The world in 100 words: crafting a history of the American museum label
Date
2024
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The history of interpretive museum labels in the United States from the 1780s to the 1950s is an understudied topic. This absence is remedied through four case studies from collections of natural history and ethnography, including the Philadelphia Museum (founded 1784), Charleston Museum (founded 1773), the Smithsonian Children’s Room (opened 1901), and Penn Museum (founded 1887). By uniting extant historic labels, museum meeting minutes, newspaper articles, and other related sources, this analysis demonstrates how widespread public demand for educational accessibility in late nineteenth-century American museums prompted curators to instate the standard of the modern, longform, interpretive museum label. I argue that this turning point in museum practice created a labeling standard that granted American curators unprecedented interpretive power, a reality that equipped museum labels with the ability to impart onto visiting patrons alternatingly educationally insightful and socially harmful content. This analysis concludes with an exploration of how this duality continues to impact museum interpretation today.
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Keywords
American curators, Museum labels, United States, Museum interpretation, Newspaper