The History Channeler: David Kahn (San Diego: The San Diego Union Tribune)
San Diego has one type of museum that neither San Francisco or Los Angeles does, and David Kahn is proud to share this point with you. He’s talking about the San Diego History Center, which he oversees in his role as director of the San Diego Historical Society.
“People really care about the heritage of this city,” says Kahn. “I’ve really been impressed by this. There really is nothing comparable to this center in San Francisco or Los Angeles.”
To be fair, there are plans afoot for a history museum in San Francisco. But of course, San Diego has had one since 1929, when the Serra Museum opened a year after George Marston and some other notables founded the San Diego Historical Society. Balboa Park became home in the early 1980s,
Kahn’s arrival in August 2008 was noteworthy, since he is the first museum professional to hold the post in years. Arguably the last person to fit that description was Ann Bethel, who came to town in 1995 from the Ronald Reagan Library and Museum and stayed until 1997. From then on, it was directors or acting directors who were trying to improve the financial picture more than enhance its programming.
David Watson, a local attorney who led the historical society from 2005 to 2007, stabilized the institution, making it possible to recruit someone like Kahn for the post. Though there is no endowment to speak of, the museum is in the black this year, with a $1.8 million annual budget that includes $156,000 in city arts funding.
But in terms of what the public sees, the essential situation Kahn confronted when he came to town was a museum without a schedule of exhibitions or a blueprint for how to contemporize the display of its collections.
Now, a bit of optimism may be in order about its programming. One reason: his ability to bring a show here that was curated by the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. The excellent “Faces of the Frontier: Photographic Portraits From the American West, 1845-1924” is currently on view through June 6.
It’s the kind of show that fits his larger vision of what history museums should be doing: bringing the past to life, while also giving it a populist appeal. “Faces of the Frontier” is a visual panorama of iconic figures in American history: George Custer, Calamity Jane, Samuel Clemens, John Muir and dozens of others, some still well known and all vital to the history of the Western frontier.
“It’s a miracle that this show is happening,” he says.
This is because the exhibition space doesn’t have an up-to-date climate control system. But Kahn was determined to make bring this show here and had a temporary one installed. The exhibition’s organizers were persuaded at that point to send it here.
On this front, there is additional good news, too: The city will install a climate control system suitable for both exhibition and archival materials in the spring, as part of some general improvements on the Casa de Balboa, which houses the historical society.
In a general sense, Kahn has devoted his career to making history museums and historical societies appealing to a wide audience, heading up the Brooklyn Historical Society (1982-1996), the Connecticut Historical Society (1996-2006) and the Louisiana State Museum (2006-2008). His academic studies as a budding art historian were in the Italian Baroque; he completed an M.A. in the field at Columbia University and had begun work toward a Ph.D. in that area at Harvard. But a second interest in American architecture eventually landed him a position with the National Park Service, which in turn led to intriguing projects that helped to change the course of his career. Prominent among these was the restoration of the interior of Theodore Roosevelt’s birthplace and work on renovating Grant’s Tomb.
In that building, Kahn found archives on its creation, which yielded the story of the building of tomb, which involved the collection of small amounts across the country. He told that story in an article he published in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. One important dimension of his approach: giving people hands-on experiences with the past.
This is nothing new, of course, as he is quick to emphasize. But he thinks many museums of history, including San Diego’s, are lagging behind on this issue.
“Science centers and children’s museums have done this well. This approach really began in California, with the Exploratorium (in San Francisco), and in our field, there are places like the Minnesota History Center and the Atlanta History Center. The heart of the matter is how you present history.”
Continued at the San Diego Union Tribune...
Source: The San Diego Union Tribune, May 16, 2010
Author: Robert L. Pincus