As you might imagine, we in Los Alamos are constantly faced with the question of controversial exhibits. Our policy has been to let people on both (or all) sides tell their own stories. Their experiences are the history. 

Heather McClenahan
Executive Director
Los Alamos Historical Society
http://www.losalamoshistory.org
[log in to unmask]
PO Box 43
1050 Bathtub Row
Los Alamos, NM 87544
505-662-6272 (office)
505-470-2912 (cell)





On Dec 7, 2011, at 7:33 AM, Parry, Manon (NIH/NLM) [C] wrote:

> Dear Meg,
> I'm interested in how we might teach students to prepare for such things - and would love to hear case studies from others of how they handled difficult situations, which might be integrated into a syllabus (anonymized, if preferred).
> 
> For your immediate issue, can you interview the named names, and discuss what their objections to incorporation were? Perhaps there's a way to present the pros and cons instead of presenting opponents as the villains and the others as the successful victors? 
> Good luck!
> Manon
> 
> Manon Parry, PhD
> Curator, Exhibition Program
> National Library of Medicine
> 8600 Rockville Pike MSC 3819
> Bldg. 38 Rm. 1E-21
> Bethesda, MD 20894
> 
> Tel: 301.594.1948
> Fax: 301.402.0872
> [log in to unmask]
> www.facebook.com/NLMExhibitions
> 
> On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 5:01 PM, Meg Justus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> **
>> I am an independent curator and exhibit designer who is currently 
>> researching and building an exhibit for a local historical society 
>> about the story of their city's incorporation, the drive towards which 
>> started as early as the 1930s, but was not resolved by a successful 
>> vote of incorporation (after several unsuccessful tries) until 1995.
>> 
>> In the course of the research interviews I have conducted with the 
>> folks who were involved in the incorporation effort, both for and 
>> against, I have run up against the information that the main group 
>> working behind the scenes to prevent incorporation consisted of people 
>> who still have a great deal of clout in the city, and while people 
>> named names off the record, no one was willing to do so on-record.  
>> The publicly available printed documentation of the incorporation effort does not name names, either.
>> 
>> I am not a journalist, nor do I have any journalistic training.  I was 
>> a librarian before I started working in the museum field, and while my 
>> museum certification program (at the University of Washington) did 
>> discuss the larger realm of controversy in exhibits, local 
>> controversies like this were not mentioned.  So I'm in somewhat over 
>> my head (when I took the job I didn't realize this was going to be an issue).
>> 
>> How would you handle something like this?  I have a meeting with my 
>> contact at the museum (the president of the board) later this week, 
>> and I would like to present her with several viable alternatives.  She 
>> does not seem to be concerned about backlash on the Society, although 
>> I think perhaps she should be, but that may not be the point.
>> 
>> Any thoughts?
>> 
>> Meg Justus
>> 
>> ------------------------------
> 
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