The question with what to do with racist monuments is a difficult one. I can certainly understand the desire to change or erase them. If I am a member of a traditionally oppressed group and I saw words like “colored” or “savage” every time I looked at a monument, I would be pretty mad about […]
Tag: public history
They say that Orange County is home to the Happiest Place on Earth. For most people, that’s Disneyland. For a cynical left-wing historian, it is the Nixon Library. When I visited Orange County l
I wanted to point everyone to this important Union of Concerned Scientists report on the impact of climate change on the nation’s cultural landscape and historic sites. The UCS asked me to be th
Minnesota Republicans are up in arms because the Minnesota Historical Society wants to commission a bust of Harry Blackmun. Why are they going crazy? Because Blackmun was one of the justices who legalized abortion in 1973.
[ERIK SAYS] This podcast discusses Ari Kelman’s new book, A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek. It explores how different groups contest the historical meanings of the
On November 29, 1864, Colonel John Chivington, a former abolitionist preacher, led a military expedition against an encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians at Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. T
I’ve expressed my reservations before about the idea of a memorial for Dwight Eisenhower on the National Mall and scoffed at the protests by his granddaughters that part of the Gehry-designed memorial would dare to depict the great man as an average boy growing up in Kansas. Witold Rybczynski has a useful op-ed about the […]
The New York Times’ Disunion series continues to be absolutely fantastic, even if it doesn’t get the publicity it did when the series started. And I’ve been reading Kevin Levin’
So it seems that Frank Gehry is designing a memorial for Dwight Eisenhower on the National Mall. Eisenhower’s family is angry because, gasp, one of the scenes shows Dewey as a poor, barefoot kid
I was fortunate enough to visit the reopened New York Historical Society just before the holidays. It’s pretty impressive. I’ve visited twice before, once when the old building was partially open and once for a major exhibit during the building’s renovation with the exhibition housed offsite. They do a great job, there’s no question. I […]
I am intrigued by Matthew Frye Jacobson’s project to create a modern archive by collecting materials and interviewing people about present-day events. Here’s a write-up about it. Jacobson,
I recently visited the Torn in Two exhibit at the Boston Public Library. Using maps at the primary storyteller, this exhibit told the story of the Civil War. Running until the end of the year, I highl