Telling it slant: Historic house museums and the re-creation of the past

This dissertation addresses the history and the methods of re-creating historical milieus in house museums. It investigates the cultural politics of historic preservation, the traditions of museum display, and the desire to represent the past in three-dimensional form through the exhibition of intimate domestic life associated with significant historical figures or periods. I argue that house museums garner their authenticity by being museums that depend upon both history and its reception to construct a convincing representation of past life.; Two historical perspectives of the display of historic interiors are analyzed: the cultural history of sites dedicated to the representation of significant national figures and traditions, and the history of the museum and its conventions.; The first path analyzes the formation and the motivations of the historic preservation movement, and the values its proponents have attributed to the restoration of historic houses.; The second path analyzes the methods and conventions formed by and in the institution of the museum to represent past life.; The invented tradition of re-created historic interiors in house museums reinforces a becalmed, genteel tradition that melds ideology, aesthetics, and scientific method to establish a context predicated upon a belief in the resurrection of an “actual” past.; I explore the dual histories of re-created historic interiors with respect to their underlying concepts. I analyze how current curatorial practices in house museums meld formal standards, scientific techniques, nineteenth-century historical perspectives, memory, imagination, and intimate associations that exceed the framework of conventional explanation.; I conclude by calling for a more self-reflexive approach to history in house museums that pays more attention to the event of reception and the importance of the viewer as an active agent in the construction of the intimate past.