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Author: Steven Lubar

Professor of American studies at Brown University.
One Room (The before post)

One Room (The before post)

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I’m about to start my gig at Office Hours, the RISD Museum program “where invited artists, designers, performers, and other community members creatively curate, teach, and experiment through a variety of participatory events.” That’s the official description. In the publicity, it’s “artists, designers, experts, and brainiacs.” I’m not sure what category I’m in: I guess safest to say “other community members.” I was flattered to be asked, of course, especially since a former student was running the program. But what…

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History museums, learning from history

History museums, learning from history

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Can museums use museum history to think about the future? Can their past successes and failures guide them? How might they find possibility and potential in the past when they need to change? I suggest that one way to do this is to look to the long history of museums. Museums have been many things. They have found many ways that museums have balanced the often-conflicting needs of audience, collections, patrons, and educational goals. Looking to this history can help…

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LeGrand Lockwood, Early Adopter

LeGrand Lockwood, Early Adopter

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Back in April I gave a talk at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum in Norwalk, Connecticut. They’ve done a very nice exhibition about the technology of the day, focusing on some of the remarkable technologies Lockwood put into his 1864 home. My talk focused on what Lockwood and others of his generation thought about the future of technology. Lockwood was an early adopter and investor. Others were more cautious. Some rejected it, others saw utopian potential. The gimmick for the talk…

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Teaching through projects

Teaching through projects

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The public humanities program has two required courses, one theory and one method Projects count for about 50 percent of the grade in the project course. For several years, large class projects that built an exhibition. We built some shows that I am proud of, but there’s not really enough time in a one semester course, the group’s too large for everyone to learn about all of the aspects of the show, and too much of the class turns into…

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Authenticity, and bears

Authenticity, and bears

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The scene: Roger Williams Natural History Museum, Providence, Rhode Island. A group of twenty third-graders has just arrived. The docent settles them down, tells them to use their inside voices and their walking shoes. But one boy can’t wait. His hand shoots up as soon as the docent asks for questions. Is it real? He’s been staring at a taxidermied bear. It hasn’t moved, as far as he knows. But it’s in a cage, sort of, surrounded by Plexiglas, and…

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Tomorrow’s the first day of class

Tomorrow’s the first day of class

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Tomorrow’s the first day of AMST1550, Methods in Public Humanities. I’ve finished the third version of the syllabus today – I’ve claimed I was done back in November, and then again about two weeks ago. Until the course seems real – until I see the list of students signed up – it’s hard for me to pin down what the course should be. The goal of the course is to give students a quick background across many areas of the…

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A really quick definition of public history

A really quick definition of public history

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My reply to Mary Rizzo’s Jon Stewart, public historian?, and especially Erik Greenberg’s comment: Let’s think about a “big tent” definition of public historian. Limiting it to “someone grounded in the arguments, practices, and habits of mind of an academically trained historian” leaves out some of the best and most interesting work – and makes for a pretty boring field. It says, do history our way, the academic way, and then we’ll keep you in our club. What if we defined…

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Creative Providence: Past, Present and Future. An NEH Grant Proposal.

Creative Providence: Past, Present and Future. An NEH Grant Proposal.

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We’re  submitting a planning grant to the NEH for a new program that will link Providence’s creative past with its creative future. Here’s a summary: The Brown Center for Public Humanities seeks $34,100 to cover the costs of planning and testing a series of pop-up installations and events that tie Providence’s past as a locus of invention and entrepreneurship to its future as a “Creative Capital” of art- and science-based innovation. The project brings museums and humanists together with artists,…

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