Between history and memory

The National Air and Space Museum has been bitterly attacked for its ill-fated exhibit, The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, originally scheduled to open in May 1995 with the restored fuselage of the Enola Gay on display. The exhibit, critics argued, failed to provide the crucial context for the use of the bomb: the horrors of combat in the Pacific. The curators were accused of practicing “revisionist” history by portraying the Japanese as merely victims of nuclear attacks by vengeful Americans through photographs of victims of the bomb, particularly women and children. There was no place in this exhibit, argued critics, for “Monday morning quarterbacking” about the decision to drop the bomb. Nor did they think it appropriate to discuss the postwar legacy of the nuclear arms race. Critics charged that the Smithsonian had created an offensive exhibit that insulted World War II veterans

Archaeology · Context (archaeology · Nuclear weapon · Offensive · Political science · Sociology · World War II · Archaeological Research and Protection · Engineering · Gender Studies · History · Law · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Photography and Visual Culture

• The Greek Temple as Museum

  Josephine Shaya•American Journal of Archaeology•2005

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