Asking the Question of History
This is the first of what will be many posts documenting the progress on our exhibit. We are the 2016-17 Historical Administration class at Eastern Illinois University. Our exhibit this year will be located in Booth Library and focus on public history in Illinois. We are asking the Question of History. Specifically, the questions of who does history, what public history is, where history is done, when history became important, why history is important, and how history is done, even by people who have no formal training in it.
Here Dr. Michael Wiant, the Interim Director of the Illinois State Museum, shows us around the geology collections storage room at the Research and Collections Center. Photo by Richard Riccio.
Two weeks ago we took a class trip to Springfield, where we were introduced to several of the institutions we will be borrowing artifacts from this year. We toured the Research and Collections Center of the Illinois State Museum, the Illinois State Museum itself, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, the Springfield and Central Illinois African-American History Museum, and the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. Along the way we met many wonderful people and saw many varied and wonderous objects.
But it was not just a day of excitement and adventure. We also heard the story of the Illinois State Museum and its nine-month shutdown following budgetary problems (Source). The State Museum reopened at the beginning of July, just a scant month and a half before our visit. The museum remains much the same, but the hashtag #BackatISM appears on every wall, a reminder of recent events.
Juxtaposed with that experience, we were also afforded the opportunity to meet with Douglas King, the President and Acting Director of the Springfield and Central Illinois African-American History Museum. In response to a need for the preservation of African-American local history, the Springfield Illinois African American History Foundation was founded in 2006. Completely volunteer run, the museum opened in 2012 as an outgrowth of the Foundation. This museum serves as an example of the ways in which history is still changing and unfolding around us.
We are planning on highlighting both stories in our upcoming exhibit.
Through a combination of objects, oral histories, and images, we are working to tell the story of public history in Illinois and answer the question of whether or not history is still relevant.
Thank you for joining us and enjoy the ride.
The 2016-17 EIU Historical Administration class poses with the Lincoln family at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. Photo by Debra Reid.
