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“There needs to be a focus on the larger issues rather than getting bogged down in a single issue. “People who structure exhibits need to understand the context of the times,” Wolk said.
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The mix makes for an accurate historical presentation.” Memories of events and the feelings of the people involved in them play an important part in giving a true portrayal of historical events, he said. He pointed to what he calls the “false dichotomy between history and memory,” noting that the issue is not history versus memory, but that “history and memory equals good history. “It was not that these issues should not have been raised, but that in the early scripts the sheer repetition of them pointed in my own mind to an agenda,” Wolk said. The initial scripts, and especially the first script, were neither balanced, fair, nor in proper context.” Wolk said his impression after reading the scripts was that they showed a “preponderance of material and a repetition of issues” that raise doubts about strategic bombing, imply that the unconditional surrender policy was wrong and suggest the atomic bomb should have been tested before it was used. “My own view,” Wolk said, “is that the script failed on three levels–substance, process and structure. Wolk, senior historian at the Air Force History Support Office, said he had seen the script for the exhibition before its scheduled opening date, but contends that suggestions by the Air Force Association were never acknowledged or incorporated into subsequent writings. “I think we can answer that question in the affirmative.” “At the National Air and Space Museum, we began the program with only one question to be answered: Is this script an honest, accurate account of the story? We didn’t pause to answer a second question–Are there factors at work here that might make an honest and accurate account of the events in question unacceptable to Museum staff members or to the public? The situation was complicated by the appearance of counter-protests from a variety of scholarly groups and peace activists who chastised the Museum for caving in to the critics,” Crouch said. Members of the House and Senate expressed their dissatisfaction. “Public outrage, fed by an avalanche of critical stories in the news media, reached a fevered pitch. Plans for the exhibition included not only the plan and photographs of the results of the bombing, but, critics said, devoted far too much space to moral issues without considering reactions from Americans on both sides of the issue.
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“If the Museum has an obligation to inspire its visitors,” said Thomas Crouch, chairman of the Aeronautics Department at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, “we believe that it should also at least occasionally move beyond that function in an effort to help visitors understand the complex background of aerospace development and the impact those developments have on the world.” Crouch supervised curators who prepared the original script for the interpretive exhibit of the Enola Gay. Panelists agreed that it was important to mount exhibitions that are controversial, but varied in their approach to doing so. Enola Gay experience teaches need for sensitivity Enola Gay experience teaches need for sensitivityĬonsiderably more than a year of writing, collecting, planning and organizing crumbled in January when the Smithsonian Institution, under fire from veteran’s groups, scrapped plans for an exhibition featuring Enola Gay, the B-29 warplane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, signaling the beginning of the end of World War II.įour panelists gathered here last week at a symposium on controversial museum exhibits sponsored by the U-M and the Smithsonian Institution to discuss “The Enola Gay Exhibit: A Case Study in Controversy,” and to try to determine what led to such a high level of conflict.