By Kathleen Lavey
Lansing State Journal
LANSING (AP) - Buses of school children are on the way, but in this quiet moment before the doors open, Suzanne Fischer has the exhibits at the state History Museum almost to herself as she leads a couple of visitors through the museum.
In front of a floor-to-ceiling, hand-painted mural depicting scenes from Great Lakes Native American life, she slides open a door at child level to reveal artifacts depicted in the picture.
From the third floor overlook, she stands next to a gigantic faceted Fresnel lens, used in lighthouses.
Standing inside the museum's realistic mock-up of an Upper Peninsula copper mine, Fischer wants to make sure a photo of her doesn't include a large hand-painted "keep out" sign near the mine's entrance.
"We don't want to keep people out," she said. "We want to bring people in."
That's a key part of Fischer's mission as the director of the Michigan History Museum System, the Lansing State Journal reported. Hired in early December, she oversees exhibits and programming at the state's flagship museum in Lansing and 10 regional museums across the state including the lumber camp at Hartwick Pines near Grayling, Fort Wilkins and the Fayette Town site in the Upper Peninsula, the Civilian Conservation Corps Museum near Higgins Lake and the Walker Tavern Historic Site in Brooklyn.
"I love Michigan history," she said. "There are a lot of stories with national and international important that started right here in Michigan."
Fischer, 36, was one of 100 candidates for the job, said Mark Harvey, state archivist, who interviewed candidates along with History Center director Sandra Clark.
"Her energy and her drive are something we were absolutely looking for to complement the existing management here," Harvey said of Fischer. "She has extremely strong credentials in the field and an award-winning track record of exhibitions."
Fischer grew up in suburban Detroit, earned a degree in history at Oberlin College in Ohio and completed a doctorate in the history of science and technology at the University of Minnesota. She has worked at the Henry Ford in Dearborn and came back to Michigan from a post as curator at the Oakland Museum of California.
Fischer already seems completely at home in the state museum. Maybe that's because museums have always been a familiar and comfortable place for her.
"I definitely spent my childhood going to museums," she said.
And she enjoys the opportunity to foster a love of history in others using actual artifacts.
Her goal for the state's museums is to make them more inclusive of all of Michigan's people.
"One of the really interesting things happening in museums across the country right now is the ways we are figuring out how to invite more people in and how to make sure more people are represented," she said.
In Oakland, for example, the museum owned a donated collection of items from communities of Pacific Islanders. Curators were stymied as to the best way to present them - or whether they even belonged in a California history museum.
"We got together a community advisory group and asked them, 'What do these objects mean to you today?'" she said. The result: an exhibit that included artifacts from painted bark cloths to a 27-foot canoe from Papua New Guinea.
And she's not opposed to using technology in museum exhibits, as long as interactive screens and other bells and whistles enhance the interpretation for visitors.
"There are all kinds of ways to engage with history," she said. "We don't want to put a book on the wall. We want experiences."
Published: Mon, Jan 23, 2017
