On May 30, 1996 11:54:43, 'Adrienne DeArmas <[log in to unmask]>' wrote:

>... What I, and I
>believe others, are trying to say is that just because our goal etc. is
more
>nobler and our presentation and purpose involves reality does not mean we
are
>precluded from borrowing techniques which appeal and WORK to bring people
in.

While I generally agree (and so implied) that using the proven workable
techniques of making museum exhibits and displays enjoyable, educational
and attractive -- the same strategies and techniques used by our commercial
cousins, the theme parks -- and may even confess that this may be just what
museums need to combat the draw of our mass entertainment parks, I do have
a fear -- a reservation -- that by making museums and similar cultural
institutions seem more edutainmented (ouch), the differences in goals,
values, and roles of these two institutions will begin to erode.  While we
may find ourselves expecting museums to be more interactive, more narrative
and more sensitive to the cultural and physical needs of visitors, I do not
think we will find the theme park more accepting of the need to present
culture and the history of culture (art, or, whatever) for its own sake, in
the necessary messiness of historical inquiry.

Furthermore, as museums become ever more theme-parkish (ouch again), I
expect that the scientific and/or historical missions of these institutions
will begin to wear away.  Let's say, for instance, that a museum mounted an
exhibit of the American Flag in which Old Glory is shown in its
evolutionary and historical contexts.  This exhibit also includes a section
on how the flag had grown to be a symbol of criticism and protest.  Some of
these examples jar conventional sensibilities.  Sound familiar?  From the
museum's point of view, such an exhibit is defensible as a serious study of
history.  Perhaps a scholarly catalogue is published with the exhibit.
What happens, however, to this exhibit when viewers cannot tell the
differences between an exhibit intended to lay a foundation for a patriotic
panegyric on the flag and one that is supposed to be an historical study.
The former would fit well in some theme-park's Federal Hall recreation, the
latter would not.  When the theme-park audience comes to the
theme-parkified museum and is confronted with what they now must certainly
perceive as an affront to their patriotic sensibilities, they are expecting
the museum to fulfill the goals of the theme park which it resembles -- not
that of a museum, which it does not resemble.  By embracing the theme park
package, the museum runs the risk of losing its mandate to present history
with all its warts and uncomfortable truths.

Herein lies the tragedy of the Enola Gay exhibit.  One group came to it
with the expectations of history as painted by the already theme-parkified
Air and Space museum.  Imagine being a veteran of that war, believing that
the use of the bomb ended the war in the Pacific, saved your life,
actually, and you've come to the Enola Gay exhibit, saw it as it was
planned, but expected these "conventional" significances to be underscored,
and further, expected them to be told to the new world at large so that
your own life, its peril, its salvation, and your suffering in the Pacific
theater, be taught to our descendants and be made a fixture of the national
myth.  Can you imagine how they would feel when (let's say for argument's
sake) this self-same war is presented from multiple perspectives with the
major decisions and values of those times challenged?  Their values, their
life-justifying mythos, forged through intense trauma, will have been
seriously undercut.  Do we have a right to take this away from them?

For Air and Space, this is an issue of decorum (a word I use in its
original sense).  Like it or not, large modern societies need a venue to
present its national myths (a kind word for lies), but they also need
locales in which these assertions and belief systems are questioned.  To my
mind herein lies one of the chief distinctions between theme-park and
museum.  The theme-park reinforces our sense of self, while the museum
tries to determine what it is or what it is not.

My great fear is that as museums adapt the outer forms of the theme-park,
they will also be infecting themselves with the worm that animates its
inner spirit.  In a civilization where the clothes make the man (pardon
ladies), I'd be very careful how I dress.

--

Robert A. Baron
Museum Computer Consultant
P.O. Box 93, Larchmont N.Y. 10538
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