That aha moment
I did have one of those “I have to share this” moments recently. I love every opportunity I have to look through the collections and find things. Do you ever get to just browse the Newberry archives? Being able to do it on that particular anniversary at that particular site so you could really experience what the moment was like-that remains pretty memorable. The other one is the 125th anniversary reenactment of the Haymarket Affair, because we did it at the original site, to scale, with thousands of people. We got to explore this crazy pop cultural moment, but also to provide the historical context around it. We did that at the now-defunct Op Shop in Hyde Park, which used to be a credit union and had a vaultlike space in the basement. I still have a very special place in my heart for the first one, because it was the silliest by far: we marked the 24th anniversary of the broadcast of The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults, which was a live television event hosted by Geraldo Rivera. Do you have a favorite Pocket Guide to Hell event? It also made me think about how his life and his writing could have taken a very different direction if he had made a different choice. It changed the way I thought about Melville, because I never thought of him as having any connections to the region I call home. One of the galleries had a letter he wrote from Illinois-he was visiting an uncle who lived here-in which he thought about becoming a Mississippi riverboat sailor rather than making the decision he ultimately did, which was to go out on a whaling voyage. I can give an example from the Newberry that precedes my time here: an exhibition on Herman Melville that coincided with the bicentennial of his birth. You’re not encountering just the narrative-you’re also encountering objects that remind you the story actually occurred in space and time.įor me, the most compelling exhibitions always have some “aha” item that changes your perspective on whatever the story is. What makes a great museum exhibition?Ī strong, relevant, captivating story that has people at its center but then uses collection items as a way of adding physicality and tactility to that story. I don’t think the work I do now, whether at the Newberry or prior, would be nearly as strong without the experiences I had at the University of Chicago. They supported me in exploring other opportunities and ultimately helped me to end up where I am. I also benefited from having a dissertation committee that was understanding and encouraging of this work, and saw value in it. When I decided that there might be a career in this for me, I had some relationships in place. One was beginning to do projects on my own and forming relationships with different cultural institutions across the city. But as I was getting to the dissertation-writing phase, that’s when I began to do more of the public history work, and I found it to be really appealing and much more in sync with what I wanted to do.Īlthough I didn’t set out to get here, I was making choices while I was at the University that helped me arrive at this place. I anticipated I would write my dissertation and find a teaching position somewhere. program in English Language and Literature? Did you imagine this would be your career path when you started your Ph.D. In the following Q&A, Durica, AM’06, PhD’13, discusses what he learned at UChicago, what makes for a great museum exhibition, and oft-overlooked tidbits of Chicago history. Today, after four years at Illinois Humanities, he is director of exhibitions at Chicago’s Newberry Library. Instead of becoming an academic, he wanted to find ways to bring history to wider audiences. The project, which has reemerged after a multiyear hiatus as a monthly pub trivia event, reshaped his career plans. (For instance: Chicago’s 1855 Lager Beer Riot was restaged as a dodgeball game.) So in 2008, he founded Pocket Guide to Hell, a public history effort that took many forms-reenactments, performances, walking tours-and combined intellectual heft with, on occasion, pure silliness.
When University of Chicago alum Paul Durica was researching his dissertation on hobos and tramps as figures in American literature, he kept discovering stories that didn’t quite belong in his scholarly work-but were too fascinating to keep to himself.