Burns, Andrea A. From Storefront to Monument: Tracing the Public History of the Black Museum Movement. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013.
Resistance to African American Museums: From Storefront to Monument
In Andrea A. Burns’ book, From Storefront to Monument: Tracing the Public History of the Black Museum Movement, Burns documents the journeys of a variety of different black museums in the late 20th century, as well as the beginning of the development of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the 21st century. Burns argues that although these museums intended to be beneficial to their surrounding communities, they failed to meet the community’s service expectations. Burns also states that these museums lost sight of “connecting with audiences and maintaining financial solvency” (Burns 183). when they became preoccupied with expansion and adjusting programs and goals. This book is a good resource for those researching lesser known organizations during the Civil Rights Movement, museums, or public history historiography.
The book is organized into eight parts, an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion. The six chapters are relatively chronological. Chapters two, four, and six focus on specific African American museums, and chapters one, three, and five focus on different themes regarding the black museum movement. The conclusion looks into museums’ roles as community agents. The themes discussed in the odd numbered chapters are expressed in the titles: “When ‘Civil Rights Are Not Enough’”, “Confronting the ‘Tyranny of Relevance’”, and “Rocky Transitions”. The museums studied in the even chapters are the African American Museum of Philadelphia and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Burns focuses on the AAMP because of the controversy that surrounded it during the Bicentennial. Burns’ thesis is not stated clearly until the book’s conclusion. In the introduction, Burns’ states that as African American museums were established and developed, their connection to the Black Power Movement “will persevere, change, and, at times, falter.” (Burns, 14). In the conclusion, Burns argues that in their development, African American museums’ connections with their surrounding communities were weakened as the museums began to focus more on expansion. The thesis stated in the conclusion rather than the one in the introduction proves to be the one best suited to the contents of the book.
One of the main themes of this book is the white opposition to the formation of African American museums. In each museum studied in each chapter, Burns details how museum leadership teams experienced backlash from surrounding white communities. The African American Museum of Philadelphia experienced a horde of resistance within Society Hill, the favored location of the museum. The surrounding white community drafted a list of rules for the AAMP if they were to build in the community. These rules dictated the hours the museum could be open as well as how the AAMP could use its floor space. Eventually, the AAMP was forced to choose a new location for the museum. Burns highlights other examples of white resistance to black museums throughout the book.
This book contributes to the ongoing discussion of public history and the role of the public historian in society. Burns’ position on whether or not a museums and public historians should be social justice activists is not explicitly stated, but the subject and thesis of this book implies that Burns’ believes public historians should take an active role in bettering communities, on the local scale as well as the national scale. This book also adds a new perspective to the recent commentaries on public history programs with grassroots start ups. Specifically, Burns contributes to an ongoing discussion on the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, adding a new perspective that considers its relationship with Smithsonian staff members.
Although the goal of the book is stated implicitly, Burns is efficient in providing evidence to support her thesis. Each chapter explores one or multiple museums, the problems they faced, as well as how these problems affected the museums’ relationships with their surrounding communities. Some secondary sources do appear throughout the book, but the sources used are mostly primary–newspapers and interviews. Notes are used extensively throughout the book, and the bibliography in the back is extensive. Burns does an adequate job of avoiding obvious bias throughout the book, despite a topic that could easily succumb to objectivity. The organization of the book aids the establishment of the thesis. Jumping back and forth between an examination of the African American Museum of Philadelphia and various themes that apply to African American museums overall allows readers to understand the high and low points for the development of African American museums in the late 20th century, as well as see specific examples through the AAMP.