This is an interesting discussion, and raises a number of issues about
interpretation, presentation, and scholarship.  I'd like to add an anecdote,
which may throw the problems raised into a somewhat different ligh:
 
In 1985, I served as~Assistant Curator of Photographs at the Valentine
Museum in Richmond, Virginia.  My first curatorial assignment was an
exhibition entitled "From Resistance to Renaissance," which dealt with
the issue of segregation in the city from the 1950's to the 1980's.  The
director knew that this was a touchy subject, but felt strongly that, as
the museum of the city of Richmond, we had an obligation to represent the
whole city, and the whole history of the city, pleasant or not.
 
My co-curator and I set out to amass an oral history of the period, and
to collect representative objects--yearbooks from local high schools,
advertisements, demonstration placards, signs, newspapers, video clips.
We met with scepticism, and a certain resistance--after all, museums, we
were told, are elitist institutions, what interest do museums have in the
common stuff of people's lives, especially the things people wonld rather
ignore or forget?
 
The final exhibition generated more discussion than controversy, and became
the first in a long string of such exhibitions--dealing with working people,
the tobacco industry, and so on--that allowed the objects very much to speak
for themselves, and which opened the muse's doors to everyone in the
community.
 
Perhaps smaller museums are better able to make such an effort, to make both
objects and history accessible.  That's actually a rather lofty purpose.
 
Jenni Rodda, Curator
Visual Resources Collections
Institute of Fine Arts
1 East 78th Street
New York, NY  10021
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