Jeff Kupperman has a valid question about my posting:
>
what is the point of holding an exhibition that purposely ignores
>one's own current scholarship?  Aren't museums in the business of presenting
>ideas to the public--ideas which are often based on original research?
>
I guess I was less than clear about my own point of view.  I do think
that yes, absolutely, museums should present complex issues to its public
in exhibitions.  And yes, absolutely, museums should utilize current
scholarship when it is available.  (We would never think of undertaking an
exhibition project without it.)  HOWEVER, I think that we need to make
more of an effort to show the public how we got to the conclusions that
we reached.

I hold fast to the view that the public understanding of history seriously
lags behind current scholarship.  But you cannot present the latest
scholarship without explaining how you got there--not only will the public
likely not understand it, they won't BELIEVE it.  That is what I meant by
saying are our methods "transparent" enough.

On a similar issue, I also think that we need to tread carefully when
presenting topics that are within the living memory of our audience.
People are much less likely, I think, to accept a new interpretation of
events they clearly remember living.  Despite the fact that everyone
probably realizes what time does to memory, certain feelings and emotions
stay very close to the surface with many people.  I cannot tell you the
number of World War II veterans who were close to tears when they told me
the stories of their service while dropping off objects for our World
War II exhibit.  What the living want is for museums to help them tell
their story of the past to their children and grandchildren.  We can
certainly do that, and we can also drop suggestions that some of the things
they may have believed didn't happen exactly the way they remember them.
But we have to be careful, and we have to involve some of them in our
planning.


Let's talk about this some more.

Claudia Nicholson
Curator of Collections
South Dakota State Historical Society, Pierre

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