This weeks readings, Freeman Tilden's Interpreting Our Heritage, Michael Frisch's A Shared Authority, and Andrew Hurley's Beyond Preservation, unsurprisingly all focus on issues of interpretation when doing public history. Coming from the somewhat scattered and unorganized meeting we all had last week, where answering questions of "who is the audience?" and "what does the content say?" seemed almost impossible, I'm glad for a chance for us all to discuss the importance of interpretation in pursuit of "doing good history" and what this can mean for our exhibit. The readings speak strongly to the importance of "knowing one's audience" something that we talk a lot about in class, and have discussed with some of the other readings. But they also speak to the fact that interpreting is an art form, and as such we need to be thoughtful and practice our own interpretive skills (luckily Tilden's book gives us a good starting place for interpretive techniques). Obviously to successful interpret and sell our interpretations to our visitors, the first thing we need to do is to hammer down a better idea of who our audience is, what they expect, what appeals to them, etc.
It seems to me, even if a bit abstractly, that Hurley's emphasis on inclusive shared pasts as the way to utilize preservation and interpretation might be a good way to think about what our project hopes to achieve. If we continue in the path of this Historic Germantown idea we began to float at the last meeting, it will be important to tie the history of center city Philly to the history of Germantown. While I understand that Hurley is arguing for better inner city preservation tactics that are inclusive and balance the interests of all the diverse members of an urban community, I still think his approach will be valuable for us.
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