On July 24, I attended the opening of the exhibit Investigating Where We Live (IWWL) at the National Building Museum
and was excited to see my name among those listed in the Acknowledgements panel
at the gallery entrance.
The first
project I took on as I began my internship at the Historical Society of
Washington, D.C. (HSW) was assisting the young people attending the five-week program research the city as they developed the exhibit design that would be
their final project.
Each year, the exhibit focuses primarily on original
photography by the participants, so the research librarian and I decided to use
the HSW collections created by two local photographers for the first activity. Amateur
photographer John P. Wymer was a member of the Historical Society who donated
the photographs he took all around the city from 1948 to 1953. He created his documentary record of the
buildings throughout the District as a hobby. William E. Barrett was a
professional photographer who was hired to make a record of Washington
buildings that were disappearing as the city grew and changed. He documented
city life and architecture about 10 years after Wymer, in the 1960s. I selected
pairs of pictures, one from each of the Wymer and Barrett Photograph
Collections, taken in the Chinatown area, since the group would walk those
streets when they traveled from the National Building Museum and the Carnegie
Library at Mount Vernon Square. The activity worksheet that I developed invited
the students to compare the two photos in terms of composition, perspective,
and focus without revealing the credentials of each of the artists. After
studying the quality of the photos, the participants were instructed to examine
them with a historian’s eye, looking for clues that might reveal where and when
the pictures were taken. The exercise, which was conducted on the second day of
the program, seemed to go well; the young people were able to discern elements
that improved the documentary and artistic quality of a photograph.
The second visit did not work out quite as smoothly. The
adult coordinators of IWWL notified
HSW by email that the group had decided that the city’s monuments and memorials
would be the theme of the exhibit. They asked the research librarian to pull a
sample of photographs, newspaper articles, and other items from the collection
that loosely covered the East Mall, the Central Mall, and the West Mall,
mentioning three structures specifically: the Grant Memorial, the Washington
Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial. I spent about 8 total hours of research
time searching the catalog and choosing pamphlets, books, photographs, and
vertical files to correspond with the request. However, once the group arrived
for their appointment, the items did not appear to hold their interest. The 45
minutes allotted to research was insufficient for the participants to learn
much about their subjects. Ultimately, the research conducted that day did not
seem to meaningfully contribute to the final exhibit. In subsequent years, I
would suggest that the IWWL group
search the online catalog themselves and provide a preliminary list of items
they would like to view. The research staff could then supplement the pull list
based on their knowledge of the collection.
I have had the opportunity to work with other groups during their visits to HSW, although none of the other activities have been as involved as the partnership with the National Building Museum. Some, like a group of English teachers from China, came by without much advanced notice so we improvised a presentation on the fly. Others, like graduate students from Western Kentucky and George Washington University, had a defined research purpose for their visit and were easier to prepare for. I have enjoyed the opportunity to put my public history skills to work in diverse situation and finding ways to make meaningful connections with visitors to the collections and to the history of Washington, D.C.
Pictures from the Investigating Where We Live opening, including the photograph at the entrance of the exhibit which shows the participants posing on the steps of the Carnegie Library, home of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
