Understanding Our Heritage Interactive Display
Challenge
Any institution old enough to celebrate a bicentennial will likely have opportunities to examine the morality of its history. Those opportunities are especially meaningful if the goals of that institution are rooted in education, since learning from our history is often touted as a way of avoiding future missteps. The University of Cincinnati was faced with such a challenge on the eve of its 200th birthday. Though Charles McMicken’s bequest provided the land where the university was built, concerns had been raised for many years about the use of his name on campus due to his participation in slave owning and trading. Representative faculty and student bodies within the College of Arts & Sciences unanimously passed resolutions to discontinue use of the surname as attached to the college. A working group was commissioned by the president to survey concerns of the campus community and they recommended to the board that the name be removed from the college. For physical structures and spaces that currently make use of the surname, maintaining those designations was approved as long as digital displays were installed to contextualize those spaces to more fully and fairly representing the legacies associated with McMicken.
Response
Situated in front of McMicken Hall, the exterior-grade touchscreen is housed in a Corian solid surface surround, mounted at an angle for ergonomic viewing, anchored to two repurposed architectural columns. The natural materials convey the historical nature of the subject matter, and the digital display is fitted into these components as a modern lens with which to study the past. A narrative crafted by the university archivist serves as a jumping off point for additional content. Historical photographs flank relevant sections of the narrative, and key phrases within the text function as hyperlinks that launch supplemental videos, websites, and documents.