2023 Western History Association panel, “Reimagining Imagined Wests at the Autry: Engaging Popular Narratives in a Museum Exhibition”

Comments by Flannery Burke, Ph.D.

When we first sat down as a group to work on the exhibit Imagined Wests at the Autry Museum of the American West – Josh Garret-Davis, Martha Sandweiss, Virginia Scharff, Emily Lutenski, Anthony Macías, and Nancy Marie Mithlo and I, Nancy announced: “We are going to fail.”

This really took the pressure off. Especially for Josh, I think.

Nancy had just conducted a study with a cognitive scientist with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The study found that museum-goers’ narratives regarding Native peoples did not change as a result of museum exhibitions. In fact, whatever stories museums goers’ entered with were reinforced by their experience, regardless of the content of the wall text. The result, for most non-Native audiences was a reinforcement of stereotypes about Native people. Nancy and her collaborator ended their article about the research with the conclusion that educators should forestall conclusion making and embrace uncertainty.

So that was our goal: forestall conclusion making and embrace uncertainty.

Did we fail?

You all, of course, should go see the gallery if you have not yet done so and decide for yourselves. But I’d like to present three aspects of the gallery that I think succeed in these goals of forestalling conclusion making and embracing uncertainty.

#1: The psychedelic Chucky Cheese environment. Early in our planning, Gingy advocated for an immersive experience, something like Meow Wolf, she said. At that point, Meow Wolf had not expanded to nearly every corner of the West and she was referring specifically to the House of Eternal Return, the first permanent installation of the Meow Wolf art collective in Santa Fe. Part amusement park, part escape room, and part art project – the House of Eternal Return includes the glowing ribs of a mastodon that can be played like a xylophone, a washing machine through which one enters a parallel universe, and multiple places where visitors can touch objects and produce lights and sounds.

Imagined Wests has this too: the Cabinet of Wonders that invites visitors to twirl the squares of western figures, open secret compartments to learn about Buffalo Bill, and tour the world alongside the cultural products of the American West. An Easter egg door bell (there’s no text or explanation of the bell) that when rung casts a light on the visitor and plays the iconic whistle from the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The multiple, painstakingly created miniatures that when examined closely may show the dangers of uranium mining or the difficulty of getting water in Monument Valley. And, a holdover from the gallery’s previous form: a green screen on which visitors can see themselves cast into western landscapes – complete with a soundtrack. In part because visitors just don’t know what’s around each corner and because children, the museum’s most frequent visitors, adore the opportunities to touch and ring and play -- expecting uncertainty is pretty much inescapable.

#2 The makers of the psychedelic Chucky Cheese environment. Repeatedly, throughout the gallery, making is highlighted. The writing and reading corner includes the sound of a typewriter, a shelf of books, easily replenished with a variety of titles, a cozy chair in which to read them, and an exhibit of a writer’s desk. I think the most clever addition is a video of a typewriter producing those quotations for which Josh and the gallery designers did not have room on the walls. In this way, some of those ideas too painful to cut made their way into the gallery after all.

Not surprisingly, we all had questions about the creation of the Cabinet of Wonders and not surprisingly, the artist who constructed it, Mack Maker, who also creates structures at Burning Man, has embraced the name “Maker” in his professional name. The pattern of makers and making is repeated later in which a sewing table is surrounded by clothing created by Hollywood costume designers. A third case, which tells the story of Ramona, includes a Native-made basket, a multilayered commentary on Native women as “makers” of popular culture but also Native women as participants in a tourist and collectors’ economy. The pattern forestalls conclusion making because visitors are, in some ways, cast into the role of makers themselves (That’s part of the lure of touching, listening, and playing with the exhibits) and so visitors get to make their own stories and are reminded of the makers who made stories in the past. Which leads me to:

#3 Decolonization with a smile. The previous iteration of the Imagined West gallery told a settler colonial story – often twice – as it emphasized to visitors that white western settlement happened and then that white western settlement was fictionalized – usually on a screen. Early in my career, I thought that telling students that both of these things were happening at the same time would blow their minds and inspire challenges to frontier narratives. But the new Autry approach is a more effective one. Rather than tell the story, or tell the story in reverse (Your frontier, my front yard), the gallery allows visitors to begin anywhere – with Hopi storytelling dolls or gay rodeos or Monument Valley or the story of Quanah Parker or the question of why presidents wear cowboy hats or the significance of pick-up trucks in western life. The exhibition forestalls the narrative conclusions of settler colonialism and the frontier by beginning in the West, with what I understand is Steve’s favorite new phrase: the view from here.

Of course, not everyone is happy with such an approach. The exhibition includes a screenshot of a negative review of the Autry on Instagram from a disgruntled visitor. It reads: “Have you become disconnected from your original western historic preservation? Not sure how some of your recent posts meet that historic preservation criteria. Do you have a mission statement? Just curious. Passive aggressive shrugging emoji.” It is difficult, of course, to peer into another mind, but I think this just might be an example of someone resisting the gallery’s message to forestall conclusion making. It’s a suggestion of some progress toward the Autry’s mission, which is included alongside the negative review: “The Autry brings together the stories of all peoples of the American West, connecting the past to the present to inspire our shared future.”

We haven’t failed yet.
 
 

Mithlo NM, Sherman A. (2020) Perspective-Taking Can Lead to Increased Bias: A Call for ‘Less Certain’ Positions in American Indian Contexts. Curator: The Museum Journal 63(3):353-369. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cura.12373