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Date: | Fri, 27 Jan 1995 09:34:46 EST |
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I am writing this without having seen the actual exhibit script, and I
am basing some of my comments on the "West as America" exhibit also
mounted the Smithsonian or the National Gallery of Art. As you may
recall, that exhibit used pasinting to reinterpet the American
experience in the West and it ran into a firestorm of critism and was
rewritten. I saw the rewritten version of the exhibtit and it seemed
to met that in the effort to present the "alternative view" of the
west, they overlooked key information and drew unwarrented conclusions
from the paintings. In short, it was appallingly bad history. I fear
that this is what happened to the Enola Gay Exhibit.
I believe that ideologically based history, either Marxist, Patriotic
or Politically Correct is generally bad history since it tries to fit
the facts into a preconcieved conlusion. The story is never that
simple and there are always many sides to it. Both exhibits, it would
appear, are (were) based more on ideology than the facts.
I believe that both the settling of the American West and the dropping
of the Atomic Bomb draw ambivalent response from most people. They
think it was in general a good thing, but are disturbed by the human
cost borne by the other side. Perhaps a more ambivalent and balanced
approach by the curators of both exhibits would have been acceptable
to the general population and allowed them to explore the other side
of the story.
[The views expressed herein belong to the author and are not
necessarily the views of the Department of Defense, Armed Forces
Institute of Pathology or the National Museum of Health and Medicine.]
Alan Hawk
National Museum of Health and Medicine
Armed Forces Institute of Pathology
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