I receive Museum-L in digest form so please forgive the lack of a specific
header here.
 
I am writing about the various postings with respect to the NASM and the
Enola Gay exhibit.  The issues are fairly complex, and they are being
confused in much of the debate.
 
The first question (and the more important one in my view) involves principles
about muesum exhibition and the authority of curatorial scholarship.  As a
matter of principle, museums and museum workers should be prepared to say
that curatorial authority for interpretation should be as sacrosanct
in museums as professorial freedom and authority are in universities.  The
museum world has been shamefully slow in asserting this principle and in
defeniding it, in my opinion.  It began with art museums in the Reagan-Bush
years, and history and science museums are now starting to catch hell.
 
The second issue involves the present case of the Enola Gay exhibit and its
content.  I am not prepared to say what I think about the quality of  an
exhibit that I have not seen, and I wonder why others feel so confident that
they know precisely what is in the exhibit, especially since the reporting
about it (including in Museum News) has been so slight, slanted, and partial.
Museum exhibits ought to provoke and ought to bve controversial. They also
should make us uncomfortable from time to time.  If this one does that, it
will succeed, I think, even if at the endo of the day I disagree with its
interpretation.  Arguments for "balance" like that made by Chancellor Heyman
in his innaugural address at the Smithsonian can be covers for emptying
exhibitions of their capacity to educate and provoke debate.
 
In any case, I would simply like to caution us all to distinguish between the
argument about principles and the argument about the content of this exhibit.
The first can be undertaken vigorously and knowledgably by many members of this
list.  Very few of us are really in a position to say anything at all
(supported by evidence) about the second question.  AAM and Museum News
could do us all a big favor by reporting the issue fully and completetely and
by obtaining a copy of the script for the exhibition.
 
Douglas Greenberg
President and Director
The Chicago Historical Society
Clark Street at North Avenue
Chicago  Il.  60614-6099
Telephone 312 642 5035
FAX 312 266 2077 OR 312 642 1199
Bitnet U27777@UICVM
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