Barbara Weitbrecht of NASM wrote,
>But there are neutral or positive terms for these concepts as well.
>One man's "revisionism" is another's "reassessment" -- all the word
>means is that history is being reexamined, and new conclusions drawn.
>"Editorializing" is a value-loaded word for "presenting a point of
>view" or "telling a story."  Many museum professionals feel that an
>exhibit should *have* a point of view, lest it be a mere cabinet of
>curiosities.  "Whose story is being told?" is a key question of exhibit
>design.  Subjectivity is not necessarily either evil or avoidable in
>our profession.
 
I think Barbara has articulated an extremely important point about the
power of words and our responses to their connotations.
 
One of the main ideas underlying the gobbledygook of Post Modernism is that
no opinion, no artifact, no idea, and even (if you're a serious
Deconstructionist) no word can escape the political implications of its
particular context, and as that context changes, the message changes as
well.  What is *not* said in the re-vamped Enola Gay exhibit is just as
eloquent and politically potent as whatever may have been said in the
"revisionist" or "reassessed" version.  (Sorry if I've mangled the Po-Mo
premise, I'm only an Academic hanger-on, not actually one.)
 
Every exhibit we do is subject to this phenomenon, even the cabinet of
curiosities model based on a so-called Rationalist ideal of objectivity.
 
Recently, I read a book by Stephen Jay Gould (Harvard paleontologist and
prolific popular science writer) called "The Mismeasure of Man."  Written
in the early '80s, it's about the scientific rationalization of racist and
(im)moral political stances through certain conceptions of what comprises
human intelligence.  (An anti-The Bell Curve. . .).  Its not-so-subtle
subtext is that even when we try to be objective and well-intentioned, our
biases creep in and affect our perception of exactly what conclusions a
given set of data/information/evidence point to.  As a museum professional
who deals with issues of interpretation and communication to visitors, I
found the book to be an interesting wake-up call with general application
to the field.
 
It's time that museums woke up to their biases, struggled to *re-search*
*re-assess* and *re-present* new/old ideas to themselves and, as Lisa
Roberts posted earlier, to our visitors.
 
Britt Raphling
Evaluator, Adler Planetarium
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