Tamil Nadu   

“Public monuments need to interpret lives of ordinary people”

Theresa Nichols

MADURAI: Public monuments, heritage sites and spaces of museum. They trigger memories through people’s real or assumed relationship with the objects, events and images they are witnessing, according to Theresa Nichols, Park Ranger, Aztec Ruins National Monument in Northwest New Mexico, United States of America.

Ms. Nichols in a vivacious tête-À-tête at the Gandhi Museum here recently touched upon many issues relating to conservation practices. A veteran in museum practices, she has been involved in the national parks, monuments and heritage site conservation and museum practices for almost 30 years now, helping in conserving the treasures of her nation. A graduate in Anthropology, she is on her third visit to Madurai. Called affectionately as Terry, she studied Tamil and Indian Culture at Madurai Kamaraj University in the mid 70s and she visited the Temple City again in the year 1985.

She says, “Madurai is my second home and I was contemplating on many things since my last visit.” Stating that she always evinced keen interest to know about the condition or status of Indian women, she compared herself with a friend of her with whom she lived together in Madurai in the 70s. She said that there existed a strong bond of familial ties and relationship between the individuals when compared with the United States. She opined that food culture here acted as a major integrative factor where a long tradition of community feasts and combined dining is in place.

Answering a question on what implications do the museum and its practices have on the everyday life of people and their imagination, Ms. Nichols said that these institutions need to interpret the everyday lives of ordinary people in such a way that displays contained central, recognisable, emotional and generic truths. She opines, “We, as curators, are concerned with the inclusion of artefacts and resultant emotional response in the visitor and how he relates himself with the past. This needs knowledge about the material, the class background of the curator and the interpretation of the story related to the artefact.” She further stated that the question of studying how people experienced the past was determined with the historical mediation of the subject with the site or spaces.

It could be argued that monuments and museum, as public space, were an inappropriate forum in which to release strong emotions. There was also the possible problem that people whose history and present existence were reflected in displays might not be comfortable expressing their painful emotions about their lives in public.

She quoted the example of ‘Aztec ruins’ where the national monument authorities gave a distorted version of history stating that the Aztecs abandoned the places but the Aztec natives represented with the authority that they never abandoned the place and the place still had haunting memories of a hoary past which was being reproduced by the natives in various forms and the authorities also included the Aztec’s description of history within their discourse.

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“Public monuments need to interpret lives of ordinary people”

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