At Concord Museum, a reminder that history is a living thing
CONCORD — the Concord museum has more than 45,000 items in its collection. that’s impressive for a town with a population of less than 19,000. of course Concord has a history that’s even more impressive: the battle of lexington and Concord, at the start of the Revolutionary War; the presence of Ralph Waldo emerson and Henry david thoreau and nathaniel Hawthorne and the Alcotts during the middle of the 19th century.
it’s a place with a remarkable amount of history, which makes the title of “What makes History? new stories From the Collection” all the more intriguing. Curated by the Concord museum’s david Wood and Reed gochberg, it runs there through Aug. 18.
it’s one thing to say that minutemen fighting Redcoats at old north bridge or louisa may Alcott writing “little Women” made history, which they certainly did. but what about those who made things literally, not figuratively, things such as pencils and bellows and calling card cases and chairs and fans (the handheld kind)? they’re part of history, too: “history” meaning not just something past but something representative, indicative, or even revelatory about the past. Ranging in date from the late 18th century to 2011, those 80 or so items are to be found in “What makes History?”
it matters that the title is a question, not a statement. it also matters that the first word is “what” rather than “who.” so many of the objects in the show are the handiwork of multiple people — and, by extension, the handiwork of the larger society.
History as traditionally conceived, the achievements of the famous, sometimes overlaps here with history as the achievements of the obscure or even anonymous. Consider the display concerning pencils. there are unfinished pencils, a bundle of finished pencils, a disc and spoon used in pencil-making, a sheet of pencil labels, and a pencil box (which, not to put too fine a point on it, is easily the most enchanting item in the show). other than the disc and spoon, which date to the early 19th century, all are from the middle of that century, and most relate to the Concord pencil-maker William C. munroe sr. munroe was not the only maker of pencils in that community. His chief rivals were a Concord family by the name of thoreau.
the unfinished pencils pertain to a running theme in the show: incompleteness. there are quilt blocks, but no quilts. bellows tops, but no finished bellows. A clock frame without a face or workings, and a set of workings without a frame. that which is partial is a reminder of process, which is something finished objects can’t help but conceal. And process in a larger sense, lest we forget, is what history is.
ostensibly mundane objects can illustrate mighty, ongoing matters. the show includes objects from throughout the world — Asia, Africa, europe, and the Americas — and objects that incorporate materials from those places. in the niftiest instance of this protoglobalization, a fan with scenes from Concord, circa 1875, was made in Japan.
informative without being pedantic, the show is an implicit reminder that history is a living thing, the present being an extension of the past (and preparation for the future). An explicit reminder is that students from a Concord Academy Us history course have written up accounts of various items in the show and they’re displayed as wall texts.
if “What makes History?” has a tutelary deity it’s Cummings e. davis, the museum’s founding collector. “Whatever belongs to the remote past has an unspeakable charm for me,” he said in1870. looking around the galleries, it’s easy to see why he felt that way. the show includes a davis account book and some related ephemera, such as a recipe for ginger snaps that was found among the book’s pages. What makes history? sometimes it can be making cookies.