Article Review: American Memory, Culture Wars, and the Challenge of Presenting Science and Technology

In his article “American Memory, Culture Wars, and the Challenge of Presenting Science and Technology in a National Museum”, Roger D. Launius tackles the issue of the interpretation of science and technology in museums such as the NASM, and what kind of perspectives and approaches such type of museums could adopt. What should the NASM role be in the debate over American identity and past-making? Launius starts by going over the main historical schools from the 1940s to nowadays. He identifies two primary ones: first, the consensus school, followed by the new social history. The consensus interpretation tends to look at the past and interpret it as one unified past, the past of one people. Then, in the 1960s, the new social history approached the past under its multitude (black history, women’s history, etc.). This is important because for Launius it helps to understand the gap between the general public, cultural institutions, and the academics. Indeed, during the 1980s, scholars were drifting away from the consensus approach, whereas cultural institutions kept holding on to it. This is what Launius calls “the battle for control of the national memory”: is this history to be a sole unified one, or is it to be the one of different communities, evolving in different contexts? In the 1990s, the attempts to control the making of a unified history for the United States became more and more present, via control of television, secondary school and others. Launius asks the question, in the midst of those struggles, where do the museums stand? The question raised by Crouch, curator of the NASM when asking “Do you want an exhibition intended to make veterans feel good, or do you want an exhibition that will lead our visitors to talk about the consequences of the atomic bombing of Japan” (p.19) points at the dichotomy of the situation. Is it possible for museums to include different perspectives and have divergent communities accept this? According to Launius, controversial exhibits have always been found, but they have grown in a more frequent phenomenon during the 1990s. Has something changed for that to happen? Launius thinks it might come from the fact that the “forces of the consensus, one-nation, one-people history” (p. 20) have been leading more and more attacks to control the making of national history. What is at stake for an institution like the Smithsonian? How should they deal with those issues? Launius is worried that several of the recent exhibits put up at the Smithsonian become more and more uncritical and consensual. What should be the Smithsonian’s role in relation to an “official memory”? Should it allow visitors to encounter divergent meanings and interpret them themselves?
Launius then goes on to present the three ways people relate to history (through personal experience, through relatives or friends, and finally through broader historical events with which they have no personal connection). According to him, museums’ mission is to find ways to connect people to that last category, to bring them in relation to distant events or phenomena. After presenting ten projects that he has had in mind but that he knows will be controversial, Launius closes his article by wondering what public historians can do, and how institutions such as museums can have a positive impact on its audiences. What should be the role of a science and technology museum? For instance, should it focus only on technical aspects, or relate them to a broader social context? Launius seems concerned that all there is left for NASM is to bring a certain type of celebration of the past to its public, to educate them in that sole aspect, without challenging their thoughts. Launius hopes that there is still something else left. He admits not having any answers or ready-made solutions, but nor does he desire to give up. This is certainly something worth to do: to not give up, to keep trying, without actually imposing one interpretation or the other on society.