The Prison Wall: Interpretation Problems for Prison Museums
by Jennifer Garton-Smith

Abstract

The prison wall functions as a barrier between the prison and the community and implies that there is no relationship between the two. However its very existence is part of the implicit definition of a secure community. Prison and community are, therefore, concepts which are reliant on each other.

Many prison spaces, however, have been redeveloped as heritage spaces in ways that do not acknowledge this ambiguity.

Many prison museums in Australia focus on the fabric of the site and fail to respond to the New Museology. Links to wider contemporary issues are rare.

This paper uses the prison wall as both actual and metaphoric. It argues that the prison wall inhibits the development of provocative heritage interpretation in prison museums because the "prison wall" offers such a solid physical structure that its very presence seems to guarantee access to "reality". The appearance of self-evident "reality" works against complex interpretation. The foregrounded fabric thus inhibits the development of ideals of the New Museology.

This paper raises issues of representation in museum prisons. It places the problem of the ambiguous relationship between community and prison in the context of wider heritage problems, for example, the production of synchrony and prioritisation of fabric.

It examines heritage production in prison museums in order to answer the question: how can we speak of the textuality of prison museums?

Date published: August 2000

References

Allen, Jim, 1976, 'Port Arthur site museum, Australia: its preservation and historical perspectives, Museum XXVIII, 2, 104-105.

Bennett, Tony, 1988a, 'The exhibitionary complex', New Formations, IV, 73-102.

Bennett, Tony, 1988b, Out of Which Past?: Critical Reflections on Australian Museum and Heritage Policy, Occasional Paper no.3, Brisbane, Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Griffith University.

Carey, Peter, 1997, Jack Maggs, St Lucia, University of Queensland Press.

Commission Inquiring into Treatment of Aboriginal Prisoners, 1884, Rottnest Island.

Dewar, Mickey, 1997, '"Hard labour" or "a salubrious retreat"?: the relationship between gaol and community in Palmerston 1869-1910', Journal of Northern Territory History, 1-11.

Dwork, Deborah and Robert Jan van Pelt, 1994, 'Reclaiming Auschwitz' in Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory, ed. Geoffrey Hartmann, Oxford, U.K. and Cambridge, U.S.A., Blackwell.

Egloff, Brian, 1982, 'Port Arthur Historic Site', Heritage Australia, II, 3-6.

Fremantle, City of, nd, Conservation Policy for the Fremantle West End Conservation Area.

Foucault, Michel, 1977, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, London, Penguin.

Garton Smith, Jennifer, 1999, Learning from popular culture: interpretation, visitors and critique', International Journal of Heritage Studies, V, 3&4, 135-148.

Green, Neville and Susan Moon, 1997, Far From Home: Aboriginal Prisoners on Rottnest Island 1838-1931, Dictionary of Western Australians Volume X, Nedlands, University of Western Australia Press.

Harvey, David, 1989, The Condition of Post Modernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Oxford, Basil Blackwell.

Hewison, Robert, 1987, The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline, London, Methuen.

Huyssen, Andreas, 1995, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia, New York and London, Routledge.

Kerr, James Semple, 1988, Out of Sight Out of Mind: Australia's Places of Confinement, 1788-1988, Sydney, S.H. Ervin Gallery.

Kerr, James Semple, 1992, Fremantle Prison: A Policy for Its Conservation, Building Management Authority of Western Australia.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, 1998, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums and Heritage, Berkeley, University of California Press.

Lombardo, Lucien X., 1981, Guards Imprisoned: Correctional Officers at Work, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press.

MacCannell, Dean, 1976, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, London, Macmillan.

Mickler, Stephen, 1990, 'The curators and the colony: managing the past at Rottnest Island Museum', Continuum, III, 1, 84-100.

Newman, Joan, 1994, 'Fearful or festive: the re-formation of Fremantle Prison', proc. of a conference, Traditions and Tourism: The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Melbourne.

Novick, Peter, 1999, The Holocaust in American Life, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company.

Prentice, Richard, 1993, Tourism and Heritage Attractions, London, Routledge.

Post, The, 1998, 'Rottnest - island from hell', 17-18 October: 64.

Rics Studio and Events, 1993, Out of Sight Insight, Fremantle Prison Museum.

Roth, Michael, Claire Lyons and Charles Merewether, 1997, Irresistible Decay: Ruins Reclaimed, Los Angeles, The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities.

Stallybrass, Peter and Allon White, 1986, The Poetics and Politics of Transgression, London, Methuen.

Tilden, Freeman, 1957, Interpreting Our Heritage, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press.

Uzzell, David, 1989, 'The hot interpretation of war and conflict', in Heritage Interpretation: The Natural and Built Environment, ed. David Uzzell, London, Belhaven Press.

Vergo, Peter, 1989, The New Museology, London, Reaktion Books.

Walsh, Kevin, 1990, The Representation of the Past: Museums and Heritage in the Post-Modern World, London and New York, Routledge.

Watson, Edward Jack, 1998, Rottnest - Its Tragedy and its Glory, D.L. Watson.

West Australian, The, 1998a, 'My car led to death of policeman', 13 August: 12.

West Australian, The, 1998b, 'Jail young car thieves', 13 August: 12.

Wiedenhofer, Maggie, 1981, Port Arthur: A Place of Misery, Oxford University Press.

Winkworth, Kylie, 1997, Rottnest Interpretation Plan, Peter Freeman Pty Ltd, Conservation Architects and Planners.

Wolff, Kurt, 1964, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, London, Collier Macmillan.

Young, James, 1988, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust, Bloomington, Indiana.

Young, James, 1993, The Texture of Memory, Newhaven and London, Yale University Press.