The Smithsonian American History Museum certainly provokes thought. Not quite so much about American history as about how to design and organize a musuem, and what constitutes history. I had never seen American History before, having managed to hit almost everything else around the mall but that and Native American (which, appropos, I've been universally advised to avoid because it is horribly designed and basically sucks). I'm still not wholly certain what it was I had expected, but I definitely left feeling as though I'd just walked through a production of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, as told by the Federal Government and Ye Old Powers That Be.
I only had the chance to see three exhibits, and the method of presentation was radically different for each. Americans at War was the most traditional, in that it had exhibits about the various wars, campaign histories, etc., but still, almost all testimonials (that I noticed at least) were told by a minority or a woman. Science in American Life, however, managed to convey the impression that only minorities had ever engaged in scientific exploration, and most of what we've created will either kill us or ruin all life. Lastly, the galleria for the American Flag flying over Fort Sumpter was a full display devoted to a single artifact, yet uses it as a microcosm for discussing the Pledge, the iterations of the flag, and the lives of the designers and sewers; in short, a conversation piece.
Now, to put this upfront, my disagreement isn't with the inclusion of stories so often ignored in the past. I've been to my fair share of museums stressing the hegemonic narrative. China was riddled with nothing but, and half the fun of Chinese museums was the often absurd lengths the museums would go to hide or whitewash facts known to anyone who has even just purused modern Chinese history. And more than a few of the inventors/inventions in Science in America I'd never heard of and found fascinating. Instead, my issue has more to do with the exclusion of certain things. How is an exhibit about American inventions complete without Edison (although I'd love to see the same exhibit talk about Tesla), or Ford, or Eli Whitney (even if his cotton gin did reinforce slavery in the South, that too is a big deal)?
So as I said, Americans at War was the most traditional, at least in terms of how it was organized and presented. There were maps and interactive little displays, object centerpieces and things like sections of the Berlin Wall; all the standard relics one might expect in a museum. But what got me thinking was that through all these times, the majority of the participants, and the majority of the viewers were not minorities (yeah... that's not tautological). Stories like the Buffalo Soldiers deserve to be told, and their model for later racial integration worth highlighting at length. But I'd imagine a little Timmy from the Bronx is more likely to be going to see what his grandfather was doing in Normandy than what his grandfather's neighbor from Harlem was doing.
And that's where my confusion begins to set in. If all Timmy hears about is his grandfather, how has his worldview expanded? What has he learned or been exposed to that's helped him grow? Envisioning a more nuanced perspective for Timmy upon hearing about black soldiers storming the beaches too isn't very hard to do. But by emphasizing the racial aspect of these black soldiers, Timmy starts moving away from the story of his grandfather. So an exhibit that speaks to the broad strokes of history, while using stories more likely to go unheard by the wider audience makes some sense. It raises awareness, increases exposure, and adds shading to old pictures. But is the mission of a museum to transmit the narrative, or just to hold the relics of a bygone era?
Which brings us to The Flag. It struck me as rather odd to have an entire exhibit devouted to a single artifact, at least one that didn't rock the foundations of the world. Serving as inspiration for the National Anthem is certainly pretty cool, but we're not too likely to hear about the model for the Mona Lisa when what's interesting is the painting itself. Even so, the exhibit used the flag as a conversation starter, a chance to discuss the people involved in it's crafting, design, and preservation. It turned an artifact into a mind web, using what would normally be a single artifact with a solitary plaque explaining it's history as an opportunity contextualize an era and a symbol. Still, that's not a model you can use that often. I mean, the armor worn by King Richard the Lionhearted might be pretty kickass, but what about the coins used by Thomas Jefferson to buy the Louisiana Purchase? Or was it a check? 'Cause I can't imagine too many people standing around to look at a check, but you might get some people in with a chest 'o loot.
Ultimately, I'm still unresolved on a methodology for organizing the museum. The old model of museums (and history) that told only the stories of the powerful and the majority seems to becoming an exhibit over in Natural History, next to the dodos. But the new model seems similarly distorted, too. Even if Edison was still a hack who stole his ideas from Tesla, omitting one or the other leaves the story incomplete, and Ford deserves his place in any pantheon. A model that just houses relics isn't terribly appealing ("oh yay... yet another suit of armor... shiny"), but not everything is worthy of being a conversation piece. I like the ecclectism in the designs (and I don't think that was their intent), but I don't like swapping one slanted narrative for another. At least I knew how to parse the old one, and it made for some awesome parody fodder.
