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December 29, 1995
Web posted at: 9:30 p.m. EST
From Correspondent Kathleen Koch
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- 1995 was not a very good year for anyone hoping to mount a controversial exhibit at a public museum in the United States. From slavery to Freud to the atomic bomb, potentially offensive exhibits were scaled back, delayed or scrapped.
If there is an intellectual chill in the air at public museums, it may have begun in Washington last January. After protests from veterans and lawmakers over what they considered a pro-Japanese viewpoint, the Smithsonian Institution scaled back its exhibit of the plane, the "Enola Gay," that bombed Hiroshima.
Gone were references to the debate over dropping the first atomic bomb, or to the damage it wrought. Opponents say that a public museum isn't the place for such an emotional presentation. "It's not a teaching institution per se, which is what some wanted it to be maybe four or five years ago. It's a museum. It's America's showplace," Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, said.
"It says finally that you better bring your asbestos clothes when you go to do an exhibit. We're going to have to broker our information in a way that perhaps is more subtle. But some things can't be subtle."
-- Exhibit curator John Michael Vlach,
Library of Congress
The museum director says that future exhibits must show both sides of an issue, and let visitors decide which is right. "I think if they're given choices with regard to what to believe, that's fine. I don't think we have a credo in which we are going to instruct people that that's the way they have to think." said Smithsonian secretary I. Michael Heyman. (127K AIFF sound or 127K WAV sound)
Later, changes were made in the Science in American Life exhibit at the Smithsonian, which featured an anti-nuclear message. Scientists and conservatives said it was too negative.
At the Library of Congress, there's an empty room where last week stood an exhibit on slavery, scrapped because some library workers found it offensive.
Only weeks earlier, the library postponed indefinitely a Sigmund Freud exhibit after protests from academics who believe his theories have been discredited. The library blames budget pressures.
John Michael Vlach, curator of the slavery exhibit, said that it sends a message that smacks of censorship. "It says finally that you better bring your asbestos clothes when you go to do an exhibit. We're going to have to broker our information in a way that perhaps is more subtle. But some things can't be subtle."
Why are these exhibits being scaled back, modified, or scrapped? Some say it's a clash between older generations accustomed to celebratory history, and baby-boomers who view events more critically. Others blame a conservative Republican Congress which isn't afraid to use its power over museum budgets to influence their contents.
Insiders insist that there's a price to pay in the push for politically benign exhibits. "If we beat up on the arts and the humanities and the sciences, we are beating up on the possibility that we can work hard to learn something. And that's true of beating up on history as well." said Roger Kennedy, who is the former director of the Smithsonian's American History Museum. (136K AIFF sound or 136K WAV sound)
Like controversial art exhibits, history with a strong critical message may soon be relegated to private museums.
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