Exhibition Reviews

Brian Horrigan and Kathleen Franz

Contributing Editors

Introduction

In the past few issues we have clustered some of the exhibition reviews around a com-
mon topic or theme. As editors, we hope this approach provides a way to compare tech-
niques and foster a conversation among the reviews. Undoubtedly, we have missed sites
that might add to the conversation. Please do not consider these reviews to be the last
word on these topics; we welcome suggestions for additions. If you read this issue and
are inspired to send in suggestions for more sites on disability history, women’s history,
or the Civil War, we would be delighted to continue the conversation.
For the June issue, we are pleased to have a group of reviews on historic sites and
museums that address the diverse history of disability in the United States. The con-
tributors Julia Sandy-Bailey, William S. Walker, and Sarah Yahm have reviewed mu-
seums that span different historical experiences and cover territory from Buffalo, New
York, to Salem, Oregon. Their reviews demonstrate the challenges of interpreting histo-
ries of disability and also the challenges of building museum governance structures that
are inclusive and equitable. They contextualize the individual museums and exhibitions
they write about within the larger historical and critical contexts of exhibiting disability.
Walker’s review of the Museum of disAbility History, which opened in Buffalo, places
the small but ambitious museum within the recent movement to discuss the history of
disability in public forums, both through physical exhibits and on the World Wide Web.
For instance, the National Museum of American History’s online exhibit EveryBody: An
Artifact History of Disability in America, has been a leader in this movement. Despite the
founders’ claim that the Museum of disAbility History is the only one of its kind in the
United States, Walker demonstrates that it is in good company with other museums that
have often included the voices of advocates for the disabled and people in communities
of consumers, ex-patients, and survivors. As the other reviewers show, while inclusion
is often a goal, in reality interpretation can often privilege the medical community. In
her review of the Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health, opened in the fall
of 2012, Yahm encourages us to consider the unique challenges facing disability muse-
ums, which must “struggle to avoid what the scholar David Hevey calls ‘enfreakment’—
indulging prurient interests in different bodies.” The Museum of Mental Health, similar
to the other museums reviewed here, strives to advocate for the communities they serve.
The founders and staff of the Museum of Mental Health are committed to working with
© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians.
All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

198 The Journal of American History June 2014

 Exhibition Reviews 199

the “communities of consumers, survivors, and ex-patients” and, as Yahm notes, include
members of these communities on the board. As with many museums, therefore, the
mission goes deeper than the exhibitions, shaping governance structures as well as inter-
pretation. Yahm discovers that, unfortunately, the newly minted museum has a long way
to go to fully realize its inclusive mission.
Perhaps the most established of the three museums, the American Printing House for
the Blind (aph), occupies space in a factory the organization had constructed in Louis-
ville, Kentucky, in 1883. Opened in the mid-1990s, the museum places the corporation’s
history within the “national and international history of education for the blind.” Far
from a dry institutional history, however, the aph employs multiple approaches to edu-
cate and advocate on behalf of the blind. Accessibility is a priority, and the museum of-
fers labels in a variety of formats to serve multiple users, but as Sandy-Bailey shows, “the
museum goes beyond these accommodations to offer for all visitors, sighted and blind,
a vibrant tactile experience that encourages a hands-on exploration of its topics.” Sandy-
Bailey concludes that the exhibitions at the aph are “as much about institutions, person-
alities, and government will” as they are about the artifacts they display.
Departing from the theme of disability history, Karen Dunak nevertheless continues
the discussion of museums driven by a mix of governmental institutions and personali-
ties in her review of the First Ladies National Historic Site and Saxton McKinley House
in Canton, Ohio. If you thought that the National Museum of American History at the
Smithsonian Institution offered one of the only histories of the First Ladies of the United
States through its long-term and popular exhibition of First Ladies’ gowns, then read on.
Dunak provides an insightful review of the history of the Ohio complex, which includes
the library, a museum housed in a historic bank building, and the Ida Saxton McKinley
House, where Ida McKinley grew up and later returned after the assassination of her hus-
band. Although Dunak concludes that the museum exhibitions are a work in progress
that need to move beyond the “great women behind great men” interpretation, she sees
a rich variety of resources for scholars at the library and an immersive interpretation of
Victorian gender roles at the Saxton McKinley House.
In the Civil War exhibit for this issue, Rick Beard returns to questions of displaying
the body, disability, and, in this case, human suffering. He highlights the difficult histo-
ries and images of the Civil War wounded in the new Seminary Ridge Museum in Get-
tysburg, Pennsylvania. Opened on July 1, 2013, the museum is operated by the Adams
County Historical Society and the Lutheran Theological Seminary and occupies the his-
toric seminary building that served as a hospital for Confederate and Union wounded.
Beard praises the new museum as one of the “most credible and compelling historical
attractions” in Gettysburg. Moving beyond a retelling of the battle and the display of
“unsettling” images of the wounded, the museum contemplates the “moral, spiritual,
and religious issues that shaped the Civil War era.” As Beard argues, there are few mu-
seums that highlight the role of religion in the Civil War, and the Seminary Ridge Mu-
seum has done exceptional work of filling this niche. In addition, Beard calls attention to
exhibits that “are installed in, not on, the building fabric.” For instance, “life-size three-
dimensional figures” interpret the experiences of wounded soldiers in a ward where
they would have awaited treatment. While the attention to and photographs of victims
could objectify suffering, the figures lend a compelling sense of humanity to the space. A
200 The Journal of American History June 2014

member of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, the museum should be a

must-see for its fresh approaches to difficult histories.
As always, we welcome reactions to these reviews and invite suggestions of exhibi-
tions, historic sites, public monuments, reenactments, and other programs to include in
these pages. For the December 2014 issue, we especially encourage readers and potential
reviewers to send suggestions on exhibitions related to women’s history. Please contact:

Brian Horrigan Kathleen Franz

Minnesota Historical Society Department of History
345 W. Kellogg Blvd. American University
St. Paul, MN 55102 4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
brian.horrigan@mnhs.org Washington, DC 20016
kathleengfranz@gmail.com

Museum of disAbility History, Buffalo, N.Y. http://museumofdisability.org/.

Permanent exhibition, established 1998, relocated 2010. Doug Farley, museum direc-
tor; Doug Platt, museum curator; People, Inc. and the B. Thomas Golisano Foundation,
developers.

The Museum of disAbility History in Buffalo, New York, is a project developed by

People, Inc., a not-for-profit health and human services agency that serves individuals
with developmental disabilities as well as senior citizens in western New York. Founded
in 1998 and relocated to a new, larger site in 2010, the museum promotes independence
for people with developmental disabilities and greater understanding and acceptance of
all people in society. According to the museum’s promotional literature, it is the “only
‘bricks and mortar’ museum in the country dedicated exclusively to preserving the his-
tory of people with disabling conditions, their struggles, successes and their impact on
American society.”
Various disability history projects have appeared online recently, including a major
digital exhibition from the National Museum of American History entitled EveryBody:
An Artifact History of Disability in America. Despite these projects and the increased vis-
ibility of disability studies in the academy, the Buffalo museum is, to my knowledge, still
unique among museums in the United States. The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia and
the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland, have present-
ed disability in the context of the history of medicine. Other institutions have addressed
the topic of disability history in exhibitions, such as those on polio and the disability
rights movement at the Smithsonian Institution or those on eugenics and the killing of
disabled people by the Nazis at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Wash-
ington, D.C. The Museum of disAbility History, however, has a singular focus on people
with disabilities that those other institutions lack. Moreover, it strives for a comprehen-
sive scope, providing an overview of the history of disabled people and the individuals
and institutions that studied, treated, housed, assisted, abused, and interacted with them
from the Middle Ages to today.
Presenting such a sweeping range of history in a relatively small space—the permanent
exhibition occupies one medium-size room—is a tall order that the exhibit’s designers
 Exhibition Reviews 201

The “Evolution of Adaptive Equipment” exhibit at the Museum of disAbility History

illustrates the history and development of motion and mobility aids. Photo by William
S. Walker. Courtesy William S. Walker.

accomplish reasonably well. The museum consists primarily of a series of panel displays
that mix a fairly sizable amount of text with an array of images. The panels are colorful,
well designed, well lit, and easy to read. They provide an introduction to various aspects
of disability history for adult visitors. In choosing breadth, however, the exhibit’s design-
ers sacrificed the opportunity to go into depth on any particular subject. In making my
way through the museum, I often felt as if I was reading the pages of a textbook. The
panels’ largely neutral tone and the procession of individuals and institutions becomes
numbing after a while. Furthermore, the survey nature of the exhibition often means
that the panels end up focusing on institutions and a few well-known individuals—
typically medical researchers—without offering a comparable amount of information
about specific disabled people. A lack of sufficient source material, especially for earlier
periods, is likely to blame for this gap. Still, more creative approaches to images and ob-
jects might have overcome a paucity of documentary evidence. In addition, use of au-
diovisual displays and more sources of interactivity could have enlivened a rather static
exhibition space. The cellular telephone tour, which currently is little more than a recital
of panel texts, is another place where museum staff could more actively engage visitors.
The tour could include visual descriptions of images and objects, which would improve
the museum’s accessibility for visually impaired visitors.
Many of the images could be better identified in captions. In some places, the lack
of identifying information—for example, photographer, artist, name(s) of subjects,
202 The Journal of American History June 2014

location, date, and source—makes the images problematic illustrations of the historical
narratives being presented. Similarly, several of the objects—including the larger show-
pieces such as a wheelchair and straitjacket—do not have a satisfactory amount of in-
formation accompanying them. This oversight is unfortunate, as museum staff members
have worked hard to assemble a large collection of documents, images, and three-dimen-
sional objects, most of which are not on display but which can be accessed through the
museum’s library and archives. Objects associated with fund raising, such as a coin bank
in the shape of a Schlitz beer can that was used to raise money for cerebral palsy research,
as well as those objects associated with disabled people in popular culture are the most
compelling in the exhibition. Perhaps not coincidentally, this is also the place where the
exhibition’s tone shifts perceptibly to a more critical stance. A panel on Jerry Lewis’s La-
bor Day telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, for example, mentions objec-
tions that “Jerry’s kids” have raised about their portrayal. A button showing an “R” with a
slash through it and the phrase Spread the Word to End the Word similarly highlights the
agency of disabled people and their allies in challenging negative attitudes toward people
with disabilities (and specifically fighting against the use of the term retarded ).
The museum’s leadership envisions it as both a space for people with disabilities and
a site for able-bodied people to learn about the history of disability. Currently, visitation
numbers are quite small, perhaps a few thousand annually. However, museum staff mem-
bers have been successful in doing outreach and offering school programs. Collabora-
tions with the University at Buffalo’s medical school and center for disability studies have
been especially fruitful. Medical students tour the museum annually, attend lectures on
disability history at the university, and participate in classes taught by individuals with
disabilities. The museum also sponsors an annual disabilities film festival, an antibully-
ing campaign, and other children’s programs. In addition, they offer a variety of traveling
exhibits on topics such as “African Americans and the disAbility Experience” and “The
Portrayal of Children with disAbilities throughout History.”
Museum staff members are also currently working on a new project, which will in-
clude a traveling exhibition, on the history of institutional cemeteries in New York. This
project dovetails nicely with one of the main features of the permanent exhibition—
a section on state institutions for people with disabilities. Charting this history from
the mid-nineteenth century to deinstitutionalization in the 1970s, this section’s panels
mostly steer clear of critical discussion of institutional history and instead enumerate key
dates, sites, and individuals. At times, however, the text suggests an endorsement of the
necessity and benevolence of such institutions. Although visitors may not need to hear
about Michel Foucault’s theories, the museum would benefit from incorporating in this
section a more incisive discussion of the ways institutions constructed notions of normal-
ity and disability and used the power of the state to enforce them. Such a perspective is
especially important for a museum sponsored by an organization that continues to pro-
vide services to people with disabilities.
A more critical historical perspective would also align with the advocacy goals of the
museum. Starting in 2007, the museum and People, Inc. were at the forefront of a push
to create Disability History Week in New York. In the past couple of years they have also
advocated for educational initiatives to develop curricula that encourages “understand-
 Exhibition Reviews 203

ing and acceptance of students with disabilities.” This admirable work illustrates the po-
tential of combining historical research, museum work, and advocacy for social justice.
William S. Walker
Cooperstown Graduate Program
Cooperstown, New York
and
State University of New York at Oneonta
Oneonta, New York
doi: 10.1093/jahist/jau331

Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health, Salem, Ore. http://oshmuseum.org/.

Permanent exhibition, opened Oct. 2012. 2,500 sq. ft. Curated, designed, and fab-
ricated by the volunteer board of trustees for the Oregon State Hospital Museum of
Mental Health.

When the Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health opened its doors in Octo-
ber 2012 hundreds of people flocked to the ribbon cutting, eager to see the artifacts and
hear the stories of life inside the hospital. Americans have always been fascinated with
insane asylums—in the late nineteenth century visiting asylums was part of a normal
summer vacation routine, along with visits to Niagara Falls and other sites on the “grand
tour.” Today, former mental hospitals linger in public memory as sites of cruelty and
mistreatment, and their abandoned buildings elicit interest and titillating fear in the
surrounding communities. Oregon State Hospital (osh) gained notoriety in the 1970s as
the film set for the movie One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Ever since, the hospital
has been a lurid symbol of the mistreatment of the mentally ill, a physical manifestation
of conformity and coercive power. The new Museum of Mental Health, located on the
grounds of the original osh building, capitalizes on this history and tries to distance
itself from it, resisting narratives of social control. Instead museum organizers focus on
medical history, chronicling shifting treatment modalities and diagnostic categories and
avoiding sticky theoretical questions about deviance, conformity, and surveillance.
The original osh building was constructed during a utopian moment in the mid-
nineteenth century when physicians believed compassionate, peaceful retreats would lead
to cure. In the early 1800s the physician Thomas Kirkbride, a proponent of moral treat-
ment for the mentally ill, created a physical template for insane asylums where the build-
ing itself would be part of the treatment. Every Kirkbride-inspired design had a central
administrative building and two wings on either side lined with windows, because the
doctor believed that light and air had powerful restorative effects. Additionally, the build-
ings were located outside of town on extensive farmland because physical labor was seen
as an integral part of the treatment. These buildings were originally designed so that each
patient could have a single room and a window, but they rapidly became overcrowded
until, by the mid-twentieth century, patients were sometimes sleeping in the tunnels be-
low the Kirkbride complex. Overcrowding and underfunding turned these grand build-
ings into looming, decaying representations of neglect, with little if any trace of the
original vision. After the deinstitutionalization movement in the 1960s, most of these
buildings were emptied of patients and abandoned.
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