Because of the internet, no one has authority over what you can see and how you see it. However, museums hold onto that authority very strongly. Museums hold their authority in various ways; first, they don’t let patrons touch anything. This preserves the thing as it was, keeping it in that time period. This is both a good and a bad thing. Not touching the artifacts and props helps people learn about history and how things used to be but, by letting people touch things, they understand it more and, create history in it. Every person who writes “Liz was here” on something has just created history and has made an otherwise unimportant moment, memorable. I’m still not sure which one I think is more valuable. While, as a history major, I want to teach history as it actually was but, I also see the importance of created history and a gaining a deeper understanding, both of which would come from touching things.

Going back to how museums have authority; one example we talked about in class really stood out to me. A museum got a lunch counter from the civil rights time period that was used for a sit in. When placed at normal level, the museum noticed that people didn’t think about the civil rights movement, they thought about lunch counters. The museum then placed it on a podium and then people saw the message that the museum was trying to get across. This is interesting to me because all that had to be done was change the angle in which people saw the bench and it changed their whole view.