The concept of an exhibition on "creationism" is fascinating.  What would one
display?  Would you display the same artifacts, just interpeted differently?
This, to me, illuminates interesting questions about the purposes of museums
and museum exhibitions.  Since I'm one of the old-fashioned fuddy-duddies who
believes that the fundamental role of museums is to collect, preserve, and
make available for study historical artifacts as evidence of the past and to
allow multiple interpretations, rather than merely collecting and displaying
objects to illustrate and promote a predetermined agenda, it strikes me that
a natural-history exhibition containing prehistoric artifacts would actually
be a great vehicle to present the evolutionist vs. creationist debate.

When a "creationist" looks at the artifacts in an "evolution" exhibition and
declares that there is no scientific "evidence" to support the theory of
evolution, it piques my curiosity.  It makes me wonder how creationists
interpret or explain these objects and their relationships to each other.  It
makes me envision a curatorial collaboration between a "creationist"
scientist (and they assure us that there are such people) and an
"evolutionist" scientist, presenting their disparate interpretations of
appropriate artifactual evidence, side by side.  So if anyone is looking for
a REAL exhibition challenge, that's my suggestion...

David Haberstich

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