum display (pp. 11-24). Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution.

King, T. F. (2003). Places that count: Traditional cultural properties in cultural
resources management. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. (1998). Destination culture: Tourism, museums, and heritage.
Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kopytoff, I. (1986). The cultural biography of things: Commoditization as process. In A.
Appadurai (Ed.), The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective
(pp. 64-91). Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kroslowitz, K. J. (in press). Spontaneous memorials: Forums for dialog and discourse.
Museums & Social Issues, 2(2), 245-257

Lawrence, D. L., & Low, S. M. (1990). The built environment and spatial form. Annual
Review of A nthropology, 19, 453-505.

Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. (1997). Illumination: Framing the terrain. In S. Lawrence-
Lightfoot & J. H. Davis (Eds), The art and science of portraiture (pp. 41-59). San

Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Leach, W. (1999). Country of exiles: The destruction ofplace in American life. New
York: Pantheon Books.

Lee, C.-F. (2002). The museum as an educational entity: The performative
transformation of places into spaces. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,

Pennsylvania State University, 2002.

Lefebvre, H. (1974/1991). The production of space (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans).
Oxford; Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.

Lord, G. D. (2005). The importance of space and place. Curator, 48(1), 23-26.

82

Lovell, M. M. (2005). Art in a season of revolution: Painters, artisans, and patrons in
early America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

Lowenthal, D. (1985). The past is a foreign country. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge
University Press.

Maleuvre, D. (1999). Museum memories: History, technologv, art. Stanford University
Press.

Merkel, J. (2002). The museum as artifact. The Wilson Quarterly, 26(1), 66-79.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/1962). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans).
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Middleton, D., & Brown, S. D. (2005). The social psychology of experience: Studies in
remembering and forgetting. London; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Miller, J. S. (2006). Mapping the boosterist imaginary: Colonial Williamsburg, historical
tourism, and the construction of managerial memory. The Public Historian, 28(4),
51-74.

Milligan, M. J. (2007). Buildings as history: The place of collective memory in the study
of historic preservation. Symbolic Interaction, 30(1), 105-123.

Mires, C. (1999). In the shadow of Independence Hall: Vernacular activities and the
meanings of historic places. The Public Historian, 21(2), 49-64.

Moore, K. (1997). Museums and popular culture. London; Washington, DC: Cassell.

National Park Service. (2007). Welcome to the National Register. Washington, DC:
Author. Retrieved March 17, 2007, from http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/about.htm

Nemerov, A. (2006). Interventions: The boy in bed: The scene of reading in N. C.
Wyeth’s Wreck of the “Covenant.” Art Bulletin, 88(1), 7-27.

Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de me'moire [Special Issue:
Memory and Counter-Memory]. Representations, 26, 7-24.

O’Neill, M. E. (2001). Corporeal experience: A haptic way of knowing. Journal of
Architectural Education, 55(1), 3-12.

Oberhardt, S. (2001). Frames within frames: The art museum as cultural artifact. New
York: Peter Lang.

Odegaard, N. (1995). Artists’ intent: Material culture studies and conservation. Journal of
the American Institute for Conservation, 34(3), 187-193.

83

Pekarik, A. (2002). The power of the object. Curator, 45(2), 89-91.

Petrov, K. V. (1989). Memory and oral tradition. In T. Butler (Ed.), Memory: History,
culture and the mind (pp. 77-96). Oxford University Press.

Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1963). The child's conception of space. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.

Plato. (1965). Timaeus. Baltimore: Penguin Books.

Prown, J. D. (1988). Mind in matter: An introduction to material culture theory and
method. In R. B. St. George (Ed.), Material life in America, 1600-1860 (pp. 17-
37). Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Prown, J. D., & Haltman, K. (2000). American artifacts: Essays in material culture. East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Radley, A. (1991). Boredom, fascination and mortality: Reflections upon the experience
of museum visiting. In G. Kavangh (Ed.), Museum languages: Objects and texts
(pp. 65-82). Leicester University Press.

Relph, E. C. (1976). Place and placelessness. London: Pion.

Ricketts, S. (1996). Cultural selection and national identity: Establishing historic sites in
a national framework, 1920-1939. The Public Historian, 18(3), 23-41.

Ritchie, I. (1994). An architect's view of recent developments in European museums. In
R. S. Miles & L. Zavala (Eds), Towards the museum of the future: New European
perspectives (pp. 7-30). London; New York: Routledge.

Rosenzweig, R., & Thelen, D. P. (1998). The presence of the past: Popular uses of
history in American life. New York: Columbia University Press.

Schlereth, T. J. (1980). Artifacts and the American past. Nashville, TN: American
Association for State and Local History.

Schoken, H. (2006). Packaging the evolving museum. Curator, 49(1), 12-15.

Shackel, P. A. (2001). Myth, memory, and the making of the American landscape.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Silverstone, R. (1994). The medium is the museum: On objects and logics in times and
spaces. In R. S. Miles & L. Zavala (Eds), Towards the museum of the future: New
European perspectives (pp. 161-176). London; New York: Routledge.

Sirlin, D., & Margolis, M. ( 1985). What color is your smile? Art Education, 38(4), 40-42.

84

Smith, H. I. (1917). The development of museums and their relation to education. The
Scientific Monthly, 5(2), 97-1 19.

Tilden, F. (1957/1977). Interpreting our heritage (3rd ed.). Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press.

Trachtenberg, A. (1965). Brooklyn Bridge, fact and symbol. New York: Oxford
University Press.

Tuan, Y.-F. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.

Visual Understanding in Education. (2001). What is VTS? Retrieved June 7, 2007, from
http://www.vue.org/whatisvtshtml

Vogel, S. (1991). Always true to the object, in our fashion. In I. Karp & S. D. Lavine
(Eds), Exhibiting cultures: The poetics and politics of museum display (pp. 191-
204). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

Walkowitz, D. J., & Knauer, L. M. (2004). Memory and the impact of political
transformation in public space. Radical Perspectives Series. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.

Walsh, K. (1992). The representation of the past: museums and heritage in the
postmodern world. Heritage Series. London; New York: Routledge.

Walter, E. V. (1988). Placeways: A theory of the human environment. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.

Weible, R. (1984). Lowell: Building a new appreciation for historical place. The Public
Historian, 6(3), 27-38.

Wittlin, A. S. (1949). The museum: Its history and its tasks in education. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Woessner, M. (2005). Daniel Libeskind: From the end of architecture to the space of
memory. In G. Backhaus & J. Murungi (Eds), Lived topographies and their
mediational forces (pp. 145-160). Lanham: Lexington Books.

Zolbrod, P. G. (1987). When artifacts speak, what can they tell us? In A. Krupat & B.
Swann (Eds), Recovering the word: Essays on Native American literature (pp.
13-40). Berkeley: University of California Press.

85

M

liltilliljiilliillilil

R

11]]

6

   

[iii

       

.A‘» __-..—"