Reflections Exhibition, Missouri History Museum--Pink kitchen
Photograph by Cary Horton, 2006.
Photograph © 2006, Missouri History Museum.
"American fascination with automobile culture and the flight to new postwar suburbs remade America’s urban landscape. Houses popped up in staggering numbers in new suburbs beyond the city. We attempted to evoke this transformation in a gallery in the Missouri History Museum. One of the devices we used was a re-created “pink kitchen.” We thought that this would provide a venue for exploration of the consequences of the exodus to suburbia. One day I stood unobtrusively near the exhibit. Family members from several different generations arrived. I listened intently. There was no discussion of suburbia, no reading of labels, hardly a comment on the pinkness of the surroundings. The conversation was about recipes, family gatherings around the dinner table, grandmothers and mothers and the stories they told as they washed the dishes. And it was about family ties. The exhibit became a memory place that reinforced those ties because it stimulated personal remembrance and strengthened remembrance through repetition. Museums are not classrooms. Our experiences here are far less structured, much more visitor defined, with unpredictable outcomes. How can we structure exhibits to really enhance visitor experiences and to acknowledge that those of us who work in museums cannot dictate interpretation?"--Voices Magazine, Spring 2007
www.mhsvoices.org/2007SpringFeature1.php
Visit us: www.mohistory.org
Reflections Exhibition, Missouri History Museum--Pink kitchen
Photograph by Cary Horton, 2006.
Photograph © 2006, Missouri History Museum.
"American fascination with automobile culture and the flight to new postwar suburbs remade America’s urban landscape. Houses popped up in staggering numbers in new suburbs beyond the city. We attempted to evoke this transformation in a gallery in the Missouri History Museum. One of the devices we used was a re-created “pink kitchen.” We thought that this would provide a venue for exploration of the consequences of the exodus to suburbia. One day I stood unobtrusively near the exhibit. Family members from several different generations arrived. I listened intently. There was no discussion of suburbia, no reading of labels, hardly a comment on the pinkness of the surroundings. The conversation was about recipes, family gatherings around the dinner table, grandmothers and mothers and the stories they told as they washed the dishes. And it was about family ties. The exhibit became a memory place that reinforced those ties because it stimulated personal remembrance and strengthened remembrance through repetition. Museums are not classrooms. Our experiences here are far less structured, much more visitor defined, with unpredictable outcomes. How can we structure exhibits to really enhance visitor experiences and to acknowledge that those of us who work in museums cannot dictate interpretation?"--Voices Magazine, Spring 2007
www.mhsvoices.org/2007SpringFeature1.php
Visit us: www.mohistory.org