ABSTRACT
This chapter details recent interventions and reinterpretations of historic interiors, or period rooms, at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), authored by staff integral to the “Living Rooms” program. As a change from traditional approaches, these experimental installations shift the emphasis to human experience and activity and an understanding of the rooms as products of larger systems of labor, conflict, and economic exchange.
The authors focus on four installations that address various historic themes through divergent strategies, from dynamic lighting programs to the insertion of new narratives created in collaboration with members of Minnesota’s local Native and African communities. Their descriptions reveal emphasis on sensory and emotional reception of the spaces that foreground under-represented individuals and communities. Themes discussed include the emergence of nightlife in eighteenth-century Parisian urban culture and new demands upon domestic labor; the implications of global trade in eighteenth-century Providence, Rhode Island; the complex relationships between Royalists, Africans, and Native Americans in eighteenth-century Charleston, South Carolina; and England’s ambivalence toward the Islamic realm during the Tudor era.
The authors also present research findings that indicate these projects’ efficacy in fostering more intellectually and emotionally powerful visitor experiences with the rooms.
