A Consummate Collector

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Sometimes Lubar collected objects solely because of the stories they could tell. Most antique-car buffs wouldn’t imagine saving a Civic, for instance, but Lubar says that he obtained one for America on the Move because of its importance in American history. “Not only does it give you a chance to tell about the rise of Japanese manufacturers, but it also gives you a chance to talk about oil prices and compact cars, a chance to talk about the changes America was going through, the second-car phenomenon,” he says.

So which of today’s technologies does Lubar think might one day end up in the Smithsonian? He says nanotechnologies and microelectromechanical systems probably will, although it will be difficult to display them because of their size. “Fifty years from now, [nanotechnology will] either be a great example of something that changed society, or it’ll be an example of what seemed like a very exciting technology that didn’t go anywhere,” he says. Either way, Lubar says, the museum needs to document it. For now, the Smithsonian is holding off on collecting electric cars, hybrid cars, or fuel-cell-powered vehicles, not to mention most of the very recent advances in computers and cell phones, both of which are difficult to display because different models look so similar, Lubar says. “The art of the curator is always making choices and saying no,” he says.

In Lubar’s current research at Brown University, he continues to examine the curator’s role. He also directs the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization, in addition to heading the new master’s program in public humanities. He says this program examines the vehicles through which the humanities and history reach the public, from museums to public art to documentaries.

Susan Smulyan, a Brown associate professor of American civilization who led the search committee that hired Lubar, says he was chosen for his interesting mix of experience and expertise. “Most people who work in museums and public history have not also done what faculty recognize as traditional research,” she says. Lubar has authored more than 40 articles on the history of technology and public history, and he has published six books, including Legacies: Collecting America’s History at the Smithsonian. “He has a scholarly turn of mind,” says Smulyan.

This scholarly focus is part of the legacy Lubar has left at the Smithsonian. “Steve was a real intellectual steward in pushing the staff in his division to think more broadly about their collections and ask fundamentally different kinds of questions,” says museum specialist Peter Liebhold, who accompanied us on our storage room tour. “It’s much easier to do taxonomy—to collect every one of a series. It’s much harder to think about the stray things you should collect.”
When we reach the final cabinet in the storage area, it’s clear to me that Lubar’s method for contextualizing objects has rubbed off on Liebhold. From the bottom shelf, Liebhold pulls out a twisted hunk of metal painted with an American flag. At first glance, it seems like just another piece of scrap metal. But then Liebhold tells me it came from United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a field in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001. What a difference context makes.