Shortly after I regretted the concept of a new Latino-American Museum on the Mall in Washington DC, Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post, who wrote the original piece about where such a museum might best be located, published a more thoughtful followup.
In it, he raised some of the thoughts I had voiced, which is nice, but he added a couple of interesting new points as well:
The National Museum of the American Indian, whose layout I also regretted, has experienced a considerable drop in the number of visitors: 2.2 million in its first year (2005) but only 1.4 million last year. This is a great statistic. It illustrates my point that the NMAI is a failure that doesn't work as a museum. Kennicott notes that the problem is, it was designed with "native American communities as its client," rather than museum visitors. Amen to that!
Kennicott also notes that the downturn in attendance at the NMAI may signal that the trend of ethnic museums has already run its course. He points out that shortly after the new Latino museum opens, if it does, minority groups will be a majority in the U.S. -- an odd time to be building new monuments to the concept of minorities. This fits logically, too, with the idea that our history ought to be presented as a cohesive whole or, as Kennicott puts it, that "history won't be well-served by an infinite fracturing into sub-narratives, each controlled by a different cultural group."
Comments