The Smithsonian Institution is again under fire over alleged political or social commentary in the presentation of historical exhibits. I have previously criticized the Smithsonian for its stress on narratives over artifacts. There was also the outrageous exclusion of Clarence Thomas as one of the great African Americans in history. Now, the White House is demanding changes after the Smithsonian was unable to offer an exhibit on American pop culture without extraneous social or political commentary.
I have been critical of the National Museum of American History’s tendency to allocate more and more space to interpretive sections that present narratives over actual historical collections. This “less is more” approach to modern museums is not confined to the Smithsonian, but it is a shame to see so much of the collection warehoused so visitors can hear from curators on the patterns or meaning in history.
For example, many people would come to the museum to see C-3PO and R2-D2 from Star Wars, but they will find a bizarre commentary masking as a description of the items. The Smithsonian ties the movie into people fleeing from the realities of the “loss in Vietnam and revelations about Richard Nixon’s dirty-tricks presidency.” I was one of those who went to the movie when it came out, and I cannot recall anyone thinking, let alone connecting, the film to Nixon or Vietnam. It was a breakthrough technological cinematic moment. We were in awe, even if kids today mock what is now comparably low-rate special effects.
Another description, based on a 1923 circus poster, reads: “Under the big top, circuses expressed the colonial impulse to claim dominion over the world.”
In presenting another display, the Smithsonian tells visitors, “One of the earliest defining traits of entertainment in the United States was extraordinary violence.”
Some are simply weird. For example, a display of the Lone Ranger states: “The White title character’s relationship with Tonto resembled how the U.S. government imagined itself the world’s Lone Ranger.”
What? These descriptions sound like they were ripped from a paper from a curation class at Smith College.
Much of the commentary is disconnected from not just the artifacts but reality.
For me, the problem is not political bias, but the new culture of curators emerging from higher education. Just showing artifacts with neutral, factual descriptions is considered passe and pedantic. For people who are more interested in seeing original items of historical importance, they are met with displays focusing on interpretive elements and thematic narratives.
I remember when the “Castle” on the mall housed a wonderful collection of items sent to the Capitol for our centennial anniversary, including exhibits like a liberty bell made from tobacco. It was delightful to walk through the different artifacts. You felt that you had walked back in time. The last time I visited, it had been replaced with a boring collection that interpreted the evolution of the mall and the city.
I may be a throwback when it comes to such questions. As many readers of this blog are aware, I am a history enthusiast, particularly in the field of military history. I love being able to walk through artifacts and reach my own interpretive conclusions. Nevertheless, most people would agree that the Smithsonian descriptions in this exhibit are bizarre and should be changed.
Ukraine should keep tabs on Putin’s location, and relentlessly bomb every place and location that he visits and is known to be, never letting up. If Ukraine keep doing this, then sooner or later, they will get him.
What the f*ck does this stupid ass post have to do with Turley’s article?? To the f*cking dumba** that wrote this, shut the f*ck uo and move on!!
What the —- does this comment have to do with Professor Turley’s article?
Dennis Prager said long ago, and it’s still true today even moreso, that “the Left ruins everything it touches.”
That is rich coming from Prager, who is a hate filled white Christian nationalist.
Um, what?!! That takes the prize for the most bizarre comment of the week. You belong in a padded room.
So loving America is bad?
Typical lib…. You hate everything
The problem should be addressed by, I believe the board of regents made up of congressmen and senators, otherwise cutbacks on funding should minimize the problem?
This so bizarre, so odd, so compulsive, that for the left, every single optional task must be riddled with politics. It’s as though they’ve been programmed and their minds seconded to some weird force. These dark side volunteers are their own ruination. The obsessive compulsive do not attract but a few.
@gdonaldallen
‘They have been programmed.’
FIFY 😉
I too have seen this bias grow and either easily turn off the station, delete from my newsfeed and/or no longer donate. It’s that easy!
The downside in what you suggest is that it does nothing to fix the problem while depriving you (or any like-minded observer) of a benefit you are entitled to enjoy. Any taxpayer-supported enterprise should offer a benefit to every taxpayer without picking sides in political matters.
Exactly, it is the National Museum, not the DNC or any other party.
This is the very reason I have given up on news channels, all of them and pop culture in general. I am sick and tired of constantly being told what to think about what I am seeing and hearing. Present me with the facts, events, and historical objects and I’ll reach my own conclusions
In 2023, I took my grandkids to see the exhibit on ‘Cellphones’ at the National Museum of Natural History. They enjoyed the exhibits, but I was disturbed by its emphasis on what I would label ‘contributions of marginalized people.’
As a physicist who has worked for over 60 years in solid state devices, I know that the major contributors were mostly white guys. Either the curators of the exhibit didn’t know this, or they were interested in suppressing history. What do you think?
Was the AT&T Bellboy paging receiver on display. In the mid-60s AT&T sold the technology to Motorola that a few years later added audio which may technically be the first “cellphone.” I was given the prototype Bellboy by my Father along with the base of the only other famous “Red Phone” at NORAD. I’ve offered to donate both to the Smithsonian and other museums but none have been interested.
For once I agree with the good Professor Turley.
I said just yesterday that the leftists have invaded the law schools (when discussing the thought process utilized by the likes of Katanji Brown Jackson), Medical schools (sad and frightening) and especially our Journalism schools. I said that they have now infested all our “elite” universities our high schools and now even our elementary schools, as evidenced by the expulsion of two young Jewish girls for complaining about being called baby killers. I should then not be surprised that they have invaded our Art schools as well.
The left truly ruins everything, and that is not hyperbole. Go to a concert and have Bono, Sprinsteen, John Mellencamp or some nut cases like Bob Vylon or Kneecap and the concert is ruined. Watch a movie on Netflix and our founding fathers are black or gay. Watch a football game and they are kneeling instead of saluting our flag. Watch an awards show and be called a fascist bigot.
Have you daughter play a sport and watch her get mauled by a fake “girl” and then have the boy change with her in the locker room.
The left ruins everything.
HullBobby,
All you have to do is look at how badly some of the recent, woke, Star Wars have done not so well. In fact, their insistence to inject various woke into them got more than a few canceled, or bombed at the box office.
As Bongino often says: Republicans may not be the solution to all our problems, but Democrats are absolutely the cause of them.
You are not a throwback, Professor. I shared a similar experience from The Getty the other day – it’s rampant, absurd, puerile, and frankly – twisted. These are not serious people, and certainly not of adult capacity in any meaningful sense. We need to keep saying it. One of the healthiest things we can do for our country and planet is to make woke/Marxism fringe again.
None of the WH objections are all valid. The Smithsonian is putting the artifacts in their proper historical context. And sometimes that does not make the US look good.
The good professor is correct. Star Wars had nothing to do with Vietnam or Nixon. Read an article that George Lucas inspiration for the screen play was a older Japanese movie about samurai. He also based the relationship between C3PO and R2D2 off another Japanese movie.
@Upstate
That was Kurosawa’s ‘The Hidden Fortress’, and Star Wars was a wee bit mire more than ‘inspired’ by it (is pilfered too string a word?), as great as Star Wars is. There’s a healthy dose of Flash Gordon in there, too.
The generations in question have an overwhelming tendency to recontextualize literally almost everything to their own mushroom headed narcissism. Just my opinion, but think it’s because they inherited such relative prosperity and peace and were not particularly challenged in their upbringings and ‘missed out’ on the struggle – so instead of being grateful and contributing from that mentality, they manufacture crisis whole cloth.
It’s a stupid and juvenile game but with real consequences beyond institutional walls, and we’ve all been forced to play along for too long. I think the levee is finally cracking.
James,
Thank you for the clarification.
Right about the “struggle.” It is a common theme in many books and movies. As you point out, some generations are too squeemish about things like hard work, struggle and just want everything handed to them.
Jawboned.
James
healthy dose of Flash Gordon in there, too
___________________
Be-careful… Showing ones age. (-:
It worked for The Magnificent Seven, so why not?
*. Godzilla and Mothra. 😂. Too many cocoons for the silk make nightmare.
Cool story bro.
I think you don’t understand “historical context”.
“None of the WH objections are all valid”. Huh?
The WH does not have shit power to tell the Smithsonian to do anything.
Ha, just like the WH can’t tell Iran not to have nukes.
How disappointing. My family enjoyed visiting all of the Smithsonian many times. The Museum of History and Technology (the name was later changed by Jimmy Carter) was a history lesson in and of itself, of the 17th through the 20th century. Air and Space offered a guide to the history of manned flight. The Natural History Museum had a fabulous collection of fossils, gems, and natural history. The other museums on the Mall (of Asian art and European art from late medieval to modern) were a treat too. I’m sorry to see that the woke philosophy has not been eradicated from this mall treasure.
After touring the Smithsonian, I went to see all the fossils and extinct animals. Thank goodness the Capitol rotunda was open to visit. 😂
To work at an institution such as that you need, at minimum, a BA and most likely advanced degrees from what had, until now, been considered “prestigious” schools.
Of course they all indulge in progressive group think and that limited range of thinking amounts to the indoctrination that was inculcated during their times at these prog/left cesspools of divisive and totally incorrect understandings of the universe.
Much of this transition of our cultural institutions from being American in nature to focusing more on, and the importation of, European modern art which was given a heavy lift by the employment of these radical progressive socialists during their Euro-centered visions and pushed aside what had, until then, been a developing American cultural ethos.
Most people will recognize the names of Picasso and Pollack but most will not know of Grant Wood. This is the result of our progressive enthrallment with a global vision of culture that is basically rudderless and subjective in nature and does nothing towards cultural adhesion.
It was the WPA that gave the biggest financial push to replace American culture with European progressive ideology.
I am sure you have been to the army museum at Fort Belvior. The museum isn’t very woke and it is more enlightening of our history than many exhibits at the Smithsonian.
I go to museums to see old stuff, rare stuff, and famous stuff. I’m intelligent enough to understand why the stuff is in the museum.
” I’m intelligent enough to understand why the stuff is in the museum.”
I doubt that.
These are the types of reasons I no longer donate to either Monticello or the Smithsonian.
Hey there Mr. Critic Lawyer, Those curators didn’t go to Sarah Lawrence for nothing and they are enlightening you just as they were – so get with it, buddy.
They are not enlightened. Far from it.
Nice bit of sarcasm this
It is maddening to see the glory of our history replaced with meaningless word salads. They are probably hiring too many Ivy League grads.
They can add wokism to the exhibits because it’s now a relic of the past. I can write the interpretation for them.
Diogenes,
I am looking forward to see how different historians interpret the dark, woke period in American history.
T Rex on the Smithsonian website starts with good paleontology discussion of dinosaurs. How does it end? By sermon on humans making choices, presumably about climate change. 150 million years of dinosaurs ended with the Chichalub earth impactor just off Yucatan. Nothing to do with human climate change. If you say one thing is the same as the other, they have to match.
Leave it to libs to muck up everything.
Mike Gilmore,
Thank you for providing that input. I would of thought they would of blamed the extinction of the dinosaurs by dinosaur farts and then linking that to climate change.
The truth about 🦕 extinction is much more bizarre than Dino facts.
Upstate Farmer thanks. I might add that the Chichalub (Mayan for the tail of the Devil) was about 66 million years ago. That said, your thought on dinosaur farts as Left climate change extinction doctrine is all too plausible. Sadly.