The Museum in Crisis

The Museum in Crisis Reed Gochberg (bio) Samuel J. Redman, The Museum: A Short History of Crisis and Resilience. New York: New York University Press, 2022. 232 pp. Notes and index. $24.95. On April 8, 2020, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History announced a Rapid Response Collecting Task Force in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Acknowledging "the urgency to document the ephemeral aspects of the historic turning points . . . and the need to provide a long-term historical perspective," the Smithsonian outlined a significant role for the museum during a period of major uncertainty.1 By pursuing objects from across different areas of American society, from science and medicine to business, politics, and culture, museum curators saw an opportunity to record the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on all aspects of everyday life. These materials would ensure that such a crisis would not be forgotten, and they would allow future historians and members of the public to understand this significant moment in history. The crisis the Smithsonian sought to preserve was taking place not only outside the walls of museums, but also within them. Many museums remained closed for months in 2020 due to the pandemic, and even when they reopened, the consequences were deeply felt. Staff layoffs, new masking and distancing policies, and ongoing economic impacts all transformed the way museums had to operate. These closures also coincided with nationwide protests surrounding the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, which prompted a wider reckoning about racial injustice across American political, social, and cultural institutions. Some saw these challenges as a chance to rethink the role of a museum. An article for the American Alliance of Museums proclaimed that, "The museum we closed will not be the museum we reopen," suggesting a sense of tentative optimism that perhaps this pause in everyday operations might create space for reflection and an opportunity for change.2 Samuel Redman's recent book The Museum: A Short History of Crisis and Resilience reveals the much longer history of how museums have survived challenging times. Redman traces a set of key moments in American history throughout the twentieth century, including the influenza epidemic of 1918 and the Great Depression to World War II and the culture wars of the 1980s [End Page 103] and 1990s, situating the work of museums against the backdrop of major crises. Throughout this book, Redman defines museums as dynamic institutions, capable of shifting priorities and operations in order to respond actively to the needs of a given moment. The Museum: A Short History of Crisis and Resilience emphasizes that a crisis can also provide an opportunity to reflect on institutional values: "What are our main priorities? Whom do museums serve? How do cultural institutions continue to survive with curtailed operations? What operations are deemed 'essential'?" (p. 4). Such questions have enormous consequences for how museums define their audiences and communities, how they understand their sense of social responsibility, and how they prepare for future moments of uncertainty. Redman's work demonstrates the importance of looking to how museums have responded to past challenges in order to better understand how they might imagine alternative approaches in the future. The first chapter takes up a crisis that may feel eerily familiar to contemporary readers: the impact of the 1918 influenza epidemic, known as the "Spanish flu," and how museums such as the American Museum of Natural History sought to navigate and manage their response. This chapter highlights numerous resonances with the challenges faced by museums in the last few years, including a decline in visitor attendance, a slow and gradual recovery over the course of several years, and even strategies such as face masks used to mitigate the spread of disease. The 1918 influenza epidemic occurred during a period of immense change for public museums, when new methods for presenting information to visitors through exhibitions had only recently taken hold. The idea of a museum as a space for public education was not new, but the educational and social reforms of the Progressive Era had granted even greater urgency to these questions within the world of cultural institutions. The shock and uncertainty of the influenza pandemic, therefore...