Blog #9 - House Museums

A house museum is kind of like a scrapbook. The building is preserved and there are objects collected and arranged in order to represent a moment from the past. The house hasn't been strictly preserved, it's more the idea of the house that is being preserved by collecting items and piecing together rooms that bring to life a scene from history. The house is no longer a house, but a tool used to teach people what life was like when it was a house. The goal of a house museum is scholarly in nature, but it's unique in that it exists as a real, tangible experience. So much of history is recorded only in words, drawings, and photographs. It's an entirely different experience to be able to enter a historical place and walk around in it.

The Pabst mansion is a great example of a house museum. The actual building has been preserved, but its purpose has been changed. Inside, rooms have been carefully restored into a state that may not be exactly as it once existed, but combines known elements in order to create a believable example of how it could have existed during a certain time period. Occasionally mistakes are made, as our tour guide pointed out with the pink upholstery that probably would have originally been a more conservative blue or green. Still, being able to enter a space like the Pabst mansion really transports you to another time. The mansion is completely out of place where it's located now, but on the tour you learn that the area used to have many similar buildings that were lost one by one. By preserving the Pabst mansion, the area has one remaining lifeline back to its roots. If it had not been for preservation, the history of that street could have been wiped clean.

The thing that interests me about house museums is the point where preservation and reconstruction meet. Murtagh tells the story of one house museum that had all of its most important furnishings meticulously reproduced so that the originals could be sold off and replaced with the copies. From a preservationist standpoint, this seems just plain wrong. You're throwing out everything that makes the house historic. If you believe that the  real merit of a house museum is its usefulness as a three-dimensional teaching tool, though, then does it matter if it's all original or not? In the Pabst mansion there is a reproduction of a large chandelier that dominates the entryway of the house. The actual chandelier is in the possession of a bar somewhere, and they wouldn't give it up, hence the reproduction. It definitely needs to be there, it's a major part of the room and speaks volumes about the German heritage and culture of the Pabst family. Does it matter that it's not the original? And if one is to be so forgiving as to allow that, how much of the experience needs to consist of original, preserved objects? Or does it simply matter that the reproductions rest on a foundation of preservation?