Julia Rose, Director of the West Baton Rouge Museum has a new book that tackles the extraordinary challenges of interpreting histories of slavery, war, genocide and mass oppression. Published by Rowman and Littlefield this May 2016, the new book “Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites” opens with a foreword by Jonathan Holloway, Dean of Yale College entitled, “What We Risk.”
Difficult histories pose significant resistances and challenges for museum workers and visitors. The new book,
Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites, offers public historians, museums, and educators a much needed resource to interpret histories of slavery, war and trauma.
The new book, provides a sensitive strategy, which is based in learning theories that are clearly described.
Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites is framed by education psychoanalytic theory and positions museum workers, public historians and museum visitors as learners. Through this lens, history workers and educators can develop compelling and ethical representations of historic individuals, communities and populations who have suffered.
Mr. Kenny Greig hails from New Iberia, Louisiana. His driftwood art is carved from sinker cypress collected from the Atchafalaya Basin and Lake Pontchartrain; driftwood that has been floating about the swamp for an unknown number of years. No stump or tree is ever cut or damaged in this process, for the Basin is sacred to Mr. Greig. Additionally, he takes only the driftwood in which he can see some form or feature. His carving does not begin until the driftwood is pressure-washed and sun dried. His goal is to do as little as possible to the wood, for the true attraction is the beauty of what nature has already done. His fish, pelican and duck carvings emerge from what nature has already wrought of the natural cypress. 
