From the second week to the first day of the fourth week, I have worked on making timeline and writing essays of the William-Brown house, the building of Salem Museum itself. When I was asked to work on this, I was wondering why I should do this, because it is so obvious that there should be some records or charts already had done before. Also, everyone can read some explanations on the website. Unfortunately, I heard from one of docents that prior executive director had been working on it, but Fran said she had no idea with any left data or organized records. Well, I would prefer to work on excel or visual thing that I can see the outcome directly. But It was still exciting to read through all the resources, not only articles but old ads, censure records and other things. It was thrilling when I could see the whole picture after all the separated puzzles came up together.
As the history of an “architecture” is intertwined with literally EVERYTHING, it was a demanding process. Stories of people who lived in there, who owned it, and who tried to preserve it are all linked in together. This historical local building conceives local stories. The spontaneous contribution from a society(SHS) and citizens to preserve this historical site was surprising. It was a huge project that had taken more than 20 years to make a plan out, plea against the rejection from City Council, and gathering donation for moving the building. Looking through whole phases and efforts how could the building move and be preserved, it was like getting on a time machine.
To be honest, reading and gathering new information, and organizing it in chronical order, those are not that hard process compare to writing an essay for signs. Depend on what kind of vocabs I use or which community I (subconsciously) support, the story can totally change and even one innocent individual can be shown as a villain. Sustaining objectiveness is the most demanding thing. And also, selecting what is the “important” or “necessary” thing to show to visitors is obscure. What kind of story could be less important than others?
I wish I could see the exhibition before I leave but it’s sad that I could not! I hope that my effort, time and labour would not be useless for the future exhibition. And I’m learning how to balance my effort to do works persistently. I found out that I easily lose interests if I don’t see any outcome or result soon. Haha.