Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America's House Museums [Paperback]

Patricia West (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1560988363 | ISBN-13: 978-1560988366 | Publication Date: May 17, 1999

Celebrating the lives of famous men and women, historic house museums showcase restored rooms and period furnishings, and portray in detail their former occupants' daily lives. But behind the gilded molding and curtain brocade lie the largely unknown, politically charged stories of how the homes were first established as museums. Focusing on George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and the Booker T. Washington National Monument, Patricia West shows how historic houses reflect less the lives and times of their famous inhabitants than the political pressures of the eras during which they were transformed into museums.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Extremely well-researched and judicious. . . . The most distinctive aspect of the book is the author's persistent emphasis upon the political context that shaped the creation of those house museums. . . . [F]illed with delicious ironies.”—Michael Kammen, The Journal of American History

“[A] nuanced account. . . . [and] crisp little book.”—American Historical Review

“Domesticating History will undoubtedly become required reading for students and teachers of public history, museum practitioners, and, I hope, historians of women and public life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well. The historical perspective West provides is especially welcome amid public perception that historic house museums are falling prey to pandemic political correctness.”—The Public Historian

About the Author

Patricia West is the curator of Martin Van Buren National Historic Site and teaches at the State University of New York at Albany.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Smithsonian Books (May 17, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560988363
• ISBN-13: 978-1560988366
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #537,523 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There's No Place Like Home for Understanding Our Past, April 5, 2000

By 

Gregory J. Thompson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America's House Museums (Paperback)

Patricia West's "Domesticating History" serves a useful dual function in the study of history and museums. The book looks at four museum homes in the United States. The choice of homes allows for diversity in geography, temporality, race and gender. What is most immediately striking about the book is that it is not about the homes, the interpretation that occurs within the homes or the time period in which their famous residents occupied them. Rather the book is about what went into making the home a museum, and more specifically, the political motivations and confrontations that surrounded the acquisition and development of the house museum. The house museum, being an important part of material culture, allows us to study the process through which history becomes preserved, interpreted, and emphasized for future generations. From the perspective of museum studies (a growing field in which how we interpret the interpretation is as important as how we interpret the history) the book plays an important role in allowing the reader into the world of the acquisition of some well known national landmarks. The process and difficulties through which these locations were acquired makes for an important understanding of just how difficult it can be to appropriate physical space into national myth. West states in her conclusion that "As inheritors of the material legacy of the house museum founders, we now see the proper functions of a museum as the presentation of historically accurate interpretations of the American past." Through understanding the historical context in which the properties were acquired we see the process through which figures from history are debated and placed into the historical imagination where they then become part of the national iconography. I do not use the words myth or iconography lightly and I believe that West would agree that there is in many instances a sense of the creation of or addition to the national civil religion. She makes clear reference to these aspects in the first chapter citing both the idea of domestic religion (Colleen McDannell) and Civil religion (Robert Bellah) in he study of Mount Vernon. Throughout he book, and especially in the chapter on Book T. Washington there is clear reference to the importance of religion in the make up of everyday life in American history. Her discussion of the Monticello campaign is an excellent example of her detailed accounting of the historical growth of the property as museum. She does not dwell on the intricacies of the house or the items displayed in the mansion. Rather takes the reader on a journey through the fund raising campaign to purchase the house, including the appropriation of Jefferson as democratic model for the party in the 1920s and 30s, to the establishment of a curator for the house. She clearly shows in her explorations that the appropriation of both the property and the historical inhabitants reflects in large part the political climate of time. For example her discussion the Booker T. Washington birthplace, is filled with descriptions of the desegregation movements in which the events were couched. The George Washington Carver birthplace she seems to say would not have been appropriated had I not been the result of the need to acquire an African American location in order to pacify African Americans in the 1940s. In these descriptions she pays great attention to details about the historical context of which she speaks. Occasionally I believe she may have paid too much attention, leaving the intended subjects in order to emphasis the political fervor of the time. A god example might be the beginning of Chapter 4. The section is titled "The Bricks of Compromise settle into place: Booker T Washington's Birthplace and the Civil Rights Movement." The first subsection of the chapter however is a discussion of the growth of house museums under New Deal politics. The section is extremely illuminating as to the history and expansion of house museums in the 1930s yet it has little directly to do with the chapter heading. That is not to say however that she does not provide further insight into areas that might previously have been glossed over in survey course on such subjects as the civil rights movement and gender studies in the United States. West highlights the importance that women played in the acquisition, development and promotion of these house museums. Further she approaches although does not fully develop the exploration of the transition from women as curator to men in the "professionalizing" of the filed. I think I was disappointed that the text was not more focused on the untold stories of the domestics and of women in these houses, but upon further reflection I suppose West never promised that in her title. The text is extremely useful, not only as history of the house museum movement but also in its exploration of race, gender and general history. How the Booker T. Washington birthplace became a landmark or when Monticello was dedicated as a house museum gives great insight in to the attitudes and political leanings of the country at times in history. There is a great deal of information in the book that relates to theories of consumer culture. West is only able to briefly mention these items in her book. I believe that her text could be a useful starting point for those interested in pursuing this line of thought as an exploration of consumer culture in twentieth century United States. Through the exploration of the political environment in which these homes became museums West illustrates well the power of the museum to be used as not only a center for learning and cataloguing the past but also of influencing the present and the future. As she states in her conclusion "early house museum founders knew the power of historical imagination to inform perceptions of current problems, energize social action, and legitimate authority and principles."

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Domesticating History: Womens early political involvement, December 11, 2000

By 

Mary Campbell (Denton, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America's House Museums (Paperback)

Patricia West's interesting book, Domesticating History, explores the idea and origination of the house museum industry. She counters the idea that "house museums were founded strictly to memorialize a glorious past separable from politics" (xii). House museums reflect the social and political context in which they were developed and that to truly understand a museum, one must understand the historic context in which it was developed. As West states, "house museums are documents of political history, particularly of women's relationship to the public sphere" (159). As such, West takes her reader through the development of house museums and women's active political stance in this industry by siting four examples from the first hundred years of America's history in this area. She uses the homes of Mount Vernon, Orchard House, Monticello, and Booker T. Washington National Monument to "tell us about the crucial issues of gender and social diversity" (xi). Thus West challenges her readers to re-examine interpretations of house museums within their political, social, and historic context. West brings her expertise to the area of house museums in her new book, Domesticating History. She is currently curator of the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site in Kinderhook, New York, and has been involved in different aspects of museum work since as early as 1978. She lectures at various universities on the East Coast and at the Smithsonian. She obtained her Ph.D. at SUNY in Binghamton, 1992, in American History with minor fields in Women's and Public History. She has served as a consultant for the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, the Saratoga National Battlefield project, Friendship Hill National Historic Site, and the Chapman and Roberson museums. She continues to teach as an Adjunct Professor in the Public History Graduate Program at SUNY in Albany while holding her position as curator. Substantial notes at the end of her book and numerous articles indicate her extensive research into this field and thus offers us an interesting look into the political involvement of women in the development of house museums. West states that "although this is not a book about house museum interpretations, there are implications to the history of historic house museums for interpretive and curratorial planning" (162). I enjoyed the book and find it useful in many ways. First, it serves as a history text of women's involvement and political roles in the development of house museums. Second, it is a great introduction into the field of house museums and preservation from historic, political, and social viewpoints. And third, it serves as a catalyst for revisiting interpretation of house museums in the context of social and political atmospheres that existed at the time of preservation. West's book, thus, is an excellent history of the museum house movement using fine examples from different periods that represent main eras of the museum history movement. West brings up interesting questions of what has been preserved and why. Perhaps we should re-exam historic artifacts in light of new information and within the context of the political and social construct of the day.

5 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too Many Tangents, Not Enough Evidence, March 2, 2001

By 

Dave Thomer (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America's House Museums (Paperback)

The main problem with Domesticating History is that it claims to show that the historic houses "reflect less the lives and times of their famous inhabitants than the political pressures of the eras during whih they transformed in museums" -- but then barely discusses the museums themselves and the messages they conveyed. We get a lot of detail about the other political efforts of the people who tried to found these museums, but we have no way of knowing to what extent those other political beliefs manifested themselves in what visitors saw, because we never really learn *what* they saw. That many of the organizations that sprouted up to restore and maintain these homes had deep ideological divisions makes this omission even more glaring, because the reader has no way of knowing which agenda, if any, eventually won out. There is interesting and informative material here, but what argument there is, is poorly presented.