Carol

Your request about tolerance prompts some thought about the way museums as
a whole deal with contested areas, with controversy and with difference in
their exhibitions and public programmes.

In Australia there is a lot of pussy footing when it comes to difficult
debate.  I've just seen a display in a national park which ignores the
vigorous and hotly contested national debate about the clear felling and
wood chipping of our old growth forests for the export market. People chain
themselves to trees and bulldozers, but you would never know it from the
bland-leading-the-bland approach to interpretive communications I saw the
other day.

 Yet in Strahan, Tasmania, a town bitterly divided over a conservation
issue has created a visitor centre through a community development process
which does tackle the issues of difference very imaginatively. It is tough,
provocative, and effective.

Is tolerance not a matter for institutional policy and  practice, as well
as a subject for a special museum?

I would be very interested to hear from the List about exhibitions which
are courageous and tough-minded.

cheers,  Rachel Faggetter

Rachel Faggetter
Natural and Cultural Heritage Interpretation
Museum Studies Unit
Deakin University-Rusden
662 Blackburn Road, Clayton, VICTORIA 3168
Tel: 61.3 9244 7567   FAX 61.3. 9244 7480