Who Owns America's Past? The Smithsonian and the Problem of History - Exploring Historical Narratives for Students, Researchers & History Enthusiasts
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When preserving our history, what do we choose to value, why, and who decides?Honorable Mention for the National Council on Public History Book Award of the National Council on Public HistoryIn 1994, when the National Air and Space Museum announced plans to display the Enola Gay, the B-29 sent to destroy Hiroshima with an atomic bomb, the ensuing political uproar caught the museum's parent Smithsonian Institution entirely unprepared. As the largest such complex in the world, the Smithsonian cares for millions of objects and has displayed everything from George Washington's sword to moon rocks to Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. Why did this particular object arouse such controversy? From an insider’s perspective, Robert C. Post’s Who Owns America’s Past? offers insight into the politics of display and the interpretation of history.Never before has a book about the Smithsonian detailed the recent and dramatic shift from collection-driven shows, with artifacts meant to speak for themselves, to concept-driven exhibitions, in which objects aim to tell a story, displayed like illustrations in a book. Even more recently, the trend is to show artifacts along with props, sound effects, and interactive elements in order to create an immersive environment. Rather than looking at history, visitors are invited to experience it.Who Owns America’s Past? examines the different ways that the Smithsonian’s exhibitions have been conceived and designed—whether to educate visitors, celebrate an important historical moment, or satisfy donor demands or partisan agendas. Combining information from hitherto-untapped archival sources, extensive interviews, a thorough review of the secondary literature, and considerable personal experience, Post gives the reader a behind-the-scenes view of disputes among curators, academics, and stakeholders that were sometimes private and at other times burst into headline news.
Customer Reviews
Bob Post is an accomplished historian of technology specializing in transportation topics, including streetcars and drag racing, about each of which he has written excellent volumes, both also published by Johns Hopkins Press. In this, his most recent book, Post turns his historical lens on the Smithsonian Institution (SI), and in particular the National Museum of American History (NMAH) and the National Air and Space Museum (NASM). In the interest of full disclosure, I should say up front that I have known and interacted with the author in various capacities for 30 some years. We have ridden, and gotten lost on, street cars and trains in several different countries; hopped the back fences at Steam Town National Historic Site to sneak a peak at some otherwise off-limit railroad equipment; and even co-edited a book together. Thankfully, he has never taken me drag racing.For this book, Post, a now-retired SI curator, serves in the role as an extremely knowledgeable docent, walking the reader through the founding and subsequent expansions of the Smithsonian, introducing collection management polices, and revealing behind-the -scenes controversies over exhibit design and interpretation. The most notable of the the latter was that surrounding 50th anniversary plans to display and interpret portions of the Boeing B-29 "Enola Gay" of Hiroshima fame or infamy depending on one's perspective. [The complete plane is now on display at the NASM's Udvar-Hazy Center.] Other themes about which I previously had only hazy ideas, even though I have known numerous SI curators and historians over the years, include building expansions, artifact acquisition, exhibit funding, and professional staffing issues. One of the most interesting and enduring themes faced by the Smithsonian, indeed, by any museum, has been the tension between artifact display, especially when dealing with what one former NMHT director called "pieces of the True Cross," and their contextual interpretation. For me at least then, the book's most important discussion centers around the issue of whose and what stories are to be told in our museums, and how to do so. If ever asked to write another museum exhibit review, I would look at and evaluate things quite differently than I might otherwise have done, having now read this book.To steal a line, only slightly out of context, from the former NMHT director, Roger Kennedy, I would urge anyone with an interest in the history of technology, history museums and exhibitions generally, or the SI specifically to get their "mitts" on this book. If you do, you will learn a great deal about things, literally artifacts, but, more importantly, ideas about them.
