Nicholson, Claudia wrote: > > Harry Needham has raised an interesting point when he noted that the > museum gets accused of "glorifying" Hitler because they show the > decapitated head of a Hitler statue in the museum. > > I ran into the same problem in South Dakota. An exhibit of a Ku Klux > Klan robe brought a sharp response from some visitors, including one who > bothered to write her anger. She accused us of "glorifying" the Klan > because we showed the outfit. We thought that it would be good to point > out that the Klan was not simply an organization of the American > South--that it was active in the northern parts of the country too, and > in the case of South Dakota, went after foreigners and Catholics. > > Unfortunately, many visitors still think that what museums do is glorify > the past. Anything that we show, therefore, is out for the public to > see so that they might revel in the ever-upward spiral of civilization. > Although the context and explanatory labeling of any potentially > controversial object in a museum exhibit can very carefully show why the > object is not there to be glorified, if the visitor does not read the > label or pay attention to the context, they can make an incorrect > assumption. > > Once again, I will ask the question: how do museums really educate the > public to what we are trying to do? How do we get visitors in a > questioning frame of mind when they come through our doors? How can we > get them to question--and then seek to find the answer--when they see > something in our galleries that they think is inappropriate? How do we > get them to understand that, at least in history museums, we are tying > to talk about both the good and the bad of the past? > > Claudia J. Nicholson > Curator > Museum Collections Department > Minnesota Historical Society > 345 Kellogg Blvd. W. > St. Paul, MN 55102-1906 > Tel.: 612/297-7442 > FAX: 612/297-2967 > E-mail: [log in to unmask] > > > Hmmm. I wonder what will happen when we open our new interpretive center, which will include a working antebellum plantation with slaves? Will we be glorifying slavery? That, by-the-way, will be more of a problem to us when we go about recruiting (hiring)the interpeters. -- Bob Handy, Director Brazoria County Historical Museum Angleton, Texas http://www.bchm.org