Editors’ Note: Amanda Moniz introduces a recent special issue of The Public Historian, which she guest-edited, exploring material culture as a methodology for the history of philanthropy.
What are your storytelling goals?, a thoughtful philanthropy professional asked not long ago. I’ve been asked versions of that question repeatedly since joining the staff of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History as the David M. Rubenstein Curator of Philanthropy. By way of answer, I would like to introduce HistPhil readers to a special issue of The Public Historian I recently guest-edited exploring material culture as a methodology for the history of philanthropy. The Public Historian is the journal of the National Council of Public History, and the special issue is geared to historians and museum professionals, with the hope that it will catalyze more research that will enrich public-facing museum work. I also hope that philanthropy practitioners will find the issue of interest and that it will help demystify the work of telling stories about the history of philanthropy through objects for public audiences.
First, some background. In 2015, the Smithsonian launched the Philanthropy Initiative at the National Museum of American History to collect and exhibit objects related to the history of American giving and to convene public conversations that bring historic perspectives to contemporary issues in philanthropy. The following year, the museum opened Giving in America, a long-term changing exhibition, and I joined the staff. One of the key tasks of my role is building the new Philanthropy collection, and at first the task seemed daunting in its openness.
As I explain in the introduction to the special issue, doing this work has presented me with a challenge. Philanthropy, unlike other museum collecting areas such as numismatics, ceramics and glass, or rail transportation, doesn’t have an obvious material base. (There are other new museum collecting areas, such as African American business, that likewise aren’t rooted in a particular type of material or object.) Nor has material culture as a methodology for examining the history of philanthropy gotten much scholarly attention. But objects are powerful, and museumgoers respond strongly to them. So, thinking carefully about what makes something a philanthropy object and how to use objects to effectively engage people in exploring relatively unfamiliar, complex histories seems to be an important charge.
Readers of HistPhil likely know that historians do our work guided by the 5 ‘C’s – the concepts that define historical thinking. We explore change over time. We look at the larger context – what else was happening at the time and place when the change occurred? We investigate causality – what factors were most important in leading to the change? We emphasize contingency – things turned out the way they did because of decisions and choices people made. And we insist on complexity – not everyone agreed with or pursued the change, not everyone benefitted or lost. Documents and oral narratives are central to historians’ work, and we ask questions such as who wrote a document, when, for whom, and for what purpose, as we analyze those primary sources. Material culture offers more sources – things – for helping make sense of how people have shaped and reshaped the world around them, and it layers on additional questions to the ones historians already ask.
Object analysis centers questions around the production, distribution, use, and afterlives of things.[1] Material culture scholars ask questions such as these: What was an object made from? Where did the materials come from? Who were the makers? Who used the object and how? What was the sensory experience of using the object? What sort of emotional experience did the user have with the object? Why did the object survive? Has its use or meaning changed? By now, HistPhil reader, you may have added another question: How does this approach contribute to our understanding of the history of philanthropy?
An object-based approach can broaden our understanding of the people involved in making philanthropy work. As we often say, objects speak with multiple voices. Exploring historical developments in philanthropy with close attention to material culture offers more perspectives, brings in additional voices, and suggests different questions. To help illuminate those possibilities, consider this mesh mosquito net, vibrant with an abstract pattern of reds and blues.
This net is an example of the type distributed by the nonprofit Soft Power Health in Kyabirwa, Uganda, as part of its malaria prevention efforts. The organization was established, with grassroots and foundation support, by an American doctor, Jessie Stone, in 2004 to promote malaria prevention and education in a region where malaria was prevalent but treatment was costly for families. Stone undertook a program to educate people about malaria and about the use of nets, to sell nets, and to visit homes to ensure nets are hung properly. Soft Power Health opted for that model because Stone learned that when nets are given away for free and without education, recipients often repurpose them for a range of uses around the home. Soft Power Health also learned that Ugandans washed or discarded dirty nets. Mud or dung huts and dirt roads are common in the rural area where the organization works, and the more common light-colored nets showed dirt easily. Washing the nets eliminates the insecticide that protects against malaria, thus rendering the nets inefficacious. As a result, the organization worked with a Danish manufacturer, Real Relief, to develop a colorful net made of polyethelene, a durable material, and to implant the insecticide in a way that releases it gradually. All those changes, responsive to the input of the local community, increase the efficacy and longevity of the net. A story of an American founder and funders, Ugandan partners and clients, and Danish businesspeople, it is also a story of Chinese laborers. Real Relief, a maker of supplies for major humanitarian organizations, manufactures its products in China. Here, a material culture approach attunes us to the global supply chains and laborers who make unsung contributions to making philanthropy work.
Hidden workers are behind another object in Giving in America, in this case, the silver communion plate funded by a bequest from Thomas Hancock, uncle of John Hancock, to his church in 1764. (As noted below, the piece by Sarah Weicksel in the special issue of The Public Historian delves deeply into the labor history behind silver objects.) Thomas Hancock was one of the wealthiest merchants in mid-eighteenth century Boston and when he died he bequeathed £100 to his church, the Brattle Street Church. The church chose to buy six communion plates, engraved with the words “The Gift of the Honble THOMAS HANCOCK ESQR TO THE CHURCH in Brattle Street Boston 1764.” The plate memorializes Hancock, and the name of the master silversmith, John Coburn, whose shop made the plate, is also recorded. But many more people were involved in the work that led to Hancock’s benefaction. The records do not reveal where the silver came from, but it may have been mined in South or Central America, where much of the labor was performed by Indigenous women. In the silversmiths’ shops, enslaved or free African American smiths might have been at work, alongside white workers. As to the sources of the fortune that enabled Hancock to make his bequest, he traded in enslaved people, along with logwood, to the Caribbean and Bay of Honduras and supplied the military during the Seven Years’ War, in additional to selling books and trading in other goods. Attending closely to the material used in creating this philanthropic gift and the wealth that underlay it reminds us of the extensive economic connections of colonial America and of the prevalence of unfree labor. It also encourages us to think about the sensory and spiritual experiences of churchgoers as they took communion. How, in other words, did Hancock’s philanthropy make beneficiaries of his largess?
Now that the communion plate and the mosquito net are museum objects, their stories also include museum professionals and museumgoers and their interactions with them. To turn to the plate first, the one in the NMAH collection is one of five known to be in museum collections (with the location of the sixth unknown). The other four are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (two); and the Worcester Art Museum. The art museums explore the plates in terms of the history of colonial silversmithing. (Three of the plates were made in the shop of John Coburn and the other three in Samuel Minott’s shop.) By contrast, we at NMAH, featuring the object in an exhibit focused on giving, interpret it in the context of colonial elites’ practice and performance of philanthropy. For their parts, audiences likewise bring their experiences and interests to the objects they encounter, and museumgoers respond powerfully to things. They notice particular objects for particular reasons and they often comment or share stories amongst themselves about ideas and experiences meaningful to them sparked by what they are seeing. An audience-centered approach means not just telling but also hearing stories. Meanwhile, we have to do this while being attuned to the way space and environmental conditions in the museum affect audience engagement.
The articles in the special issue of The Public Historian point to the range of stories that objects allow us to hear, to tell, and to feel. Jessica Nelson examines buildings, bells, and more to understand how charity shaped sights and sounds in colonial Oaxaca. Hilary Green explains the teaching collection of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographs she developed to help students understand African American educational philanthropy, while Georgina Brewis illuminates her work building and teaching with a collection of objects from twentieth-century British voluntary associations, such as a paper-mâché collecting box in the shape of a home from the well-known British child welfare charity, Dr. Barnardo’s. Sparked by decorative arts objects in the National Museum of American History’s collection, Sarah Weicksel probes the labor and philanthropic histories in nineteenth-century Nevada mining towns behind the beautiful goods. Meanwhile, Cheryl Ellenwood and Raymond Foxworth consider the Indigenous Data Sovereignty Movement, with a focus on the multifaceted philanthropy histories entwined with the return of the Wetxuuwíitin Collection from the Ohio Historical Society to the Nez Perce Tribe.
To elucidate the content of the special issue a little more, let me elaborate a bit on one of the articles. In “Records of Relinquishment: An Orphan Asylum and the Sacred Objects of Early American Philanthropy,” Philippa (Pippa) Koch meditates on the scraps of paper by which women relinquished their children to a nineteenth-century Washington, DC, orphanage, along with other records, to reflect on the experiences of mothers, children, and philanthropy managers at the institution. At first blush, these fragments might not seem to be objects. But as Koch explains, she found herself troubled as she examined one after another of the relics of the separation of mothers and children. Her emotional response redirected Koch’s research and led her to consider the scraps as “points of contact” between distinct caregiving practices.
To circle back to the question about my storytelling goals: My aim is to use the visual and emotional power of objects to help visitors connect their familiar experiences to the national narrative or to discover unfamiliar histories or different perspectives. The authors in the special issue show the promise of using an object-based approach to the history of giving to connect with those histories. I hope readers of HistPhil will delve into the compelling work of my colleagues.
-Amanda Moniz
Amanda Moniz is the David M. Rubenstein Curator of Philanthropy at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Her book, From Empire to Humanity: The American Revolution and the Origins of Humanitarianism (Oxford University Press, 2016), was awarded ARNOVA’S inaugural Peter Dobkin Hall History of Philanthropy Book Prize. Her work involves curating a long-term exhibit, Giving in America, and building the Smithsonian’s collection of objects telling stories about the diverse cultures and practices of Americans’ experiences with philanthropy. In addition, she is working on a biography of Isabella Graham, the Scottish immigrant widow who transformed philanthropy in early-national New York City.
[1] I am grateful to Sarah Weicksel for teaching me so much about the methodology of material culture scholarship.
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