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 [log in to unmask]