The People’s View: Constructing History through Collective Memory

The People’s View: Constructing History through Collective memory is an article published by the San Fransisco Musem of Modern Art in April 2018.

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Mike Dixon first met Rein Jelle Terpstra in a bowling alley parking lot in Elkton, Maryland, in 2015. Terpstra, an artist from the Netherlands interested in the connections between perception and memory, had come to town the day before doing research for The People’s View (2014–18). The project aimed to collect photographs, home movies, and stories from people who had witnessed Robert F. Kennedy’s funeral train as it traveled from New York City to Washington, D.C., on June 8, 1968.

Terpstra had been hanging around an out-of-service train station in Elkton, looking for people who had been there that day 50 years ago. When he noticed the Elk Lanes bowling center across the street, he went over to investigate and saw senior bowling on the schedule for the next morning. Returning early that day, he approached the man at the desk, who took the microphone and introduced him over the loud speakers. While friendly, the bowlers didn’t have any train photographs, but they did have a suggestion: call Mike Dixon. Terpstra reached out to Dixon, who told him, “Hold on, wait half an hour there. Don’t move.” And he interviewed Terpstra with a reporter from the Cecil Whig, a local paper, in the parking lot. After that initial meeting, Dixon began helping Terpstra find leads in Cecil County.

A local Maryland historian specializing in social and community history, Dixon says, “My whole practice is around the people who do not make the headlines. And [Terpstra’s] not looking for the professional journalists, the photographers, the politicians; he’s looking for the memories of everyday people.”

The People’s View: Constructing History Through Collective Memory continues on San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art website.