"The juggernaut of Museum Politics is moving again, straight toward the Mall."
So begins Philip Kennicott's report in the Washington Post. The article notes that there is a move afoot to establish a Museum of the American Latino.
It's totally predictable that once one museum focused on a single ethnic group was given the green light to build on/near the Mall, others would start lining up. The National Museum of the American Indian was the first, I guess, and incidentally, it is a colossal failure as a museum); we have the African-American Culture and History Museum coming soon, and now this latest, but I feel certain, not last, entry.
But perhaps I'm wrong about that. In a way, developments of the past 25 to 40 years on the Mall have been all about assuaging the national conscience for groups that felt "left out" of formal history in some way. Maybe it all began with the huge Vietnam War memorial (now scheduled to expand even more), which came about largely because of national guilt about the way the people who fought that war were ignored or even actively denigrated. Yet as a Vietnam veteran myself, sorry, I have to say, I never felt I needed a monument.
Then came the rush to museums, with much the same justification. Indians? It's a wonder Native Americans survive at all outside museums but in this age we feel remotely derelict for having sought to eradicate them. African-Americans? Well, we all know that story, and though things have improved, that group undoubtedly and justifiably still feels it has been omitted from the national story. Latinos? Arguably less so, but still, much of today's swelling Latino population in the U.S. feels invisible. Get a museum, get your legitimacy -- will Latinos be the last group? Almost certainly not.
It's not that these groups and cultures aren't an important or interesting part of our country's history, nor that we should ignore that heritage. But I have several objections to all this museum-building.
First, I realize that Washington is the nation's capital but why can't we seem to build museums elsewhere anymore? The District of Columbia really doesn't need any more museums. We have too many! There's no room for anything else. The city is boring enough to walk through with all those government buildings but filling in the rest of the limited space with wall-to-wall museums (each with its dull cafeteria and multi-acre "gift shop") doesn't improve things a bit. There is no parking and very little practical public transportation for visitors to these facilities. Tourism is an important element of the DC economy, but variety might serve tourism development better. When you've got 50 museums in town, the 51st doesn't add much economic value. Moreover, if they're on federal land, they won't be taxable so it can be argued that extra museums are a collective economic drag that decreases the tax base.
Second, the traditional character of the National Mall will be forever altered with each addition. We need to think about that. Part of the attraction for museums; I suppose, besides the prestige of a Mall location, is that they all want to be tax-free. But the available space is extremely limited. The Mall is far, far from being the jewel of the park-designer's art that Central Park is in New York City. It looks more like a very large sandlot where neighborhood kids might gather to play ball (as they often do). Yet most people for generations have found the extended open vista from the Capitol down the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial (since it was built) impressive and inspiring. The increasing clamor for new museum sites inevitably will obtrude into that space, as the World War II Memorial already has done. Kennicott's article (above) is mainly focused on the suggestion that there are other, potentially better sites for a Latino museum than directly on the Mall. But it's clear that suggestion will fall on deaf ears.
Last, and by far most important, is that the proliferation of sectoral museums, particularly here in the nation's capital, skews the real nature of our historical development and makes it more difficult to understand. As I argued more than a year ago with respect to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, a far more sensible approach would be an integrated single museum or museum complex that presents the many currents of American society in relationship to one another. If we may agree that the Smithsonian hasn't succeeded in achieving that up to now, we shouldn't think that a clutch of museums focused on single aspects of a complex story is going to fill the gap. In fact, their presence will delay any impetus to represent African-American, or Latino-American, history as an integral part of the fabric of our nationhood.
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