In honor of President’s Day, and we’re going to focus on a Wisconsin-native tasked with preserving the history of the People’s House — also known as the White House.
The White House Historical Association (WHHA) was founded by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961 to help the White House collect and exhibit artifacts of American history and culture. It’s a private, nonprofit organization that works to preserve artifacts, pursue research and provide education.
Dr. Matthew Costello is a Wisconsin native who completed his doctorate and masters in American history at Marquette University. His lifelong passion for the subject led him to the White House Historical Association, where he serves as the chief education officer.
He shares more about the role and what the job entails.
"We were founded in 1961 at the request of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy to enhance the public understanding of the White House and the people who lived there and worked there," explains Costello. "And since that time, we worked with every administration for many years, we had really more of a role as a fundraiser in raising awareness."
Costello also serves as the director of the David M. Rubenstein Center, which, as he describes, overseas the teacher training, field trip programs, research and scholarships, fellows and digital library. Costello says, "Our big message with the Rubenstein Center has been to encourage new scholarship about the White House and encourage younger professionals who are interested in researching and writing about the White House or the people who live there and work there; but also to make this history more accessible and more readily available for everyone."
Costello's own journey with history began early in his life while growing up in Muskego. "I got bit by the history bug early and it's never really gone away," he says. This interest in history remained with Costello as he attended UW-Madison and later Marquette. When it came time to write his dissertation, Costello choose to write about how George Washington is remembered — and this theme of legacy is something Costello continues to work with daily.
"I've long been very interested in how we talk about history ... because it's sort of this ongoing dialogue between whatever is happening today in the contemporary and what has happened and how people choose to remember those things," Costello notes. "And I think those choices are very critical to understanding their political, their social, their cultural mindsets in understanding their own relation to the past."
The WHHA is an educational institution and generally doesn't comment on current political updates. Once an administration leaves and becomes a part of American history, then the association will speak on it, Costello explains. Most of the work that he and his team do on a regular basis is serve as an "authoritative source" for the general questions that people have reguarding the White House and its many roles as a home, office, stage, museum and event space.
"Every day a new page of that history is being written," notes Costello. "For us, I think the most challenging part has been you know, we are a historic organization, we are an educational organization. So how do we balance serving that role and giving people context, giving people nuance, but also staying clear of whatever is happening in the contemporary?"
One of the biggest misconceptions about the White House is that everything is minutely documented since it was built. That is not the case according to Costello, and most things in White House History before 1945 vary in the degree of documentation and evidence.
With so much history in a place that evolves continuously, there's still many questions and mysteries waiting to be discovered. "That's a big part of the push that we're making in trying to encourage young professionals, emerging scholars, to do more work that can help us teach more about the White House and and teach more Americans about the White House," says Costello.
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