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The New Town Square. Museums and Communities in Transition.

Robert R. Archibald

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Description for The New Town Square. Museums and Communities in Transition. Paperback. Explores a growing crisis of modern America: the dissolution of place that leads to a dangerous rupture of community. Series: American Association for State & Local History. Num Pages: 232 pages, Illustrations. BIC Classification: GM. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 227 x 167 x 15. Weight in Grams: 363.
In this lyrical volume Robert R. Archibald explores a growing crisis of modern America: the dissolution of place that leads to a dangerous rupture of community. Community—born historically within the collective space of the town square where citizens come together to share stories and make meaning of their common histories—is dissipating as Americans are increasingly isolated from that shared space and are being submerged into an individualistic consumer monoculture with disregard for the common good. This volume examines how public history museums and historians can help restore community by offering a source of identity for people and their places, becoming ... Read more

Product Details

Format

Paperback

Publication date

2004

Publisher

AltaMira Press,U.S. United States

Number of pages

232

Condition

New

Series

American Association for State & Local History

Number of Pages

232

Place of Publication

Lanham, MD, United States

ISBN

9780759102880

SKU

V9780759102880

Shipping Time

Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days

Ref

99-15

About Robert R. Archibald

Since 1988 Robert R. Archibald has been president and CEO of the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis, Missouri. An active member of many professional and community organizations and author of A Place to Remember: Using History to Build Community (AltaMira 1999), he writes and speaks on numerous topics from history and historical practice to community building and environmental responsibility. ... Read more

Reviews for The New Town Square. Museums and Communities in Transition.

Bob Archibald's book is beautifully and passionately written. His is a life profoundly rooted in place: the stark beauty of Michigan's upper peninsula, the evocative landscape of the southwest, the open skies of Montana, and the urban landscape of St. Louis. He discovers stories everywhere: in graveyards, old homes, open air markets, old bridges, an African-American hospital, the death mask ... Read moreof an infant, and an Alaskan train ride. Archibald believes that public history can help repair our connections with place and revitalize communities. In a dark time, his is a welcome voice.
Edward T. Linenthal, author of Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum and The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in Amer Bob Archibald has the ability to put into words the feelings, inclinations, fears, and joys about community that so many of us share but cannot express. In The New Town Square his examples of those expressions make me actually 'see' the issues from an entirely different perspective.
Terry Davis, president and CEO, AASLH This is an elegantly written book with a clear theme. American who have grown up in the suburbs may reject Archibald's characterization of their neighborhoods as identical and stifling places that lack a sense of community. However, Archibald raises important points about the evolving nature of American society and about the place of history amid rapid change, and readers will benefit from this thought-provoking volume.
History: Reviews Of New Books
In this compassionate masterpiece of reflection and clear writing, Bob Archibald offers thoughtful insights into the past, our sense of place and identification, the ways in which we think about our environment and about wilderness, as ways to deal well with the present and the future. His book is an inspiration, a call to recognize that there is more to civilization than individual consumption, and an invitation to join in rebuilding the values on which our lives are ultimately based, in order to live dignified lives worthy of the privileges we enjoy. It must be a source of inspiration to any thoughtful person.
Peter H. Raven, Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University, St. Louis, and director, Missouri Botanical Garden This is a good book, most of all, because it relates one man's varied involvements in his community and profession as object lessons for peers and career aspirants. For Archibald, museums and historical agencies are not places in which historians and curators are to sequester themselves—as was once accepted and expected—like monks in a monastery. Rather, they must be at the center of their communities, as members of a profession who both hold and tell the stories that articulate and sustain their fellow citizens' identity. It is an awesome responsibility, for which Archibald has been a most outspoken, ardent, and eloquent advocate. . . The concluding chapter, "Under Construction," ought to be required reading for every historical society and museum staff and board member in the country.
Oregon Historical Quarterly
In many ways, these essays constitute a call to arms for public historians. Archibald seeks to embolden his professional colleagues in the power and importance of what they do, and The New Town Square is a work likely to be of considerable interest and utility to cultural resource managers. For historic preservationists, museum curators, re-enactors, public programmers, park rangers, and interpreters, it offers a model for examining the impact of the environment on how communities came to define themselves. . . These essays will benefit anyone seeking to write about a favorite locale, or hoping to develop exhibitions or programs that convey the virtues of a particular site.
Crm: The Journal Of Heritage Stewardship
The New Town Square provides another timely reminder of the necessity of collaboration between community groups.
Museums Australia Magazine
The essays are nicely packaged and, when read individually, thought-provoking. The New Town Square provides the reader with insightful questions to consider, and encourages the contemplation of one's own place, and the rold of museums and historic preservation in community.
Muse
the book offers informative and entertaining vignettes that convey at once the author's personality and a sense of of the distinctiveness of the sites he has inhabited, turning the book itself into a crossroads of America, a new and exciting town square.
Indiana Magazine History, March 2008
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The New Town Square. Museums and Communities in Transition.

Robert R. Archibald

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