The Museum as a Democracy-Building Institution: Reflections on the Shared Journeys

Program at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

Author(s): MAGGIE RUSSELL-CIARDI
Source: The Public Historian, Vol. 30, No. 1 (February 2008), pp. 39-52
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the National Council on Public History
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/tph.2008.30.1.39 .
Accessed: 21/08/2011 13:00

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of California Press and National Council on Public History are collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to The Public Historian.

http://www.jstor.org
The Museum as a Democracy-
Building Institution:
Reflections on the Shared
Journeys Program at the Lower
East Side Tenement Museum
Maggie Russell-Ciardi

Abstract: The Lower East Side Tenement Museum has embraced the challenge of serv-
ing as a democracy-building institution by providing a venue for dialogue about immi-
gration-related issues. It has also, through its Shared Journeys program, involved new im-
migrants in these dialogues, and so engaged people who are not yet naturalized citizens
in the practice of citizenship. In this process, the museum is redefining what it means to
be a citizen, and by extension, creating a more inclusive and thus more dynamic democracy.

Key words: Immigration, tenement, dialogue, ESOL, citizenship.

In recent years, there has been a great deal of interest among museum
practitioners about the role museums can play engaging visitors in critically
examining and shaping the civic issues of concern to their communities. At
the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, the museum’s mission and the site’s
history as home to generations of new arrivals to the U.S. have provided an

39

The Public Historian, Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 39–52 (February 2008). ISSN: 0272-3433,
electronic ISSN 1533-8576.
© 2008 by The Regents of the University of California and the
National Council on Public History. All rights reserved.
Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the
University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions Web site:
www.ucpress.edu/journals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10/1525/tph.2008.30.1.39.
40 ■ THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN

issue with potential importance for critical engagement: immigration. In its ef-
fort to break down stereotypes about immigrants and to draw attention to the
connections between immigrant experiences past and present, the Tenement
Museum has embraced the challenge of civic involvement by developing pro-
grams that engage a wide range of visitors—including new immigrants—in
considering the various perspectives that exist about immigration and other
related civic issues. In thus allowing the interpretation of its site to include
multiple, personalized narratives, the museum has laid groundwork for visi-
tors to engage in dialogues on those issues. If we understand citizenship and
active engagement with civic issues as the cornerstone of democracy, then the
Tenement Museum is undertaking democracy-building work.
This has not been an easy endeavor for the museum. On the road to be-
coming a visitor-engaging, democracy-building institution, the museum
learned that it had to become more democratic itself. This article describes
that process of transformation, some of the challenges that arose along the
way, the programs that have resulted, and some of the questions with which
the museum continues to grapple.

The Tenement Museum and 97 Orchard Street

The mission of the Tenement Museum is to promote tolerance and his-

torical perspective through the presentation and interpretation of the variety
of immigrant and migrant experiences on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a
gateway to America. The museum focuses its interpretation of the immigrant
and migrant experiences on the history of a single tenement building, 97 Or-
chard Street, in the heart of the Lower East Side, a building which was home
to an estimated 7,000 people from twenty countries between 1864 and 1935.
The museum has recreated the apartments of five immigrant families who
resided in the building, and has also left several apartments in close to the
same condition they were found in when the museum acquired the building
in 1988. The building is accessible by guided tour only. Trained educators lead
groups of up to fifteen people through the recreated and preserved apart-
ments, telling them the history of the building and the individual stories of
the families who lived there.
That history began in 1863–1864 when 97 Orchard Street was constructed
by a German-born tailor, Lucas Glockner. In the 1860s the Lower East Side
was witnessing unprecedented levels of immigration from German-speaking
regions of Europe, and developers like Glockner responded by constructing
tenement buildings, some of the earliest multiple-family dwellings. No hous-
ing laws yet governed the construction of these dwellings, so Glockner built
what he considered to be acceptable: a five-story apartment with twenty 325-
square-foot apartments, and with no central lighting, central heat, indoor run-
ning water, or indoor toilets.
 SITES OF CONSCIENCE: LOWER EAST SIDE TENEMENT MUSEUM ■ 41

The German immigrants who first moved into the building lived through
a major economic downturn, the Panic of 1873, in which a quarter of New
Yorkers lost their jobs. One 97 Orchard Street resident, Natalie Gumpertz,
was left to raise four small children on her own after her husband disappeared
during the Panic. She would likely have been deemed unworthy of govern-
ment assistance because New York, flooded with demands for relief from des-
titute families, had developed very restrictive guidelines for who should be
eligible for the limited resources available.
In the 1880s and 1890s, the population of the Lower East Side changed.
The German-speaking population moved uptown, and the neighborhood
quickly filled with Russian and Eastern European Jews who were fleeing re-
ligious persecution. These newcomers, who were generally much poorer when
they arrived than the Germans had been, crowded into the tenement build-
ings, sharing apartments in order to afford the rent. By 1900, the Lower East
Side was considered the most crowded place on earth; that year, one 97 Or-
chard Street apartment housed twelve people in its small rooms.
Reformers, for a wide range of reasons, determined that housing condi-
tions on the Lower East Side were unacceptable. Jacob Riis and others doc-
umented the conditions in the tenement buildings and pressured the gov-
ernment to pass housing laws to improve them. Their efforts eventually led
to the passage of the 1901 Tenement House Law, which mandated one in-
door toilet for every two families (or freeze-proof outhouses), running water
on every floor, and a window in every room. This was highly contentious. Al-
though the reformers had good intentions, landlords, many of whom were im-
migrants, could not afford the cost of the required renovations and passed it
off to their tenants in the form of rent increases. The owner of 97 Orchard
Street had to spend at least $8,000, a huge sum in those days, to bring the
building up to code. In the early 1900s, Lower East Side housewives responded
to the increases and other concerns they had about their housing conditions
by organizing rent strikes.
Many of the Jewish immigrants, including 97 Orchard Street residents Har-
ris and Jennie Levine, found employment in the newly emerging garment in-
dustry, sewing clothes by the piece in their crowded tenement apartments.
They worked at least ten hours a day, six days a week (which was a legal work-
week), in hot, stuffy apartments. They suffered from a wide range of occu-
pational and other diseases. The conditions led reformers, some of whom were
concerned about the workers and some of whom were concerned about the
possible spread of disease through “contaminated” garments, to coin the term
“sweatshop,” and to lead a mass movement to regulate the garment industry.
In 1905, the Levines closed their home shop, moved to Brooklyn, and opened
up a custom tailoring business outside their home. Many other workers went
to work in the new factories that were opening throughout the city, housed
in loft spaces.
Because there were few laws to protect the workers, the arbitrary con-
42 ■ THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum

restored the apartment of the Levines, a
Polish family who operated a garment factory
in their parlor in the 1890s. (Photo courtesy
of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum)

trol of the boss over the workers—combined with the ever-increasing de-
mands of the garment industry for clothes to be produced quickly and at low
cost—led in many instances to a decline in wages and working conditions.
This spurred on the growth of the labor movement, and garment workers,
mostly immigrant girls who lived in the tenements of the Lower East Side,
began to demand better wages and working conditions. In 1909, they or-
ganized the largest strike of working women in history. Two years later, 146
workers were killed when a massive fire broke out in their factory; this Tri-
angle Shirtwaist fire galvanized broad sectors of the population to support
the garment workers’ unions and eventually led to the passage of important
labor laws. One family that resided in 97 Orchard Street, the Russian Jew-
ish Rogarshevsky family, was probably very much affected by all of these
events; their teenage daughter, Bessie, was a sewing machine operator in a
garment factory.
During this time, Southern Italians joined the Russians and Eastern Eu-
ropeans continuing to arrive in the Lower East Side. The eugenics movement
gained political currency, arguing that the new immigrant groups were ge-
netically inferior and so should be barred from entering the United States. In
1924, the United States government passed the Johnson Reed Act, aimed at
restricting immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe, as well as from
East Asia. Many immigrants from these regions came anyway as undocu-
mented immigrants. Rosaria Baldizzi, a resident of 97 Orchard Street, was
among these undocumented immigrants, according to her daughter Josephine.
In 1934, the passage of a housing law requiring major renovations to ex-
isting tenement housing stock led to the closing of many New York tenement
buildings. In 1935, building owners Irving and Gottlieb Helpern decided to
close 97 Orchard Street as a residence and to evict all of their tenants, including
the Baldizzi family.
 SITES OF CONSCIENCE: LOWER EAST SIDE TENEMENT MUSEUM ■ 43

Reflections on This History

The history that shaped the building and residents at 97 Orchard Street
was a history of people coming together to debate how immigrants should
live and work, challenge conditions that they believed to be unjust, create a
shared vision for a better future, and work to make that future a reality. Many
of the issues that they grappled with, such as who should be entitled to call
themselves American, what the rights and responsibilities of the newcomers
to the United States should be, and who, if anyone, should be responsible for
ensuring that the newcomers were living and working in conditions that the
majority of society deemed to be acceptable, went on to become issues of na-
tional significance.
Those questions continue to be highly relevant today, among the most
pressing issues on the current political agenda. The nation has not adequately
resolved how it treats the newest members of its society. Immigrants still face
severe housing problems. A recent report shows that immigrants are signifi-
cantly more likely to suffer from housing problems than other New Yorkers,
and are less likely to use available housing services. Immigrants still toil in
sweatshops. In New York City in the early 2000s, approximately 75% of the
workers in garment factories were immigrants and approximately 75% of the
factories were considered sweatshops by the Department of Labor, which has
not been able to find an effective strategy for eradicating them. In fact, in
some instances, when the Department of Labor closed down sweatshops, the
immigrant workers took to the streets and protested because those jobs, al-
though they did not provide them with the wages and working conditions re-
quired under United States labor law, were their best employment option.
Immigrants still face discrimination on the basis of their national origin. A
1996 law made immigration status a factor in determining eligibility for gov-
ernment benefit programs, and in an effort to reduce expenditures, dramat-
ically reduced the assistance that had been provided to immigrant families.
Following September 11, 2001, purportedly in an effort to increase national
security, the United States government introduced new immigration laws that
treat people differently depending on their national origin, including a law
requiring the “special registration” of nonimmigrant aliens from Iran, Iraq,
Libya, Sudan, and Syria. Although there was some support for this among
people concerned with security issues, there was much grassroots mobiliza-
tion against the program, and several members of Congress urged Attorney
General John Ashcroft to suspend the program immediately.
In recent years there has been an upsurge all across the political spectrum
in political mobilizing around immigration and related issues, and in political
rhetoric about the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Because these
questions are so central to our understanding of who we are and what we value
as a nation, they are often emotionally charged. They have the potential to be
highly divisive, but also to galvanize people who might not otherwise be ac-
tive in the political process to take action with others who share the same vi-
44 ■ THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN

sion for the future. The Lower East Side Tenement Museum has recognized
this as an opportunity.

Deromanticizing the Past and Complicating the Present

In recreating its apartments, the museum expected that when visitors heard
the stories of the building’s former residents, they would immediately make
connections both to their own family’s immigrant experience and to the ex-
periences of contemporary immigrants currently living in conditions similar
to those in 97 Orchard Street. The hope was that by helping visitors to rec-
ognize that the experience of immigration was something that unites people
across time and culture, they could foster a sense of empathy for and toler-
ance of newer immigrant communities.
Unfortunately, this hope was not always realized. In actuality, visitors often
came to the museum with romanticized notions of the past and of previous
generations of immigrants. In some cases, visitors seemed to be coming to the
museum seeking reinforcement of their views that their immigrant forebears
were somehow different from contemporary immigrants. They often projected
these romanticized notions onto the former residents of 97 Orchard Street.
Museum educators regularly overheard visitors commenting throughout the
tours about how the building’s former residents were more willing to play by
the rules, more hard working, more eager to assimilate, more eager to learn
English—in short, better—than today’s immigrants.
The museum realized that in order to fulfill its mission of promoting tol-
erance, they could not let visitors project their romanticized notion of the past
onto 97 Orchard Street, nor allow the negative comments about contempo-
rary immigrants to go unaddressed. They would need to both actively dero-
manticize the immigrants of the past and deconstruct visitors’ stereotypes
about immigrants of the present.
To deromanticize the past, the museum began to make its tour narratives
more complex. When talking about the Italian-American Baldizzi family, the
museum realized that they should not simply hold up the family’s heroic strug-
gles to survive during the Great Depression. They should also mention that,
to the best of the museum’s knowledge, the Baldizzis entered the country with-
out authorization and lived for some time as undocumented immigrants; that
Mr. Baldizzi was often out of work and had to resort to doing odd construc-
tion jobs as a day laborer to make ends meet; that Mrs. Baldizzi concealed the
fact that she had gotten a part-time job in a garment factory so she wouldn’t
lose the government assistance on which the family relied; and that Mr. and
Mrs. Baldizzi most likely never became fluent in English. Yet the museum
was always careful to place these individual situations within the context of
the broader economic, political, and social systems that limited immigrants’
choices and influenced their day-to-day decisions.
It was not enough to highlight the ways in which immigrants of the past
 SITES OF CONSCIENCE: LOWER EAST SIDE TENEMENT MUSEUM ■ 45

did not live up to romanticized notions of the “American Dream”; that could
lead to furthering negative stereotypes about immigrants. It was also neces-
sary to deconstruct the stereotypes about immigrants of the present, to put a
human face on the contemporary immigrant experience, and to highlight the
ways in which these immigrants were enduring the same kinds of daily strug-
gles and realizing the same kinds of daily triumphs as previous generations of
immigrants from other cultural backgrounds. This was more challenging be-
cause the museum’s building was only open as a residence from 1864 to 1935;
how could the museum, in that space, interpret the stories of immigrants who
had entered the country after 1935?
What the museum decided to do was to invite contemporary immigrants
to come and learn the history of 97 Orchard Street and then to comment in a
variety of different ways on the connections they saw between the history of
the building and their own histories. This approach was based on the belief
that engaging people from different backgrounds and experiences to reflect
on the history of the United States deepens and complicates our understand-
ing of our history, and that revisiting history from different perspectives can
lead to new insights about that history, opens up new ideas about its contem-
porary relevance, and sheds new light on the similar struggles that people are
enduring today.
One of the most important steps the museum took in this effort was to hire
immigrants to lead the guided tours of 97 Orchard Street and to invite them
to personalize the tour narrative, highlighting the ways in which the experi-
ences of the families whose stories they were interpreting resonated with their
own experiences as newcomers to the United States. While seemingly a small
step, it changed the museum in profound ways.
First, it led the museum to change the requirements for its educator posi-
tions. Although much headway has been made in recent years in attracting
people of more diverse backgrounds to the museum field, at the time the mu-
seum was seeking to interpret contemporary immigrant experiences, the
people who had traditional museum credentials were still predominantly white
and middle class. The museum actively recruited people who might or might
not have those traditional museum credentials, but did have fluency in lan-
guages other than English and a strong personal connection to the immigrant
experience. This meant strengthening the training and evaluation program for
new educators, so the museum could provide them with the skills they needed
to conduct museum tours.
Second, the museum recognized that there would never be one consistent
tour narrative; as each educator personalized the history of 97 Orchard
Street, the narrative would change. This was a radical shift because it meant,
ultimately, that the history of 97 Orchard Street was open to multiple inter-
pretations, that it had different meaning for different people, and that its value
resided in large part in the connections people made between the history of
the building and their own personal experiences.
Many visitors, though, went on only one tour; they did not experience the
46 ■ THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN

tour as narrated by all of the different educators the museum employed. Thus,
many visitors, particularly those who were from areas where there were few
immigrant residents and who had little contact with immigrants, often looked
to their immigrant educator as the expert on contemporary immigrant expe-
riences. They often expected him or her to speak on behalf of all immigrants
from all backgrounds and experiences. The museum learned that they had to
take care to train educators to explain that the information that they were pre-
senting was their own personal experience, and that they could not be expected
to represent the ideas or experiences of any other immigrants.
Another important step the museum took to engage new immigrants in
making meaning of the history of 97 Orchard Street was to use the spaces in
the building that were not used for historical representation to interpret the
stories of contemporary immigrants. The museum debated for some time
whether it should develop its own exhibits about contemporary immigrants
or invite immigrants to use the space to tell their own stories. In the end, the
museum decided on a compromise solution: rather than having traditional ex-
hibits in the spaces, they would use them for art about the contemporary im-
migrant experience. The museum would curate rather than develop the art
programs and would invite immigrant artists to submit proposals for presen-
tations in the museum space. The storefront windows of the tenement were
used for changing art exhibits, and the basement classroom space was used
for theater productions by immigrant theater companies about immigrant ex-
periences. These productions included plays in languages other than English.
The artists and theater companies were asked to create work that was primar-
ily about contemporary immigrant experience, but that also reflected on the
history of 97 Orchard Street and the connection between immigrant experi-
ences past and present.
Opening up the museum space to immigrant artists and theater compa-
nies put that interpretation of the site in the hands of people with immediate
immigration and migration experiences and personal perspectives on the is-
sues. This benefited the museum in that it broadened and democratized its
interpretation, and also gave new immigrants a sense of ownership over the
site. Deciding how much control the museum should exert over the content
and design of the art and theater productions has been an ongoing challenge
for the museum. After all, the museum has responsibility for what it presents
at its historic site. The staff discussed whether it was important for the work
to be of the same caliber as the interpretations created by museum staff and,
if so, what kinds of measures would be appropriate to ensure that caliber. The
staff also considered what the museum’s relationship to the work should be.
Many of the art exhibits and theater productions take a strong stance on highly
contentious and emotionally charged immigration issues; the museum debated
what kinds of stances on immigration questions it should present at its site,
whether there were some works of art it could not host because of their po-
litical content, and whether it should be perceived as endorsing the stance
 SITES OF CONSCIENCE: LOWER EAST SIDE TENEMENT MUSEUM ■ 47

taken in the work, or whether it should state that the views of the artist do not
necessarily reflect the views of the museum.
Ultimately, the questions that have been raised as the museum has sought
to interpret the contemporary immigrant experience have democratized the
museum, opening it to a more diverse staff with a wider range of backgrounds
and experiences. They have expanded interpretation at the site and fostered
debate about how much curatorial control to keep within the institution and
how much to share with external partners. And they have led the museum to
question whether it should take a stance on contemporary immigration issues
or whether it should serve as a neutral forum for different perspectives. This
has led to an even deeper debate about the museum’s mission of promoting
tolerance. What does it mean to promote tolerance? Does it mean to advance
tolerance towards new immigrants? Does it mean promoting tolerance of dif-
ferent experiences and perspectives on immigration issues? As the staff
raised these issues, it became clear that there was no consensus, and this re-
sulted in spirited discussions about the purpose of the museum and how best
to accomplish it. These discussions continue with every new exhibit, every
new art installation, every new program.

Engaging Visitors in Democratic Dialogue: Kitchen Conversations

Within the context of its effort to interpret the contemporary immigrant

experience, the museum launched two innovative programs designed to fos-
ter civic dialogue about the issues raised by 97 Orchard Street: Kitchen Con-
versations and Shared Journeys. As the museum wrestled with the questions
about the interpretation of its site, the staff came to the conclusion that it
should not limit the debates to people within the institution but should bring
the public in. This was perhaps the most transformative decision by the in-
stitution, one that moved it from being an increasingly democratic institution
to an institution undertaking civic democracy-building.
The museum staff realized that when they deromanticized previous gen-
erations of immigrants and challenged stereotypes about contemporary im-
migrants, visitors had an emotional response. The visitors had come to the
Tenement Museum with their own knowledge, beliefs, and opinions. When
they heard things on the tour that were not consistent with their own views,
some would close up and lose interest in the tour narrative, while others would
mutter comments under their breath. In some instances, visitors became ar-
gumentative and asserted that the museum educators were wrong. The staff
saw in this an opportunity and need to open up spaces for visitors to react to
what they were hearing, share their own knowledge, and exchange ideas about
the ways in which the new information they were learning did and did not
resonate with their previous understanding of the issues.
On tours the educators began to explain that they understood that every-
48 ■ THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN

one had their own perspectives, that the issues they would be addressing were
contentious, and that visitors were invited to engage in dialogue during the
tour about the content. The museum incorporated into the tour content open-
ended discussion questions for visitors, and trained educators how to facili-
tate conversations with visitors about their differing opinions. Then, as a pi-
lot program, the museum launched Kitchen Conversations, a post-tour session
with a trained dialogue facilitator. Visitors were invited to discuss how the tour
content related to their own understanding of immigrant experiences, and
what the significance of the historical information was for them in viewing
their own relationship to contemporary immigrants. Perhaps most importantly,
visitors also discussed their differing views on challenging social questions re-
lated to immigration and how they could take action to shape immigration is-
sues in positive ways.
Most visitors, while at first skeptical about engaging in dialogue about con-
temporary immigration issues at a historic site that they had thought would
focus primarily on the history of immigration, soon grasped what the museum
was trying to do. They demonstrated a willingness to join the museum in its
efforts to make connections between past and present, to honor the knowl-
edge that visitors brought with them to the museum, and to have visitors think
critically about how the museum experience challenged what they thought
they knew. The program soon became a regular feature at the museum. An
average of 80 percent of the visitors now stay after their tour to participate in
these spirited “Kitchen Conversations.”

Using the Past to Build the Future: Shared Journeys

In 2002 the Tenement Museum developed the program Shared Journeys:

Learning English and Civics through the Stories of Immigrants Past. The goal
of the program was to engage new immigrants—people for whom the issues
raised by 97 Orchard Street are extremely relevant but who might not im-
mediately see the connection between the stories of its residents and their
own personal experiences, in the dialogue about the issues raised by the site,
exploring the connections between the stories of the residents of 97 Orchard
Street and the challenges faced by immigrant communities today.
This program is very important for the museum because the majority of
the people who take tours of the museum are not immigrants: they are, largely,
people who are at least one or two generations removed from the immigrant
experience. The Shared Journeys program extends the museum’s ongoing
dialogue with visitors about contemporary immigration issues—its public
space for grappling with pressing contemporary civic issues—to people who
might otherwise have limited opportunities to be engaged in civic dialogue and
debate.
New immigrants are often disconnected from the democratic processes that
shape the realities of their new country. Many immigrants are unfamiliar with
 SITES OF CONSCIENCE: LOWER EAST SIDE TENEMENT MUSEUM ■ 49

how democratic change is brought about in the United States, and with the
strategies that diverse communities have developed over the years for ad-
vancing their interests. Many feel disenfranchised because until they are able
to naturalize as United States citizens, a process which can take many years,
they are not able to vote, and so need to identify other ways they can shape
issues that matter to them. The Shared Journeys program helps them find
those ways.
Through the program, adult ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Lan-
guages) classes come to the museum for a series of six two-hour workshops.
At each workshop, students explore an enduring challenge that immigrant
communities faced during the time when 97 Orchard Street was open as a
residence and that new immigrants continue to face today. Workshop titles
currently include Coming to the United States, Housing Conditions Then and
Now, Making a Living, Immigrants and Social Welfare, Health Issues in Our
Communities, and Our Immigrant Histories: Telling Our Stories.
In each workshop, students visit the recreated apartment of an immigrant
family who resided in 97 Orchard Street. Then, working in small groups, they
discuss how their own immigration story compares to the story of the historic
family. They are given a list of vocabulary words which they are encouraged
to use in their small-group discussions. The museum has selected words that
the students will need to advocate for their communities and to organize other
immigrants to advance their collective interests, such as “housing law,” “liv-
ing conditions,” “job skills,” and “occupational disease.” The students then re-
port back to the larger group and talk together about why these challenges
have endured for so long, how people in the past dealt with them, and what
they can do in their own lives to address them.
In the Coming to the United States workshop, they visit the apartment of
the Baldizzi family. After learning the family’s story, they return to a class-
room where, working in small groups, they compare the Baldizzis’ experience
coming to America with their own. Participants have talked about a wide range
of experiences, such as the challenges of navigating the immigration system,
of leaving loved ones behind, and of arriving at JFK Airport not speaking a
word of English. In the workshop Housing Conditions Then and Now, stu-
dents learn about the 1901 Tenement House Law and then take on the role of
tenement inspectors-in-training to inspect 97 Orchard Street to make sure
that the owner has complied with the law. After conducting the inspection
and learning about differing views on housing reform in the early 1900s, stu-
dents return to the classroom, where they learn about the housing laws today,
what their rights are, what they can do if their building is not up to code, and
how to speak in English about their housing problems.
In the Making a Living workshop, students learn about the Levine family
and the larger debate about sweatshops that was going on while the Levines
were operating their garment shop in 97 Orchard Street. They then talk in
small groups about the working conditions in their own places of employment,
the employment challenges immigrants face, and the creative strategies
50 ■ THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN

people have developed to improve immigrants’ wages and working conditions.

In the Immigrants and Social Welfare workshop, students learn about how
the government in the 1870s, during the time of Natalie Gumpertz, began to
make distinctions between “worthy” and “unworthy” poor, and about the cre-
ative ways Gumpertz got by after being deemed unworthy of assistance. They
discuss the challenges they have faced attempting to access assistance and par-
ticipate in a facilitated dialogue about who should be eligible for assistance
today. There are often many differing opinions within the groups, depending
on what kinds of government programs people were accustomed to in their
home country and what their own experience with assistance has been, which
leads to very spirited discussions.
In the Health Issues in Our Communities workshop, students learn about
the Rogarshevsky family, who relied on traditional remedies when the father
of the family was diagnosed with tuberculosis because there was no medical
cure. They then talk about the health problems in their communities and the
various forms of medical care that are available to them. Students often talk
about the fact that they do not have access to health insurance, and share ideas
about where people who do not have insurance can go for low-cost medical
care when they are sick or injured. And in the Our Immigrant Histories: Telling
Our Stories workshop, students meet a costumed interpreter playing a for-
mer resident of 97 Orchard Street, fourteen-year-old Victoria Confino. They
take on the role of newly arrived immigrants in 1916 and ask her for advice
about how to adjust to life in the United States. The actress playing Victoria
engages them in conversation about the costs and benefits of assimilating, or
“becoming American,” and the challenges of retaining one’s cultural heritage
in a new country. Students then compare Victoria’s experience to their own.
This workshop frequently provides immigrants with the first opportunity to
talk publicly about their migration experience.
When a new class of ESOL students arrives at the museum, they are often
reluctant to speak about their lives and experiences. The teachers have told
us there are several reasons for this. Many have never been to a museum be-
fore, either in their home countries or in the United States, and are nervous,
not knowing what to expect. They are not confident about their English skills
and so are hesitant to speak in English with people who are not immigrants.
And, perhaps most importantly, they are not accustomed to speaking about
their own immigrant experiences; many have never before been asked what
it is like for them to try to make a new life in the United States, and some of
the students are ashamed of the hardships they face, particularly if they were
relatively more affluent in their home countries.
However, the experience of touring the museum and visiting the recreated
apartments of historic immigrant families has helped the students open up.
After visiting the apartments, they are often not just willing to talk about what
they have experienced as new immigrants, but participate in very passionate,
sometimes humorous, sometimes serious, sometimes deeply painful discus-
sions about their own histories. For some, it has been seeing the experiences
 SITES OF CONSCIENCE: LOWER EAST SIDE TENEMENT MUSEUM ■ 51

of “ordinary” people—undocumented, working-class immigrants struggling

to get by—honored in a museum, that helps them to recognize the signifi-
cance of their own story. For others it has been the experience of learning
about the immigrants in the past who made a difference in the lives of their
families, their communities, and the nation that moves them to speak about
their own challenges, hopes, and visions for the future.
Learning about the stories of immigrants past helps the Shared Journey
participants realize they are part of the ongoing history of the United States.
It has also made possible a rich dialogue about immigrants’ shared journeys
and about how they can work together to shape their new country. One of the
students commented, “It makes me feel I’m part of the American history, but
in a new way. I’m part of the new history!”
The museum hopes that when the newcomers who participate in the Shared
Journeys program learn about the innovative ways that immigrants in the past
shaped the issues of concern to them—people like Jacob Riis, who took pic-
tures of deplorable housing conditions in an effort to raise awareness about
the plight of tenement dwellers, the housewives who organized rent strikes,
and teenage sweatshop workers who organized the largest strike of working
women in the history of the world—they will feel inspired to take action
around the issues that matter to them.
The museum believes that this will serve to strengthen a culture of de-
mocracy, not only because it creates new political actors, but also because as
these immigrants emerge as political actors, their actions are shaped by the
diverse traditions of civic engagement that they have brought from their home
countries, which in turn expands and enriches the discourse in this country
about ways we might shape the world around us. The Shared Journeys par-
ticipants may not yet be naturalized citizens, but by engaging in civic dialogue
about issues of concern to their communities and strategizing about how to
address the issues that matter to them, they are practicing citizenship.

Conclusion

What the Tenement Museum has learned from the process of trying new
strategies to accomplish its social mission of promoting tolerance and chal-
lenging the stereotypes visitors bring about immigrants past and present is
that we cannot present history as static. We have to present it as dynamic
process, as something that is made and remade by each of us as we reflect on
the relevance of history in our own lives today, as a tool for challenging what
we think we know about the present. With this in mind, museums will be able
to develop programs that engage visitors in dialogue about contemporary civic
issues and promote civic engagement among people who have traditionally
been thought to be on the margins of history, who have had limited oppor-
tunities to be actors in the civic life of their communities.
But this cannot be done unless museums are willing to open their inter-
52 ■ THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN

pretation to include the participation of broad sections of the population, shar-

ing authority with people from diverse backgrounds and experiences. It can-
not be done unless museums commit themselves to turning the conventional
notion of what a museum is on its head, conveying to the public that they are
not coming to museums to learn from experts, but rather to exchange ideas,
teach one another, and decide for themselves why history matters.
This process of democratizing the museum so that it can become a de-
mocracy-building institution is a never-ending one. The Tenement Museum
has not found definitive answers to the questions the process has raised, nor
does it want to. The museum believes that the process of grappling with these
questions in an inclusive and democratic way is even more important than
finding answers; museums that dedicate themselves to the practice of asking
questions and engaging people from diverse backgrounds in dialogue about
those questions are truly making history.

Maggie Russell-Ciardi served as a program consultant for the International Coali-

tion of Historic Site Museums of Conscience. She was previously the director of education
at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where she developed a wide range of pro-
grams that engaged visitors in dialogue about contemporary immigration-related issues.
She won the 2006 American Association of Museums Brooking Paper on Creativity in
Museums for her essay “Immigrant Voices: A New Language for Museums.” Russell- Ciardi
has a graduate degree in Latin American Studies with a focus in politics and human rights
education.