Tilden: The Godfather of Interpertation

I am still somewhat in awe of Tilden mainly because of his writing. It was wonderful to read something so engaging, descriptive, and simple. He successfully balances preaching with inspiring. He makes suggestions and gives ideas about interpreting rather than dictating principles and standards. Tilden's six key concepts are something in between goals and guidelines. Perhaps it can be described a standard to strive for but one that you recognize you will not always everyday live up to them. Handler and Gable hint at this in their book excerpt (and I thought about it while reading Tilden) that Tilden's work can easily be idealized and be misrepresented. With the almost godly status given to Tilden's work it is far too easy to accept it as fact and untouchable rather than discussion and points of growth that he intended them to be.

Handler and Gable's work on Colonial Williamsburg gives a case study (or if case study is too social science like, a close look at) about miscommunication of interpretations. Without proper guidance of how to interact with visitors, they state, the museum or historical site ends up failing their mission statement and ultimately their public. Pressure for money and maintaining powerful connections, according to the article, has hindered how much "freedom" office historians and the ground staff have in what they can present and what they want to present. While I agree that there needs to be a change in what history is presented, Handler and Gable's solution is too idealistic for me. Money has strings that Williamsburg cannot be ignored. But Handler and Gable are right that they can do more solve these issues. Most people visit places to make connections yet without a whole picture they can't successfully do so. By becoming complacent, museums who admire Tilden as godly fail to live up to his ideas of challenging and changing both people and museums.

This goes back to what we have discussed throughout the course about how far or to what degree should public historians or museum personnel be comfort councilors? What "facts" should or can be presented? As West argues, there is no one meaning for a building and the method and who chooses what a building means is significant. Can a whole interpretation be given if there are already limitations to what is visually depicted? Even Tilden while advocating the need to provoke visitors and give them a whole picture, recognizes that words and methods must not alienate visitors. Tilden stresses the need to engage visitors so not to bore them but it can also be argued that one also needs to know how far a guide can push his/her group.

A balance is needed but who really chooses how to do that?