Personalising the past: heritage work at the Museum of African American History, Nantucket

Abstract

Historic site museums need to take into account that heritage is not an attribute of places, but is a process that reinforces identities, values, and relationships in the present. As such, the practices of museums as well as visitors might be considered ‘heritage work’ which serves social purposes in the present. This article addresses the ways that the Museum of African American History in Nantucket, Massachusetts, negotiates between competing notions of heritage. An analysis of heritage work at this museum illustrates how some museum practices reinforce notions of objectified heritage and ‘authentic’ portrayals of the past while other practices encourage personal heritage experiences and meaningful relationships between community members and the Museum. The theories of heritage and museum experience developed by recent heritage studies researchers create a theoretical frame through which to interpret the practices of this museum.

Keywords:

• historic sites
• heritage work
• archaeology
• personal experiences
• museums
• African American

Acknowledgements

Many thanks are due to Renée and Bill Oliver and Museum of African American History for the opportunity to be a part of the Boston‐Higginbotham House Archaeology Project and for their continued interest in the possibilities of archaeology. Thanks also to David Landon and the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston for allowing me to take this project on as part of my dissertation and for the continued intellectual support. Thank you also to Christa Beranek and Christina Hodge for inviting me to participate in this special issue and the TAG 2009 session Theorized Dwelling, where these papers originated, and to Chris Bare, Kim Christensen, and Anna Browne Ribeiro for reviewing earlier versions of this manuscript. All errors are of course my own.

Notes

1. Juneteenth or Emancipation Day is the celebration of the announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas, on 19 June 1865. This led to the enforcement of abolition in Texas, over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was written.

2. These excavations, under the direction of Ellen Berkland and Mary Beaudry at Boston University were in advance of the building’s renovations and were explicitly directed at public engagement (Beaudry and Berkland 2008).