and joining us now on c span is

anthea hartig. she is the president of the organizing session of american historians, which is what? well, since 1907, the age has been in service as a nonprofit and association of historians, mostly in the early days and teaching at universities. but now our membership spans museum curators, high school history teachers, and, of course, including junior college and for year and beyond, colleges. and really kind of coming together in a community of historians, as you can see behind us, of course, the most of the university presses who come and honor scholars work by bringing their books forth. but the organization headquartered in bloomington, indiana, is at the university of indiana. there has been serving and continuing to refine its mission to really understand what it means to be in service to the field. how we help educators, how we help policymakers understand the

past's relevance to our contemporary lives, and to the future. how is it different than the american historical association? mm. h i, i jokingly call them kind of grandma and grandpa, you know, slightly different, you know, older institution. there's age is a little older ages scope includes all historians in the united states working on the whole range of global issues, including u.s. history and the age. really focuses on historians all over the world, but who specialize in u.s. history. so it's kind of a different kind of lens through which to see the profession. can you be a member of both nations? yeah, i am. yeah. and what is your background? what is your study? field of study? i came up through ucla's history department as an undergraduate and then went to university of california, riverside, as well as william and mary for my graduate studies. and i fell in love very quickly with the way in which we shaped

the land, which we shape objects, which with what we leave, material, that kind of material culture of our lives. and so i've been very fortunate to work as a public servant for two cities. i've served on state commissions. i've mostly worked in the nonprofit world, and i was running the california historical society in san francisco when the smithsonian came calling, which is a very hard call not to take. so i was honored to be in that candidate pool, to be the first woman director of the national museum of american history. and so that really has continued. my my kind of conjoined love of making history accessible and meaningful and relevant in our lives. and like this conference that i as you're as president, you help sculpt the main themes of the conference and your year ends, your service year ends as president with the conference. so this technically is the conference, that program

committee and local arrangements committee that i helped create have shaped. and the overarching theme is how are we in service to communities? how do we help communities both make themselves feel like they have agency in this world, that they are part of the great span of history? and not that history is something that's fossilized or dry or didn't happen to them or didn't happen to their communities. so i get to do that both on a national scale. at the nation's flagship history museum right there on the national mall. and then as my service to the age, really helping, i think, other historians throughout the nation and the world think about their roles in their communities. so why should we know history? why is it important? what does it bring to our present? sure. well, great question for me. history is both a set of tools, which i think should be as democratic or used as possible as a toolkit of history, if you will.

i joke that we it's not neuroscience. we don't operate on brains, but it you know, we do like to change minds, right, by understanding and interpreting the complexities of that past that we've all inherited. history for me also kind of unlocked some pretty great mysteries of love, of life, of of meaning, of why we do things and studying the past, i think is can be a very active and very meaningful way in which we engage our present selves, which we understand our families, in which we understand our land and our communities and especially ourselves as political leaders and lowercase p. both kind of actors in this kind of great stage called life and i also find it utterly fascinating and endlessly fascinating. it would be better to understand history as very much something that is alive that that truly

can inform, you know, the adage that history repeats itself. history's been very busy lately. it's been watching you. it's been judging you. and history doesn't do anything. historians using the tools of research and scholarship and analysis and interpretation. historians do things right, but history has been in the news quite a bit and employed right in different ways, rhetorically, in particular. so i find it just endlessly fascinating the way in which history can be both a tool of empowerment, a tool of oppression, a tool of repression and oppression, but also, i think, a pathway for us all to understand the fullness of where we are and where we've come from. and i don't necessarily think

it's humanly possible physically. the laws of physics will not dictate that history can repeat itself. but i do sometimes like to think of it as kind of folding in on itself, like an origami of time where you realize that maybe the edges are touching, right? that there's a that there's a a parallel kind of fold that that in knowing one of the folds right. helps you understand the opposite. one. so as director of the american history museum, how much do you how much time do you spend with scholastic historians? i am incredibly fortunate to have dozens of historians on staff kind of joined with me at the national museum of american history, which is a long tradition of bringing in scholars in certain fields. we just ran into one who specialized in the history of food and the history of brewing

and whether they are specializing in the history of transportation history of modern science, the history of music, the history of popular culture, the history of political movements. it is an incredible kind of group of scholars who choose then to work at the smithsonian and in washington, but who choose to work in ways that use material culture, that use the millions of objects that we hold in stewardship for the american people. in our collection to really help tell those stories and enliven the past in ways that truly archival material, which we also have miles of linear feet of archival material, kind of joining, if you will, our federal partners at the national archives and the library of congress. but if you then infuse that with both oral history as an oral traditions, the written word, printed word, and the objects that we have created and that

we've handed down in time, i think you have an incredibly opportunity to tell a very dense, meaningful stories, but then to figure out how to interpret those not in beautiful books that are surrounding us here in the exhibit hall, but in. 75 words, you know, on an exhibit text. so there's a i love that also that kind of that art of that. right. of how that you distill. let's say, 18 pages of historiographical material, 250 objects that relate to what you want to tell. how do you bring that, you know, into an accessible, meaningful, hopefully multilingual, full set of words that help people understand the relationship that they might have with that object? so that's an incredible challenge, that kind of curatorial process i find really fascinating and i'm so fortunate to have such great colleagues and every so often and more

frequently now, we see an article about college jazz cutting their humanities departments or history under fire. why, in this age of information should we be studying history or even going to college? right. so that that kind of ebb and flow, i think especially of of academic history departments in the history wars of the nineties that probably both of us remember. i, i, i see in a couple of ways. so the first one is that the contestation over memory of how we remember, what we remember, how we are taught, what is taught is as old as the profession itself, right? which let's say you can take it back to the greeks, but let's say from the 1880s onward, when historians started going to graduate school, self-identify fying as historians, there's always been that that that kind of tension between what is

shared, what is taught, how it's perceived. so that's an old art that the newer kind of i think and more troubling art right now is that it's the division, the devaluation. i'm thinking vanities of how we learn about each other throughout time and the humanities as a touchstone, i think has sustained our civilizations since the earliest ones in slightly different forms. and i'm not taking a totally kind of eurocentric perspective of this, but history and memory and that which we remember, that which which we passed down to generation to generation is one of the sustaining through lines of our shared humanity. and i think disruptions in that kind of dictatorial. you know, the gag orders that are in place right now, the laws that are in place limit them access to information in an age

to your point where information is all around us, where if we don't have the tools of critical reading and critical thinking, how then can we or our our our children, our grandchildren, then kind of ascertain truth from fiction, from a real photograph, from a completely created one? if we're not kind of training ourselves. and i, you know, to, you know, with the ability to think critically and ascertain critically, i think we're losing. so much of what what makes the human experience. secretary lonnie bunch, you know for whom i work, says it so well when he says that to to find and locate and be unafraid of the full is history is is then when we know you know the most we can about ourselves and truncating that and stopping that or shaping that. i think you know, is a form of

censorship that the united states in particular has wrestled with for from its inception. but it is a particularly grist. grist where the grist mill of history, my dear, when it comes to the american history museum, which you run. has technology impacted how you display things? oh, absolutely. and some really wonderful ways, actually. so if you come into any of our newer exhibits and you are blind or low vision, we have on the floor your cane would tap to just elegant, maybe ten inch long, just slightly raised stainless steel plates and they're dirt tap plates or tap points. so you then you would know that there's something there that you can either touch or feel. and so, like a full cast bronze cast of dorothy's ruby slippers, every sequence for you to to

feel. and then you'd also know that there would be a qr code, that your phone would then pick up and then you would be if you pass, if you have earphones in, or if you wanted to listen to it, that you then would hear what the label says, right? that's technology that certainly we may have had a decade ago or two decades ago, but that wasn't employed as readily or as thoughtfully without the technology we have today. and so that's just one example of how technology can make things so accessible. what's the downside of technology. today? you know, people have been arguing about technology. you know, probably since the first time machine. i mean, these are long arguments over what technological advances, what innovation, what invention does to both the arts, the crafts, people's livelihoods so that you can see it in a long

arc. artificial intelligence is not a new thing. the the capacity of that can be tricky or any of the chat boxes that i think is like one core element that has a lot of people uneasy when you can ask it to write a paragraph about your bio or my bio, and it's, it's not how fed you because we have the history of computing in the collection. those curators in particular are fascinating to talk to because they see it in this long, kind of complicated dance of our uneasiness with technology. they go back to what something i mentioned just a bit ago in terms of helping people ascertain and have knowledge of what's generated through, especially advanced a.i. so it i think it kind of comes back to some of the same challenges you could read something today and

you think, oh, that's about that's about advanced a.i. taking over our writing. and you realize, no, it was about a typewriter or it was about some other technological moment where that paradigm and that kind of koonin paradigm was shifting, and there was inordinate fear around that. and i think one of the museums roles is to help people with some of those big changes. there have been huge changes in american life in our lifetimes or in the past 250 years. and so we're thinking about those revolutions as we careen towards 2026, which will be the 250th anniversary of the signing of the declaration of independence. so we're asking ourselves, what's revolutionary? i mean, truly drafting that document was revolutionary. we have a lot of material from the revolutionary war in the early republic in our collection, some of our oldest

material, and surprisingly. but we also are asking ourselves, well, what what truths are self-evident? how are we created equal or not? what moments in time have been revolutionary? the last 250 years? and what objects are also revolutionary? thomas jefferson's writing desk on which he drafted the declaration. i think we can call that a revolutionary object. the gunboat. philadelphia, from 1776, the first commissioned land, three boats in what was that would become the us navy, but wasn't yet when she was sunk in the battle of lake champlain in october of 1776 and then raised up and brought to the museum in the sixties as we were building that massive 800,000 square foot building. clearly a revolution, very object. but you know what else is, you know, what are the other 248? so we're we're embarking on a really exciting journey to think

about the semicolons centennial in ways that are both kind of predictable that you'd want to come see the washington the summer of 2026 but also ways that get you thinking about what a what quiet revolutions are what major revolutions are. one of my curators in home and community life division brought forth the first commercially produced crackpot as a revolution or object just for the first time, you can put that on in the morning and come back 8 hours later and actually have dinner and not tend to it all day, you know? so for working women, was that a revolutionary object? i'm sure for many. i asked my mom, she's like, oh, yeah, that was revolutionary. you know? so we find those entry points into the past where people both kind of identify with an object. and because we have such a rich collection, there are so many, i think, to choose from. and then we take them.

we can really take them on a journey with us, and then they can also help us with their reactions and their contribution shows to our understanding. to really create that richness and that fullness of our understanding. and that's not it's not monochromatic, it's not mono linear, but it's it's rich and dynamic and multiple, varied and colorful and and complicated. anthea hartig how do you avoid politicizing history? arkin hmm. great question, sir. so the smithsonian is avowedly and i'm very consciously nonpartisan, but lonnie, secretary bunch, all of us, i think, believe that, of course, as human beings and in this country, with our freedoms, our constitutional freedoms, we are political, are our very act, our bodies can be political, our actions can be political. so it's less about worrying

about being political as politicize sized. it's it's less about being partizan as being a kind of inclusive of a huge, a significant range of political thought, which is is, is, i think, both challenging but also made very. very doable by the breadth of our collection because if we go and collect the with every we collect every presidential election and we joke that like our careers would be the only ones going like in 2020, before i had to pull them from the field because they were in the field when covid hit, they joked that it would be the reporters c-span probably and the smithsonian curators who would be at a sanders rally and a trump rally in the same day. so part of it is that the collection and the interpretive interpretation of the collection in that way and then part of it

too is being very thoughtful and being unafraid to be contextual, but also being very thoughtful about being kind of overtly positioned in a in a way that that will seem like an overtly progressive interpretation of the past or an overtly conservative. you know, there is a there's a there's always the risk from both sides that the political spectrum that one will see in the other your actions, your interpretations, your words on a label, your choice of an object, your op ed, you know, your educational material as is leaning too far to one side or the other. and one of, i think my biggest roles and in a way biggest challenge is to take the scholarship of fantastic historians who continue to do really meaningful work. we're pushing the boundaries of both what the past is and what

our traditional notions, our traditional definitions of self and of gender and of body politic and our own bodies. to then put that into a museum context in which this year over 3 million people will see in the building, and 12 million people were access online. so it's a i think that there are i think we handle that in answer to your question with that kind of thinking and thoughtfulness. but also compassion and and really, i think leaning into the the wealth of scholarship and the wealth of knowledge and not running away from it, but also kind of keeping keeping in mind that our audience will need some not all summer, i'm sure. far smarter than i am, but they'll need us to be that bridge. bridge between cutting edge

scholarship. what they think american history is, or should be or has been, and then what they can learn by a presentation of of both fact and knowledge and object and artifact. and to your point about technology, by using technology, especially visual technol, agi, to be able to condense like years of entertainment history or years of, of political history through your media and right through the visual medium of film and digital. now, of course, digitized. so i love that. i love the question because it is a constant. if we don't if we fail to ask it, then we won't be doing our jobs. well. right. if we fail to realize that we're in this moment, which is dense and complicated and contested. and if people can see us as a as a nonpartisan place to come in and to learn and maybe to sit

next to someone who you've never met before, you're standing and looking at an object in a case or you're involved in a on site educational activity and think together about it because issues facing the nation or just get to know each other and be in a that kind of a neutral, inviting civic space. speaking of civics, what should high school students know about our nation? much as they can. coming out of coming out of high school, which what should be should there be a national standard? well, so the smithsonian educators around the country, the department of education, all worked on a new roadmap called educating for american democracy. it was finished just as the pandemic hit. we had big rollout plans and

2020 was not just it was going to be the year of the woman for the centennial of suffrage. it was going to be the year when this brand new civics and history and social studies curricula was released. it was released, but, of course, the pandemic interrupted so much painfully of our lives. but it's still a remarkable and remarkable resource that we're encouraging, along with the national council of social studies. i mean, all of the big kind of educational groups in the nation are encouraging teachers, districts, states to both you know, learn about, but also employ. it was very carefully and thoughtfully done and it opens up venues. to your point about what should they come out of high school learning that makes learning of civics, learning of history a learning of the past exciting and dynamic and relevant and, you know, a little bit less like

your grandfather's civics in a way. but still very mindful of the fact that educated populace is essential for a democracy's future. and so if they had emerged from high school with the tools of understanding of their own and their own power, right, what their vote will mean, they'll get to vote, most of them, if they're 18. right. for the first time when they graduate. and if they can feel like they are informed about what that awesome. right to franchise and people fought so hard for for so many years. i think that would be a success. what's it called again? educating for american democracy. and is it available on your website? it is along with a whole host of other educational material and curricula at american history. that aside, that edu, you're an edu and not a gov or an edu. why is that? because the vast majority of our

work as the scientists and as curators is considered to be scholarly. what's the most important exhibit? what's the most popular exhibit at american history? right now? oh, it's tough. we opened about 18 months ago. we opened entertainment nation, national spectator, which is the culmination of about ten, 15 years of work around our popular culture collections. so the intersection of music, sports, broadway, film and television. so when you walk in and you have ruby slippers, dizzy gillespie is trumpet, r2-d2 and c-3po and the original kermit the frog. there's some stiff competition, but what i love about that exhibit, and it probably is the most popular right now is its yes about popular culture from. about 1842 to the present, but it's more about how we've used entertainment, sports, music,

etc. popular forms as national forums to come together about who we are, who we are as a nation. who's included? who's excluded? what did we produce? you know, what do we include? what do we exclude? and it i think it's rightfully one of the most popular, perennially, although the star-spangled banner, the presidents and the first ladies, the first lady's gowns and china and the most recently, of course, masks, because with dr. biden's inaugural outfits, because there was no gown, she had a daytime ensemble and an evening ensemble. both of the designers, both women designers, created masks to go with it. so for the first time since edith taft's dress was given to the smithsonian, we collected masks. do you have all the first lady's gowns? we do. since.

since taft. but we do something from each first lady starting, of course, with martha washington. they're not all in display because we don't have the room, but they are in the collection. how many things are on display in the building on the mall in washington, and how many things are not on display? excellent question. and it's it's a slightly tricky one to answer. the general symptom rule is, of the two plus million objects we exhibit, roughly 3 to 4%. so what's essential about that is a radical digitization effort, which for undertaking now we to get as many of those objects not all. and you wouldn't want all of them online, but you want a big bulk of them. so we're working to get at least about. 1000000 to 2000005 objects online and also to make sure that so those are the most accessible we can't get. those can go all around the

world, but also to make sure that scholars and researchers know that what we have and and that we we have a number of traveling exhibitions right now that some very small they could go on a main street and some that need a you know, 3500 square foot space in a environmentally controlled museum. so i love the way in which we make sure that our our work and our scholarship is disseminated as broadly as possible. anthea hartig do you think that 3 to 4% is the right amount to display, or would you like to see that ten, 20, 30%? oh, you know, that's a great question. i i do think that there's. it, but i think i'm an answer in two ways. but i just and i'll say both. i think that sometimes it's actually not the quantity, but the quality of the object that can speak to us. if there's if it is unique and there is one the top hat that

president lincoln was wearing when he was assassinated, you don't need much. i mean, we have an amazing lincoln collections and some of them are on display with the top hat. but do you know do is do you need that kind of much more than that to telegraph that story or in the case of objects that you can see? an amazing chronology and a change over time where we have all the patent models from the patent office. those are astounding. and i would love to see more of those on display because you can kind of instantly see how inventors that were thinking about different elements of of technological need and prowess and inventiveness. so i think i would like to see more. i love those. i'd like to unlock the collection mostly through our digital means, because what we found it doing. so let's say we put and we work with communities and we crowdsource translation of our

chinese currency and our numismatics collection. what we learn by asking people like will you help us translate this part of our collection, which is an associate, is the national name is native collection. is that then started? yes. volunteering their time to do that but to then asking for more like well what else do you have? you know, that could what else is in the collection that needs our help or once you unlock some of the digital facsimiles of those glasses, then you want, well, what else do you have? an optical history, right? so sometimes they i think they really do kind of play so well together of getting people interested in the objects and in the archival material, bringing them and letting them deeper. and research also then helps us decide how we privilege our own work, our own digital efforts, our own exhibit efforts, our. so how does your position at the

smithsonian and president of h come together? how they come together? and so i'm the second person to be the president of o h who is not allied a generally a full professor at a university and the only other one was also a smithsonian employee. and i think it will i hope it has it aligned. well, i hope that both the smithsonian and the h feel i have served them well. my my being nominated. you're nominated as vice president, president elect. president, you. it's an ascension was approved by the secretary. there has to be any of our service as especially as museum directors. really anyone. the smithsonian service to another nonprofit is is carefully reviewed for kind of kinship. right. does it make sense for me to do this in my official capacity?

and so that was approved. and it's been a remarkable couple of years. and i think that i hope that my staff and my colleagues and my board and the secretary are proud of that. of that kind of joint service. it shows to, i think, that the smithsonian and many of our my fellow directors are very involved in nonprofits, whether it be in the sciences or the arts and i think it adds so much right to the richness of both our scholarly capacities, but then really our work on behalf of the american people. anthea hartig is president of the organization of american historians. she's also director of the smithsonian's national museum of american history, the first woman to be so and the first woman to do so since 2019. we appreciate your spending a

little time with us. thank