In his “Fred Wilson, PTSD, and Me: Reflections on the History Wars”, Ken Yellis delivers a thoughtful analysis on the meaning and the consequences of historical reflection on what is ultimately an “alien past” (345). Museums offer narratives, specifically the narratives chosen by those who establish, fund, or run the museums. What this means in practice is that, however multidimensional the narrative is, it is still one-dimensional insofar as it is someone or some groups’ narrative—imagining—of history. As such, “history wars” result as others contest the narratives promulgated about the alien past, which in the case of museums often takes the form of the museum staff versus laymen—or other academics—with their own histories of the past (333-337). But as Yellis awaits the next series of history wars, the lesson which he seems to take away from the earlier conflicts is one of doubling down on narratives. Museums must not palatize history because palatization comes at the expense of the history highlighted for discussion—at the expense of the particular kind of history that we have constructed out of the past (342).
Thus, we should not try to lean away from these conflicts over the past but toward them instead. Rather than try to smooth over conflict by producing appreciable histories—histories unlikely to stoke conflict; histories likely to seem similar to the “present”—we should endeavor to produce histories that are what they are in the fashion that we imagine them, rather than what would be easy for others—the greater whole—to understand. Why? Because their unfamiliarity to the observer of the present, and to equally unfamiliar observer of the future, will itself spur the desire to understand these histories, this version of a once-again alien past, in observers. And so while Yellis does not come right out and say it, he seems to suggest that the history wars are less of a problem for museums than they are a sort of guide to saving museums as a medium for historical storytelling (343-346).
What I find encouraging here is that leaning into narrative rather than stressing appreciability is itself a solution, encouragement that I take to our Elfrith’s Alley engagements, too. What if the Elfrith’s Alley Museum’s problems are in part the result of a too-familiar narrative? It shows us a Philadelphia in the late 1700’s, which while different from our contemporary world is nevertheless thematically comprehensible: A living space where some early white Christian Americans lived. But after Dr. Bruggerman showed me a book that taught me about a former owner of the Museum building, an Israelite/Jew named Jacob Cohen, I could not help but wonder if embracing the alien past as a now alien Jewish past, one with which most Americans as non-Jews could not relate, would not help the museum. At the worst, introducing this element widens the Museum’s audience. At best, however, it makes the Museum “controverted” enough to demand attention from people who understand the Alley a different way—and that’s a win (Yellis, 340).