The Art of Interpretation

Today I had the immense pleasure of visiting Banting House National Historic Site with my Public History class.  My knowledge of Sir Frederick Banting was quite limited before going to the museum - besides of course the whole inventing insulin thing.  Banting proved himself to be a fascinating character on multiple levels - I mean who tries to turn down the Nobel Prize and a knighthood and decides to experiment with mustard gas on himself?

                                                                        The esteemed Sir Frederick Banting

While on the tour however, I was struck most not by the content of the museum, but the artful interpretation that made that information so easy to absorb and dissect.  The curator of the museum, Grant Maltman, did an exceptional job relaying the story of Dr. Banting as well as his own passion for his work.  As someone who has never worked as an interpreter, his tour really emphasized the necessity of storytelling in making history readily accessible to the public.  It's not that information cannot be obtained from text panels, photographs and multimedia - many museum visitors expect to glean their knowledge from those sources.  Successfully communicating with the museum audience through those forms requires great skill- but it is the interpreter that has the potential to bring history off the page and engage the public in a way that an inert medium can never do. The human interaction  makes the history more tangible and relatable.  Successfully learning the art of interpretation - and yes I do believe it is an art - is not only an asset, but a necessary aspect of being an effective public historian. 

Grant Maltman inspired me today.  His passion for history and his skillful crafting of Frederick Banting's narrative not only showed me what it takes to be an effective public historian, but also reaffirmed my love for this discipline.

"We cannot think without language, we cannot process experience without story." 

Christina Baldwin