#Into to Public History

[that-butch-archivist]

"Lesbian Weddings" by Wendy Jill York

source: The Femme Mystique, edited by Lesléa Newman

[sacramentohistorymuseum]

We are often asked if multiple ink colors can be used on a single impression. In this video, Jared letterpress prints a phrase about museums showing that 6 ink colors is possible. The phrase “Museums are not neutral” was printed with red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple ink using our Washington hand press. The wood type used is 15 line pica in size and the typeface is French Clarendon.

Our museum, like all museums, is not neutral. People often argue that museums should be neutral or that museums can’t be “political.” However, museums actually are cultural institutions that originate from colonial acquisition and they are about power. History is often written by the victors. It is important for museums to focus on multiple sources and perspectives, especially historically underrepresented groups. Promoting diversity is important to understanding a more holistic history of events.

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

[nerdygaymormon]

[wouldgaysexfixthem]

would gay sex fix them?

[stuckinapril]

friend wanted to see my tumblr, and when i told him i can’t show it to him bc it’s basically my personal diary he went “oh so I can’t see it but a bunch of strangers on tumblr can??” he literally does not get me. no one will get me like the people in my phone get me

[snailspng]

Creatures from the Luttrell Psalter (c. 1320-1340) PNGs, part 1.

(Source)

[sovietpostcards]

In the Novosibirsk metro (USSR, 1989)

[detroitlib]

From our picture files: "Caesar rejecting the warnings of his death"

[prokopetz]

Speaking of the US public domain, January 1st, 2024 is a big day for another reason.

To provide some brief historical context, for most of its history the US had no federal copyright regime for standalone audio recordings (i.e., as opposed to the audio component of movies and other multimedia productions), instead allowing the individual states to set their own standards. Many states elected to grant perpetual copyright on audio recordings, a state of affairs which was exploited by record companies to ensure that there was functionally no public domain for audio recordings in the US.

This changed in 1972, with the passage of laws that brought audio recordings in line with federal copyright standards. The changes did not apply retroactively, leaving audio recordings created prior to 1972 under the old state-level perpetual copyrights – and since the federal copyright duration in the US is so long, no post-1972 audio recording has been around long enough for its term to expire.

However, further changes to federal copyright law in 2018 allowed very old audio recordings to be placed in the public domain regardless of where they were produced. Initially, this applied only to audio recordings created in 1922 and earlier, which is why we've suddenly seen a bunch of indie productions making use of old dance-hall recordings in the past couple of years. Provisions to gradually phase out the copyright protection of recordings produced between 1922 and 1972 were also included – and those start kicking in next year, beginning with audio recordings created in 1923.

TL;DR: January 1st, 2024 will be the first time in history that any standalone audio recording has ever entered the US public domain through expiration of the term of its copyright.

If you live in the US and you're a fan of old music, it might be worth looking up what exactly came out in 1923!

[that-butch-archivist]

"High Femme" from the collection of Debra Bercuvitz and Kris Knutson

source: The Femme Mystique, edited by Lesléa Newman

[liyazaki]

via the Arkansas Advocate

it’s official: in Arkansas, library staff may now be charged with a Class D felony for providing books to their communities that are deemed “obscene”.

in Florida, school librarians and teachers can be criminally charged for checking out books to kids that dare to touch on LGBTQ topics & gender identity, thanks to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

book censorship in the US is at such an all-time high, book sanctuaries are popping up all over the country.

library staff aren’t physically safe, either. just over the past couple months, threats against libraries and their staff resulted in the temporary closure of “five public library systems due to bomb and shooting threats," ALA. active shooter trainings have become the new norm for me.

the censorship myself and my colleagues have been watching unfold over the last several years has felt like watching a slow-motion car crash.

but this bill? this feels like a death knell for my profession.

via Teen Vogue

when I was a confused queer kid growing up in an ultra-religious household, the library was my refuge. when I asked hard questions, librarians listened and gave me the tools I needed to answer them. in many ways, libraries saved my life. it's why I became a librarian.

I can't believe I'm living in times where future generations of kids may not have access to the same refuge I did, but it's happening.

if you live in the US and you care about protecting open, equitable access to information, please check out the American Library Association for anti-censorship resources in your state, info on contacting your representatives, etc.

you can also report censorship you see in your community and ALA will investigate (1-800-545-2433, ext. 4266; oif@ala.org).

I know this isn't my usual content, but libraries are standing on the edge of a horrifying precipice- one we can't escape on our own.

libraries are free society's canary in the coal mine, and all the alarms are singing. when libraries fall, nations usually aren't far behind.

this matters- and we need help.

[psicheanima]

Quanxi would realize, 10 years later, “She was fucking with me.”

[historic-meme]

Found out yesterday my great-great grandparents died in a pogrom in modern-day Ukraine in 1920. The violence lasted for 5 days and killed about 700 people.

I don’t know how to make goyim understand that when finding this out I was so devastated and yet unsurprised. I was unsurprised because when learning Jewish history, starting around the middle ages to modernity, I always feel as if it is “my history.” These events happened to my ancestors. Even if technically that isn’t true.

I did not realize until the start of my MA program in public history that it is not common for people to feel this close a connection to their ethnic/religious groups history.

This phenomenon is what I want goyim to understand. That feeling of when i found out the specific event of violence that killed my great-great grandparents felt more like a final nail in the coffin than an unexpected blow. Yes, it hurt and i cried as i always do when i found out the specifics of my families deaths to antisemitic violence. But it was not a surprise. Why would it be when since at least middle school I remember learning about jewish history and internalizing it as my own history that happened to my own family.

And this phenomenon is also why jews react so strongly when violent antisemitism is in the news. Yes, it has to do with intergenerational trauma but also this deep connection we feel to all of Jewish history. That we can see how this is just another atrocity in a long line of atrocities. That there is no tangible difference between the victims and ourselves. This is all of our collective history.

[guccigarantine]

if you have lmk what was being shown