Matching Items (2)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Museum Studies
- All Subjects: Patricia Nelson Limerick
- Creators: Brandt, Beverly
Description
Los Angeles long served as a center of technological and scientific innovation and production, from nineteenth-century agriculture to twentieth-century aerospace. City boosters used spectacle-filled promotional strategies to build and maintain technological supremacy through industry. Evaluating the city’s premier industry-focused science museum, the California Science Center, is therefore a must. The California Science Center is one of the most-visited museums in the United States and is in the historic Exposition Park. Yet, no thorough analysis has been done on its influential history. This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study of the California Science Center, from its 1870s beginnings as an agricultural fairground, to the construction of the world’s fair-inspired State Exposition Building in the 1910s, to its post-World War II redesign as the California Museum of Science and Industry. It uses regional history, design history, and museum studies to evaluate the people behind the museum’s construction and development, how they shaped exhibits, and the ideologies of progress they presented to the public. This dissertation builds on established historical components in Los Angeles’ image-making, primarily boosterism, spectacular display, and racism. The museum operated as part of the booster apparatus. Influential residents constructed Exposition Park and served on the museum board. In its earliest days, exhibits presented Anglo Los Angeles as a civilizing force through scientific farming. During the Cold War, boosters shifted to promote Los Angeles as a mecca of modern living, and the museum presented technology as safe and necessary to democracy. Local industries and designers featured centrally in this narrative. Boosters also used spectacle to ensure impact. Dioramas, Hollywood special effects, and simulated interactive experiences enticed visitors to return again and again. Meanwhile, non-white residents either became romanticized, as in the case of the Mexican Californios, or ignored, as seen in the museum’s surrounding neighborhood, primarily-African American, South Central. Anglo elites removed non-whites from the city’s narrative of progress. Ultimately, this dissertation shows that the museum communicated city leaders’ ideologies of progress and dictated exhibit narratives. This study adds nuance to image-making in Los Angeles, as well as furthering regional analysis of science museums in the United States.
ContributorsVale, Catherine Minerva (Author) / Gullett, Gayle (Thesis advisor) / Brandt, Beverly (Thesis advisor) / Toon, Richard (Committee member) / Dean, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This study examines history museums in Arizona and New Mexico to determine whether New Western History themes are prevalent, twenty years after the term was conceived. Patricia Limerick is credited with using the expression in the 1980s, but she had to promote the concept frequently and for many years. There was resistance to changing from the Frederick Jackson Turner thesis of looking at the frontier as an expansion from the East, even while others were already writing more current historiography.
Limerick’s four “Cs”—continuity, convergence, conquest, and complexity—took a view of the West from the West, worthy of a separate perspective. These themes also allowed historians to reflect on what was happening locally, how and why various people were interacting, how there was less of a benevolent imbuing of European culture on Native Americans than there was a conquest of indigenous people, and how resource extraction created complex situations for all living things. While scholarly works were changing to provide relevant material based on these themes, museums were receiving thousands of visitors every year and may have been providing the Anglo-centric view of events or creating more inclusive displays. Label texts could have been either clarifying or confusing to a history loving audience.
Three types of museums were visited to determine whether there was a difference in display based on governing body. National Park Service sites, state sponsored institutions, and local city-based museums served as the study material. The age of the existing long-term exhibits ranged from brand new to fifty-one years extant. As important to the use of New Western History themes as the term of the current exhibit was the type of governing body.
Monographs, essays, and museum exhibits are all important to the dissemination of history. How they relate and how current they are to each other creates an opportunity for both academic and museum professional historians to reflect on the delivery systems used to enlighten a history-loving public.
Limerick’s four “Cs”—continuity, convergence, conquest, and complexity—took a view of the West from the West, worthy of a separate perspective. These themes also allowed historians to reflect on what was happening locally, how and why various people were interacting, how there was less of a benevolent imbuing of European culture on Native Americans than there was a conquest of indigenous people, and how resource extraction created complex situations for all living things. While scholarly works were changing to provide relevant material based on these themes, museums were receiving thousands of visitors every year and may have been providing the Anglo-centric view of events or creating more inclusive displays. Label texts could have been either clarifying or confusing to a history loving audience.
Three types of museums were visited to determine whether there was a difference in display based on governing body. National Park Service sites, state sponsored institutions, and local city-based museums served as the study material. The age of the existing long-term exhibits ranged from brand new to fifty-one years extant. As important to the use of New Western History themes as the term of the current exhibit was the type of governing body.
Monographs, essays, and museum exhibits are all important to the dissemination of history. How they relate and how current they are to each other creates an opportunity for both academic and museum professional historians to reflect on the delivery systems used to enlighten a history-loving public.
ContributorsWalsh, Thomas Kevin (Author) / Pagan, Eduardo (Thesis advisor) / Toon, Richard (Thesis advisor) / Fixico, Donald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015