I was wondering if the debate over putting a display that included the
Enola Gay and other objects about the atomic bombimgs would also fit into
this category.  I would also like to hear what other people had to say
about that exhibit.


On Thu, 22 Jan 1998, Nicholson, Claudia wrote:

> Harry Needham has raised an interesting point when he noted that the
> museum gets accused of "glorifying" Hitler because they show the
> decapitated head of a Hitler statue in the museum.
>
> I ran into the same problem in South Dakota.  An exhibit of a Ku Klux
> Klan robe brought a sharp response from some visitors, including one who
> bothered to write her anger.  She accused us of "glorifying" the Klan
> because we showed the outfit.  We thought that it would be good to point
> out that the Klan was not simply an organization of the American
> South--that it was active in the northern parts of the country too, and
> in the case of South Dakota, went after foreigners and Catholics.
>
> Unfortunately, many visitors still think that what museums do is glorify
> the past.  Anything that we show, therefore, is out for the public to
> see so that they might revel in the ever-upward spiral of civilization.
> Although the context and explanatory labeling of any potentially
> controversial object in a museum exhibit can very carefully show why the
> object is not there to be glorified, if the visitor does not read the
> label or pay attention to the context, they can make an incorrect
> assumption.
>
> Once again, I will ask the question:  how do museums really educate the
> public to what we are trying to do?  How do we get visitors in a
> questioning frame of mind when they come through our doors?  How can we
> get them to question--and then seek to find the answer--when they see
> something in our galleries that they think is inappropriate?  How do we
> get them to understand that, at least in history museums, we are tying
> to talk about both the good and the bad of the past?
>
> Claudia J. Nicholson
> Curator
> Museum Collections Department
> Minnesota Historical Society
> 345 Kellogg Blvd. W.
> St. Paul, MN  55102-1906
>   Tel.:  612/297-7442
>   FAX: 612/297-2967
>   E-mail:  [log in to unmask]
>
> >
>