106. Last Call on 'The Streets of Old Milwaukee'
Welcome to Museum Archipelago in Your Inbox, which does exactly what it says on the tin. Museum Archipelago, your audio guide to the rocky landscape of museums, is hosted by me, Ian Elsner.
I remember visiting – and loving – The Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) as a child. Opened in 1965, it’s an immersive space with cobblestone streets and perfect lighting that evokes a fall evening in turn-of-the-20th-century Milwaukee. The visitor experience isn’t peering into a diorama, it’s moving through a diorama, complete with lifelike human figures.
And I’m not the only one with fond memories. When the museum announced that the exhibit would not move over to the planned new museum down the street, the public reacted negatively. Dr. Ellen Censky, president and CEO of the MPM, describes the reasons why the museum can’t – and most interestingly shouldn’t – move The Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit. It’s a story involving cherished memories, the distinction between collections and exhibits which isn’t always at the top of visitors’ minds, and public trust.
In this episode, we explore why the Milwaukee Public Museum decided to move (it’s the fourth relocation in its history) and Milwaukee Revealed, the planned new immersive gallery that will be the spiritual successor to The Streets of Old Milwaukee, which will cover a much larger swath of the city’s history. Plus, we get into the meta question of whether museums are outside of the history they are tasked with preserving.
Image: Bartender in Streets of Old Milwaukee at Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Flickr user JeffChristiansen
Gallery Continues 🎒
I interviewed Dr. Ellen Censky on one of the first episodes of Museum Archipelago back in 2015. She was Academic Dean of the MPM at the time, and she highlighted the attention to detail across the museum's exhibits, like the snake button on Bison Hunt on Horseback or The Streets of Old Milwaukee as one of the reasons why the museum punches above its weight.
Archipelago at the Movies🍿 Toy Story 2 (1999)
After spending the first movie accepting the possibility that he might have to share his kid's love, Woody discovers he is a valuable collectible from a once-popular TV show and faces the possibility of being of being preserved forever in a museum.
The dramatic tension of the movie only works if the decision to go to the Konishi Toy Museum feels like a believable option — an eternity of “watching kids from behind glass and never be loved again” or a few years of being played with before inevitably being discarded.
Join Joe Murphy, host of the excellent Uncultured Universe Podcast, and me as we dive deep into the existential museum themes of this flawless film.
