The director of Liberal Studies at NYU who is, I think, Polish, recently visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum and left with a very negative impression. She thought it entombed the holocaust and made it into another tourist attraction (she feels the same way about what's been done at Auschwitz). She was particularly appalled that children were given stickers and other souvenirs and that they were given paper and pencils to draw their reactions to the exhibits, as if it was just another tourist spot in D.C. I dunno. I thought she was being a bit picky but, still, I do see her point. I haven't been to the Memorial yet but since I had the designer for a teacher I pretty much know the place inch by inch, as well as other "historical" projects his firm is working on (Martin Luther King Memorial, Motown Museum, Newseum, The Museum of Golf etc.) and I came away from the class with the feeling that what we're getting is designer history. But, then again, I'm still upset about what was done to my hometown museum (Cheney Cowles in Spokane, WA) where the old, frankly indadequate, displays were replaced with lots of flash and, to me, no heart. Grumpy in New York Robbin Murphy [log in to unmask]