An Interview with Nina Archabal

Rebecca Sharpless

Editor's Note: During the 2000 Organization of American Historians annual meeting in St. Louis, Nina M. Archabal, Director of the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS), served as a panelist in a roundtable discussion entitled,"Clio Confronts the Glass Ceiling--Educating Women and Minorities for Public History Leadership." While the discussion took place more than a year and a half ago, the issues it addressed are still quite salient today. OAH Newsletter Advisory Board member Rebecca Sharpless spoke with Nina Archabal about the challenges that lie ahead.

Rebecca Sharpless (RS): At the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS), how are women and minorities doing?

Nina Archabal (NA): It's hard to generalize about the field as a whole. As I look at my peers, I don't see a lot of women and minorities in the top jobs. This is a subject on which systematic data should be gathered in order to know the real situation.

NA: I would say that women have done well. The Society has been less successful in attracting and retaining minority people.

RS: How has the MNHS been able to bring women along in the profession?

NA: I credit the Society's leadership over the years with this success. Recently I asked one of the Society's long-time trustees why the board seemed to have had no trouble accepting a woman as director when they selected me in 1987. He said this had not even been an issue-that it hadn't crossed their minds. He explained that the board was accustomed to seeing women in leadership positions at the Society. Women, he said, were highly visible here. The former director, Russell Fridley, had hired and promoted many women, laying the groundwork for a woman director.

It's a fact that the Society had been hiring women for key positions for many years. A good example is Grace Lee Nute. She came to Minnesota from Harvard in 1921 with a freshly minted Ph.D. in history to take the job as head of the manuscripts division. The Society's director Solon J. Buck had offered her the job solely on the basis of a recommendation from Frederick Jackson Turner, who had been her professor, and also Dr. Buck's. Nute and other women who were recruited for top jobs found the Society to be a place that valued and rewarded scholarship. When I came to the Society in 1977, most of the senior management positions, with the exception of the director and the deputy director, were held by women. If the Society's experience in hiring women is instructive, the lesson is that long-term commitment is essential for diversity.

RS: How could we hope to replicate this situation in other areas of public history?

NA: I think the key is the willingness of leaders to do something because it's the right thing to do. Unless this happens, the doors will remain closed. It comes down to individuals--to board members and directors--to open the doors. And it has to become an institutional commitment.

RS: So it's a philosophical commitment?

NA: I think so. In preparing my paper for OAH, I interviewed a number of people, including a young African-American staff member with a Harvard B.A. who had studied with Henry Louis Gates. She had recently told us that she was leaving the Society to pursue a Ph.D. in history at Princeton. I asked her about her experience at the Society. She was very direct: "People of color feel like they're fighting a battle and have to take on an extra role. They're often put in program areas dealing with minorities. It's as if the institution has a problem, and the minority employee is supposed to find the solution." She concluded that, although she is an optimist, she questions the commitment of institutions like the Society to effect change. In her words, "It's fundamentally an issue of respect. How do you change the hearts of people?" I think she's right-someone has to open the door and make change possible.

RS: What are some reasons for the lack of retention of minorities?

NA: When we're lucky enough to hire talented minority staff members, we have a tough time holding on to them. When they don't see other people like themselves, they feel isolated and find reasons to move on. Such losses are painful, especially since the pool of minority people interested in pursuing careers in public history has been so small. Thanks to the generosity of the Coca-Cola and Knight Foundations and to the vision of Rick Beard at the Atlanta History Center, three organizations-the Atlanta History Center, the Chicago Historical Society, and the Minnesota Historical Society-have received major grants to help attract and train minority college students to work in museums and historical organizations. Since 1998, the Society has had eighteen juniors and seniors from Minnesota colleges and the University of Minnesota participate in what is called the National Museum Fellows Program.

For my OAH paper I interviewed our six 2000 Museum Fellows. Some of the students said that a career in public history had never crossed their minds. Others said they had been interested in museums and public history but had had no idea how to translate their interest into a career. After nine months in the program, all six students were thinking seriously about careers in public history. I thought that was remarkable.

RS: What kinds of things attract minority people away from the Society?

NA: They move on to a whole variety of opportunities-further education, other non-profits, government and business. If some of these individuals felt isolated at the Society, this has been less the case for our Museum Fellows. Each year six young people get to know each other and spend a lot of time together at the Minnesota Historical Society, forming their own peer group.

RS: How are the fellows being mentored?

NA: Each Fellow spends twelve weeks in the summer in a full-time paid position at the Society. They have their own projects--projects that are central to the Society's program. They also attend a series of seminars led by staff members that cover a broad range of topics related to public history--everything from ethics to exhibition planning. I lead a seminar, for example, on management. I have also offered to have the Museum Fellows shadow me for a day if they have any interest in this kind of work. Someday, I hope one of these students will do an internship with me.

RS: So are they treated basically like any other intern?

NA: They are actually treated like staff members and colleagues. And they are known and valued within the organization.

RS: How are women distributed across the divisions here at MNHS?

NA: Eleven of our twenty one department heads are women, and two of our four division directors are women. The deputy director is a male. Forty-three percent of our board members are women. One of our board's goals, along with ethnic and geographic representation that reflects the state, is to maintain gender balance.

RS: Getting back to public history institutions as a whole, how quickly can these institutions move to broaden gender and racial representation?

NA: Broader representation of women and minorities will not occur overnight. As I mentioned, the Society was preparing itself for female leadership as early as the 1920s. Greater inclusion of women and minorities in public history institutions will require a long-term commitment.

RS: What do you see as training issues?

NA: Public history organizations are dependent on universities to recruit and train students in history and to present public history as a viable and appealing career option. This gets back to Rick Beard's idea of letting students know that public history institutions exist and what's involved in the work. Training in history and in the work of public history is essential if our institutions are to be successful in attracting and retaining minorities

RS: That's an issue, it seems to me, for the historical profession as a whole, looking at the tiny number of minority Ph.D.s in history.

NA: Right. It's a major problem and one that OAH members and institutions can help to address.