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 Internet [log in to unmask]