CURATING AMERICA by Richard Rabinowitz Explains How Museums Work

A new book by American History Workshop (AHW) president Richard Rabinowitz Curating America: Journeys through Storyscapes of the American Past (University of North Carolina Press, publication date November 1, 2016) explores the radically altered landscape of public interest in and engagement with American history. One of the most influential public historians of our time, Rabinowitz examines how a master historical narrative was shattered after the upheavals of the Vietnam era, the emergence of new approaches to cognitive science and learning, and the reinvention of museums as shared spaces of civic and personal meaning-making.

Through his own professional journey, Rabinowitz reveals the evolution of public history over the last half-century and highlights the new ways we have come to engage with our past. At the heart of this endeavor is what Rabinowitz calls "storyscapes" - landscapes of engagement where individuals actively encounter stories of past lives. As a collection of storyscapes, museums become processes of narrative interplay rather than moribund storage bins of strange relics. Storyscapes bring to life even the most obscure people - making their skills of hands and minds "touchable," making their voices heard despite their absence from traditional archives, and making the dilemmas and triumphs of their lives accessible to us today.

Rabinowitz's wealth of professional experience - creating over 500 history museums, exhibitions, and educational programs across the nation - shapes and informs Curating America, equal parts history, memoir, and case studies. By weaving insights from learning theory, anthropology and geography, politics and finance, collections and preservation policy, interpretive media, and years of observation, he analyzes how the nation's most successful museums and historic sites allow visitors to confront their sense of time and place, memories of family and community, and definitions of self and the world while expanding their idea of where they stand in the flow of history.

Rabinowitz describes his role as a public historian: to appropriate things of great value - important documents, treasured objects, everyday rituals, significant places, and crucial ideas - and make them accessible, physically and intellectually, for all.

Select Praise for

Curating America: Journeys through Storyscapes of the American Past

"Richard Rabinowitz is a brilliant pioneer, the most creative designer of history museum exhibits in the United States, and a superlative writer. This book, which distills his incredible forty-year career into one volume, is a must-read for anyone interested in the evolution of the museum as an interactive place, understanding how we now engage with our past, and learning about the man who helped orchestrate the rise of public history."- David Thelen, Indiana University, Bloomington

"Richard Rabinowitz takes us on a fascinating journey through the recent past, offering lively anecdotes and vivid illustrations to illuminate the making of public history as a profession and the development of many of the most celebrated historical exhibits of the last three decades. A wonderful, intellectually stimulating book." - Robert Cross, University of Connecticut

The book is illustrated with drawings by Richard T. Hoyen.

About the Author

Richard Rabinowitz. Photograph by Marla S. Maritzer.

Richard Rabinowitz is founder and president of the American History Workshop. He is one of the leading public historians in the United States. Over the past 40 years he has led efforts to fashion over 500 successful and innovative history programs at sites like the New-York Historical Society, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York; the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati; and other sites in 33 states and the District of Columbia.

Between 2004 and 2011, he curated six blockbuster history exhibitions at the New-York Historical Society, including Slavery in New York and Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn. In 2010-11, he drew up the interpretive and curatorial plan for the "Slavery and Freedom" exhibition at the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in Washington this year. Rabinowitz has an A.B. summa cum laude and a PhD from Harvard University. He began his museum career as education director at Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts and later served on the staff of the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is currently a Fellow at the Gilder Lehrman Center for Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. In January 2013, he was awarded the Herbert Feis Award by the American Historical Association for distinguished contributions to public history. The John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded him a Fellowship in the Humanities, in the category of Intellectual and Cultural History, for 2015-2016. He is also the author of The Spiritual Self in Everyday Life: The Transformation of Personal Religious Experience in Nineteenth-Century New England.

About American History Workshop

American History Workshop (AHW) produces public programs to connect Americans with their past. Among its clients are museums, historical soci­eties, historic districts, parks and gardens, filmmakers, public agencies, businesses, citizens' groups, television stations, and others involved in inter­preting history.

AHW produces: full development plans for young or growing museums; collections management and public programs evaluations; scripts, design and technical production of multi-media presentations; interpretive ex­hibits and educational pro­grams; evaluations of public programs; guide books, catalogues, local histories and other publications; and historical research re­ports in American politics and society, business and la­bor, families and communities, ethnic groups, cities and regions, and the development of art and ar­chitecture. www.americanhistoryworkshop.com

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