American Memory, Culture Wars, and the Challenge of Presenting Science and Technology in a National Museum Review

Stuck between an exhibit and a hard place.

As a chairman at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Roger D. Launius offers a great perspective on controversial exhibits, especially those proposed in his own museum. Launius first discusses American’s varied views and uses of the past. Using Rosenweig and Thelen’s claims in Presence of the Past, he examines how Americans do not use history in a generalized and global fashion, but in fact relate to it personally. For example, studies over individuals going through exhibits over the history of aviation found families overlooking certain portions of the exhibit while focusing on an airplane design a grandparent may have helped build or a World War II aircraft a relative flew. Similarly, Vietnam veterans went directly to a display concerning the war and discussed it with other veterans while, again, ignoring other parts of the exhibit.

Launius also touches on the history of the collective American consciousness viewing its place in the world as a good power attempting to battle the rest of the world’s evils. Following events such as the Vietnam world and the end of the Cold War, this mentality has become more liberal with the advent of civil and women’s rights. Still, it remains a myth in American society that its role is that of an “Innocent Nation” and this belief was only perpetuated with the terrorist attacks and the subsequent feeling of patriotism after September 11, 2001.

The National History Standards established a basis for how history should be taught in grades K-12. This was scrutinized, however, for focusing too much on the struggles of minorities while embellishing on the shortcomings and mistreatment by white males. The education of history, it was argued—and eventually signed into law in Florida—was to be refined so as to focus more on positive aspects of American history and, as Lynne Cheney suggests, shy away from the political correctness.

This term rears its ugly head again in the discussion of museums, which Heather MacDonald summarized as overly characterized by economic, racial, and capitalist pitfalls. She proposed, of course, a curatorial blood purge of the Smithsonian to allow the institution to get back on the right track of a more centralized view of history. Indeed, it is certainly important for one of the world’s most highly revered museums to get it right as they play such a key role as contributors to “American’s public identity” (p 20).

What Launius makes apparent is the importance of American mindset and consciousness and how to best represent it. Concluding his article with a “Top Ten” list of exhibits in the world’s most visited museum that could-be but won’t-be, he provides a great example of the potential consequences and backlash of such displays in a museum. This insight is especially important to students of public history as it allows one to see the process involved in articulating an idea for an exhibit. Indeed, it is not as easy to simply have an idea and execute it, even with a simple topic such as life on other planets as this could insult those who do not believe in evolution or an examination of the moon landing as this would hastily give conspiracy theorists far too much attention.

While it is undoubtedly important to avoid stepping on as many toes as possible when designing an exhibit, it is unfortunate that potentially great opportunities to inform the general public of a topic cannot go unabashed for fear of harming the institution’s image or insulting visitors. In a nation that is so evenly split down the middle between liberal and conservative views, it is no doubt a safe bet that individuals will be offended no matter what type of compromise is attempted, such is the case with the Enola Gay. Apparently, as admitted by Launius, the only way to truly avoid this "fear of cultural warfare" (p 29) is to avoid controversial topics altogether. However, the issue then becomes that museums are not approaching new and diverse subjects, they are merely exhibiting what visitors already know and what they are comfortable with. Thus, as we have already seen in Written in Stone, it is seemingly a no-win situation.