I am a hyper-curious person, and curiosity is an important value in my life … as well as an important impact of museums.

But curiosity isn't limited to museums, and can be hard to sustain through adulthood. By sharing some of my curious paths through reading, I'm hoping to reinforce how important wide-ranging curiosity is to our practice and spark new conversations that may seem unrelated to museums, but deeply matter to how we do our work. After all, as museums we cover a variety of topics. Our curiosity should also be as omnivorous!

To that end, here's a new installment of some of my wide-ranging reads (mostly non-fiction) I hope to hear recommendations from you!

Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds: A History of Slavery in New England, by Jared Hardesty.
For most people, including many history museum-goers, slavery = the South. But slavery thrived in New England, and this book frames the expanse and depth to which it took and how New Englanders profited mightily from it. I found this book to be an easy-to-read survey of a complicated and challenging topic … and illustrates how much more there is to learn from the past, especially when it comes to topics some would prefer to ignore.


Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud, by Peter Charles Hoffer
The first half of the book is deeply appreciated for laying out the history of American history. That is, what historians of the past were trying to accomplish, what their standards were, and why the white celebratory history they recorded was so deliberate and purposeful. Of course, that has become the canon for many, making it an obstacle to having more people accept a more inclusive history that is also more fraught (in that it lays out how white Europeans were not always the benevolent masters of those they enslaved, for just one example). Understanding this history of American history is extremely helpful for understanding the viewpoints of many of our visitors, as well as what is at stake for those visitors when a more inclusive history is shared. If we can't navigate their fear, our work is much harder.  (Second half of book explores case studies of historians who have broken ethical rules; interesting, but not why I picked it up.)

The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey
I loved this novel so much, as it hit me just right as a mind-opening book to another country and its culture, religions, human rights, and past. Perveen Mistry is a female lawyer in 1920 Bombay, restricted by her gender, yet finding a pathway to assist women in need of help. There's mystery, there's unfairness, and there is hope. I loved stretching my worldview and empathy. It was a delight to read and I can't wait to read the sequel. Additional note: Perveen's experiences also give us a different view of quarantining that is downright horrifying. If you read it, you'll see exactly what I mean.


Have a suggestion for my reading list?  Email it to me at susie (at) wilkeningconsulting (dot) com.

Why I picked it up: My research keeps showing that people who are curious have better overall outcomes in life. That is, taking in a breadth of information through informal learning appears to give people greater resources from which to draw, helping them in their educations, their careers, their family formation, and their health and well-being. When I heard about this book last year, I immediately put it on my to-read list as it seemed to have a similar finding … it just took me over a year to get to it.

Thesis of book: There is a lot of conventional wisdom that in order to be successful in the 21st century, you have to specialize and go deep in your area of expertise. But that may not be an accurate statement for most of us.

In this book, Epstein suggests that if we commit early and deeply to one thing, we may not actually be playing to our own strengths, and while some will still (luckily) flourish, more won't. But if we have a chance to sample many things, during a period he calls the "sampling period," we can suss out what our own strengths are more effectively, focus later … and have years of experiences from which to draw as we go deep into our areas of expertise. And that cross-pollination matters. It makes for better inventors, innovators, and thinkers as they draw from their different experiences to enhance and create in their own work.

In fact, going deep can make us blinkered if we don't balance it with some breadth … and our work can suffer.

How this intersects with museum research/practice: Museums, being in the curiosity business, are perfectly positioned to give visitors breadth by introducing new topics, ideas, perspectives, and areas of interest. And that is how some museum-goers use museums, especially those that are eudaemonically curious: expanding their minds and making connections between things that seem disconnected (or, in other words, not being "cognitively entrenched").

But many museum-goers use museums differently, primarily for deepening knowledge in their interest areas.  Some even resist content that takes them out of their comfort-zone and shares different worldviews.

How, then, can museums be more deliberate about stretching people's interests to new areas, sparking curiosity and expanding worldviews? And how do we do this in ways that even the most resistant visitor welcomes? THAT is a big, tricky question (and one very much on my mind).

Read or skip?  In many ways, this is a typical journalistic take on a topic that, on the surface, appears confounding to most. If it pretty formulaic in that way: full of anecdotes and stories, reads easily, a bit repetitive, and refers to scholars as well as practitioners. It is not an academic read. So if you want an easy and enjoyable read on the subject, go for it. There wasn't much (or really anything) my research disagreed with.

But if you are looking for new insights beyond this review, then peruse the book's bibliography and go deep (and broad) as desired. Or email me at susie (at) wilkeningconsulting (dot) com and ask for my running notes.

Full citation:  Epstein, David. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. New York: Riverhead Books, 2019.


Have a suggestion for my reading list?  Email it to me at susie (at) wilkeningconsulting (dot) com.