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HON. XAVIER BECERRA: I happen to be privileged to be a member of congress, so obviously we
have oversight over the Smithsonian. I happen to serve as a member of the Board of
Regents for the Smithsonian. I happen to serve as a member of the Council on the National
Museum of African American History and Culture, and I happen to also sit on the board of the
Smithsonian Latino Center. I wear a number of hats here today on this particular subject.
I believe we've entered at some pretty exciting phases for the African American Museum, and
the prospects for a Latino Museum here in Washington D.C. If all goes well, and my colleagues
in congress continue to fund the project on course, by 2015 you should be able to bring
your family to feel privileged and honored to be able to walk through the doors of a
museum that will let us, for the first time, truly understand what it means to be an American
from the perspective of the African American community. We're hoping that we can keep that
project on course within the Smithsonian. With the help of congress and
all of you in making contributions to make that happen. We have legislation that an number
of us have presented that would make the dream of a museum of the American Latino a reality,
to move that forward in the coming years as well. Once we are able to establish a source
of funding and a venue, to make that a reality. I think most of us understand
that the Smithsonian is undertaking a number of efforts to try to make sure that communities
that have not always been fully represented on the national mall have that opportunity.
We have, obviously, panelists who can talk about all of those things. I, unfortunately
won't be able to stay throughout the entire portion of this presentation
because I have a hearing I have to return to in a short while, but I do thank you all
for letting me be here. Ray it's always a great
pleasure to be with you when you do your work. The African American Museum was a long time
coming. I start with that because it's been over 100 years that folks were trying to get
recognition on the national mall for Americans who have served this country in so many different
ways. In 1929 legislation was actually passed to find a spot and
build a building that would recognize African Americans, but congress would never fund it.
Finally now, with the Smithsonian, we're going to see that become a reality, we hope, as
I said by 2015. In 1993, a somewhat similar effort was undertaken with regard to Latinos.
When the Smithsonian empaneled a commission to take a look at what the Smithsonian had
done with regard to Latinos in this country. The report
that was issued by that commission was called willful neglect. It outlined how the Smithsonian
had done very little, if nothing, to try to help Americans understand
the various contributions of Americans of various backgrounds and their contributions
to our country. Let me read you just a couple of the quotes from that commission report.
The report stated that, "The Smithsonian Institution almost entirely excludes and ignores the Latino
population of the United States." It goes on to say, "This lack of
inclusion is glaringly obvious in the lack of a single museum facility focusing on Latino
or Latino American art, culture, or history." That was in 1993. There was a follow-up report
that was done by the Smithsonian to move forward. Through that report and the work that was
done by that commission the Smithsonian created the Latino Center here
at the Smithsonian. Now the notion of a Latino Museum has moved forward. Let me do a real
quick pop quiz. Where was the first permanent establishment in what we now consider the
United States? [Off MIC conversation]
HON. MR. BECERRA: I should have known somebody would know.
[Laughter] HON. MR. BECERRA: Someone was supposed to
shout out Jamestown and then someone was supposed to say no, no, Little Rock, I mean Plymouth
Rock, Little Rock. [Laughter]
HON. MR. BECERRA: I'm Latino, I don't know all my history so well, right? Not Jamestown,
not Plymouth Rock, St. Augustine in Florida, four decades before the other two. Name a
Latino soldier who served in the Revolutionary War.
[Off MIC conversation] HON. MR. BECERRA: Yeah, there were Latinos
back in those days. Bernardo de Gálvez maybe you'll recognize his name. There's a town
named Galveston named after the General. It was as a
result of General Del Galvez and his forces that came up through what is now Florida that
he helped George Washington cover the southern flank of the revolutionaries fight against
the British soldiers. We remember him in some regard, Galveston, but we don't remember him
or other Latinos in our history books. How many Latinos served in our military during
World War II? [Off MIC conversation]
HON. MR. BECERRA: About 500,000. [Off MIC conversation]
HON. MR. BECERRA: World War II, you were too young.
[Laughter] [Off MIC conversation]
HON. MR. BECERRA: 500,000. Now you have to be kind of old. There's a
movie called From Hell to Eternity, 1960, you can look it up. Jeffery Hunter was a movie
star who played an Italian American soldier who singlehandedly captured or convinced
to surrender about 1,000 Japanese troops in the Battle of Saipan in 1944. It was a good
movie. I remember watching it. It made me feel very proud. The thing is, the young man
who did that, because it's a true story, wasn't Italian American, he was Mexican American,
and his name was Guy Gabaldon. In 1960 it was easier to sell a movie
about an Italian American hero. Tom Brokaw, everybody's heard of Tom Brokaw, right? Respected
American friend, I consider him a friend. He wrote a great book, The Greatest Generation.
A big, thick book about that World War II generation. Not a single mention of Guy Gabaldon
or any of the 500,000 American soldiers of Latino descent who helped keep this
country free, nothing at all about any of those folks. There was a great documentary
not long ago made about the war called The War by Ken Burns. Anybody heard of Ken Burns?
Phenomenal Producer, great historian. His PBS documentary, 14 and a half hour documentary
was getting ready to air. Many of us found out that throughout the 14 and a half hours
he was going to have not a single mention of any Latinos in America during the whole
fight, that whole generation. We chatted with him and PBS, and fortunately they added a
few things here and there at the beginning or
at the end, but they weren't willing to make any changes to the original version of the
production. We got included because we fought to get included. There are over 50 million
Latinos in this country. If you include Puerto Rico it goes up to about 54 million. The only
place you'll find real, permanent mention of Latinos is perhaps if
you go visit the Vietnam War memorial where you'll see several thousand Latino surnames.
It's all about visibility and inclusion. It's about making sure that when your children
and my children walk the mall and have a chance to really get to know what it means to be
an American that we really do get to know what it means to be an American. If my kids
can really understand it, chances are some child from someplace far away from America
who is coming here for the first time will also get
a chance to really get to know what it's meant to be an American. I think it's time for us
to have these kinds of conversations. I think it's fantastic of the Smithsonian to do this.
I applaud the Smithsonian for moving forward. We can have this conversation as the commission
on the Latino museum said, the purpose of this work on the Latino museum is to
illuminate the American story for all. That's at the end what the Smithsonian's about. I
hope that's what we do. I thank you. [Applause]
MR. SUAREZ: Next we're joined by Phillip Kennicott, critic for the Washington Post.
PHILLIP KENNICOTT: Thanks. It's a kick for me to be on stage where my illustrious ancestor
Robert Kennicott actually got two mentions this morning. Unfortunately I didn't inherit
any of his scientific brilliance, which is why I'm a
journalist. [Laughter]
MR. KENNICOTT: I'm a critic. My title is architecture critic, but I have a slightly wider portfolio
than that. Architecture often bleeds into urban design, and art is a big enough subject
that you do end up taking up larger cultural issues. It's really a matter of which hat
I'm wearing that determines many of my reactions to some
of the questions I think we'll be considering this afternoon. As somebody who writes about
art, I firmly believe in the more the merrier. A wild diversification of museums
in Washington just gives me more material, gives me more to think about. I love that
idea. As somebody who writes about are you are keenly aware of the resilience of the
master narratives of history, the sort of hydra heads of myths and half-truths that
just keep coming back no matter how often other
museums or curators interested in correcting the narrative may do excellent work. There's
a powerful livelihood to them. As somebody who writes about architecture, I'm often thinking
about whether or not we actually need a building to accomplish an agenda. I'm thinking about
how buildings prioritize and create hierarchies of space, how they
represent what's supposed to be inside them. The more I spend time in Washington I look
around, especially on the mall at the buildings here, the more I realize
how fundamental to what a museum can accomplish is the way it's basically designed. This particular
museum, I think, is no secret is how to problem somewhat finding audiences in the first few
years. Every time I come down here I sit out in that garden. I think that garden is the
thing, in many ways, that's going to be one of the greatest assets to this museum.
It's an incredibly inviting space, and because it gives you a way to be on the mall that's
very different than the traditional way. Architecture is fundamental to the success of these buildings.
As someone who writes about urban design, I'm looking at this highly contested public
space with a mall wondering about where buildings should go. Should they be here? Should they
be off the mall? Should they even be in Washington? Are there places that if we go down a path
to diversification of ethnically-specific museums do we want to
be geographically diverse in where those things are located? So I confront those questions
as well. Finally, as someone who writes generally about culture, you deal with the philosophical
issues. The word balkanization's been brought up today, and that's oftentimes seen as the
negative outcome of the diversification of museums. I think that in
15 or 20 years we may not think about ethnic identity in the same way that we think about
it today. As we build museums that are dedicated to particular groups we also are to remember
that we're becoming an amazingly hybridic [phonetic] society in the way we identify.
Our buildings and the museums that we create today, are they going
to be adaptable enough to essentially carry that narrative of identity forward into places
that we can't even anticipate yet? In general, I think most of the problems facing
us when we consider ethnic museums or culturally-specific museums are practical ones. I'm not particularly
worried about the balkanization of culture because I think that this master narrative
of American history, we're still in the infancy of trying to correct that. I'm not that worried
about how we define ourselves in terms of identity in 20
years, because museums are basically adaptable institution. So long as they keep that in
the forefront of their thinking then they will adapt as identity adapts. For me, the
questions are primarily practical ones. Do we have the resources to do a number of new
museums and do them well? Do we have the audience for these museums to sustain
them over time? Do we have the right people thinking about what they're going to do in
these museums? Are they going to be about scholarship and preservation education? Or
are they going to be about something else? Are they going to be museums about something
or for somebody? I think that those are questions you solve in the design of exhibitions. They're
questions you solve in the way you do scholarship, and they're questions that are solved in the
way you issue the invitation to people to come in. I think that if we go
down the path of more museums and more culturally specific museums, if they're created and sustained
in ways that surprises, delight, and invoke us, then they will be successful and they
will find the audiences, and we'll be happy we made them.
[Applause] MR. SUAREZ: Next we're joined by David Penney,
Associate Director for Museum Scholarship at the National Museum of the American Indian.
DAVID PENNEY: Thank you, thank you very much. Just to begin, I'd like to acknowledge
just a couple things I heard this morning. Can you hear me? I'd like to acknowledge Dr.
Price and his mention of the Newark Museum. I spent 30 years at that - - of arts, and
I know very well and share with him enthusiasm for the ability of museums in the service
of civic and cultural revitalization. Museums can
be very powerful things. I also want to acknowledge my colleague, Dr. Thomas and his comments
about the transformational impact of the National Museum of the American Indian, my institution
now. In the field of anthropology and also museum practice, after four decades of working
in museums on Native American topics, I can testify to the enormous
changes that have taken place in my career between then and now. The National Museum
of the American Indian really has created sort of a gold standard for community
consultation and collaboration in the museum world, enormous impact there. I also wanted
to acknowledge a comment I heard this morning from a colleague from the Museum of American
History, and the parallel between balkanization, perhaps of culture in museums and also the
balkanization of disciplines, the discipline of history, anthropology, technology,
and art. I say this coming from a standpoint that I believe as culture as a category, as
in a culture museum, I think culture is composed of all those things and many things. Culture
is history, culture is an - - experience, culture is technology, culture is science,
politics, economics, law, race, land, religion, and on and on. Culture is nothing in
and of itself, but a formless vessel, a shorthand concept, an invented word that we use to contain
all those different things. Most simply put, culture consists of learned behavior,
learned knowledge. We learn our culture as we learn about the culture of others. That
learning and that knowledge becomes part of our culture too. Knowledge as insiders, knowledge
as outsiders, and everything in between. Museums, therefore, don't hold up a mirror to culture.
Museums are instruments of culture. Instruments are powerful
engines for creating culture. They're particularly well suited to generate knowledge, knowledge
in a broad sense, because of their great potential for influence. It's where scholarship meets
a broader public. In ways that are very different from the environment of the seminar, the environment
of the classroom, the media, or literature. Somebody
earlier this morning used a notion of sanctuary or sort of safe place, but it really is where,
in a sense, the rubber hits the road in the sense that the general public can come and
expand their sense of culture by virtue of knowledge. Museums actually sort of convey
knowledge mostly through this technology we know as an exhibition. We call this in the
business an information immersive learning environment. It's where the participants,
those visitors who come, they exercise a great deal of choice about how they
will experience the museum, what lessons they take from it, and now our practice of creating
and designing these immersive environments, it benefits from decades of visitor research.
We know that we really have to improve our skills at effective storytelling within the
context of museums. We've got to start where visitors are. In
storytelling, the issues of where you start, where you stop, what you include, what you
don't include, these are not objective decisions. Not meaning that they're no less
truthful, but they are political. They're always political in a sense of how you convey,
how you assemble facts, how you assemble human experience into a story that makes sense in
the context of an exhibition. So it was the mission of the National Museum of the American
Indian to change the conversation about American Indians. Our
inaugural exhibitions here I think were incredibly effective in restoring a voice to native communities.
It's ability for outreach to communities, for training of native professionals in this
business. Their work with collection sharing and with the mutual development of tribal
museums, that was their first phase of activity here. We have a lot to be proud of, but actually
it's a very exciting time right now at the National Museum of the American Indian because
we're thinking about how they can have greater impact in this larger mission about
changing that conversation. We're beginning to plan new galleries, new experiences for
our visitors that we hope will open as early as 2015 or so. In doing so we're taking on,
that was mentioned earlier this morning, this notion of our position as a national museum
and engaging in these kind of national narratives. My colleague, Dr. Thomas, talked
a great deal about how American Indian in history have been very firmly linked to anthropology
where there's been a conflation we can see between our understanding of the evolution
story, it's about the evolution of humanity, the evolution of our nation, and the evolution
of culture. Where American Indians have been cast into a role, a role as a foundation
culture, but a culture that then somehow leaves the stage. It was interesting listening to
the reenactment of Secretary Henry. We reflect here often about from the standpoint
of the 19th Century given the kind of policies and so on that American Indians experience
and endured. It's fair to say that it was impossible from the standpoint of the 19th
Century for many of the policy makers, for Secretary Henry and others to imagine a future
of 2012 where the United States would be home for 550 plus sovereign Indian nations.
All the policies led to the other direction, this notion of disappearance, that Indians
wouldn't survive. In planning for collecting and the gathering of knowledge, it really
was sort of planning over a wake or a funeral. Unfortunately however, those kinds of stories
that are being told about American Indians as it's foundational character in the American
myth, American story, they continue in a variety of different ways. Our curators, my colleagues
here have posed a question for our new installations of the kind of paradox that
in fact Indians are all around us in the sense of automobiles, helicopters, sports teams,
code names for military operations. Yet, Indians as in terms of their experience are invisible.
How do we sort of deal with this paradox? Our new installations, we hope to confront
these kinds of paradoxes front on. We're going to examine
where those sort of mythologies and stories about American Indians, so to inform the popular
media where they come from, why they're wrong, why they're incorrect, and more accurately
what is foundational about American Indian experience in terms of the history of the
American culture? We feel that the American history as American history.
It's every person's history who comes into the building. That it would be impossible
to imagine, for example, the rise of the - - economies and the European modernism without
this event of the coming together of the two hemispheres in the past. We'll deal with those
sorts of issues of this hemisphere apart in a series of galleries we'll call ancestors.
In our galleries after 2015 we're calling in sort of a shorthand way right now Americans,
we want to excavate beneath these kind of national myths that include issues like
Thanksgiving and Pocahontas, Custer's last stand, as sort of entry points, sort of revisit
us where they are. Then really examine the more surprising stories, the stories of resistance
and heroism such as the public revolt, King Phillip's War, or the facts of the brutality
of the California Gold Rush, and other narratives and other stories that are celebrated
in a very different way. Then, in present tense, we really want to deal with the issues
of the political and social struggles that resulted in the creation, this kind of settlement,
very unique in world history today of modern sovereignty as it exists in the United States,
and the impact of treaties in these contemporary relations, and to point out the fact that
this is unfinished business. There is still a lot to be said in terms of these stories.
We're very enthusiastic and hopeful about the ability of this museum and national
museums, broadly speaking, to change the conversation, to enrich our sense of culture in the broadest
sense. We're, of course, enthusiastic and very excited about the efforts of our colleagues
here at the Smithsonian and waiting expectantly for our newest addition to the mall to open,
the Museum of African American History and Culture. Thank
you. [Applause]
MR. SUAREZ: Next up is Lonnie Bunch, Director of the National Museum of
African American History and Culture. LONNIE BUNCH: Good afternoon everyone.
MULTIPLE SPEAKERS: Good afternoon. MR. BUNCH: A couple years ago I received a
letter that began, "Dear Left Wing Historian." [Laughter]
MR. BUNCH: Even I knew that wasn't going to be a good letter.
[Laughter] MR. BUNCH: The author went on to say, "What
happened to the Smithsonian I loved? It was a place that once celebrated America. It was
a place that let me feel proud that I was an American. Now you're going to create a
museum that's going to dredge up painful memories. You're going to create a museum that talks
about things that are better left unsaid." He went on to say, "After all, America's greatest
strength is its ability to forget." [Laughter]
MR. BUNCH: He then went on to say how left wing historians like me shouldn't be hired,
they should be fired, they shouldn't built this museum. He threw me off though at the
end, though, when he said, "Best wishes for your continued success."
[Laughter] MR. BUNCH: The point, however, is that in
many ways when you think about ethnically-specific or racially-specific
museums, what they really are, are places that are clarion calls to remember. More than
anything else, their job is to make sure we don't forget, and that, in many ways, we remember
as a nation not just what we want, but what we need. In many ways, the desire to have
a fuller understanding of the American experience is at the heart of what
the institutions are. I would like to sort of talk a little bit about sort of what I
think the challenges are and where these institutions need to go. I think about that
from my own career. In 1983 I was a young historian hired by the state of California
to work at the California African American Museum. It was the first, and at that time,
the only museum in America that was state funded that was wrestling with issues of race
and ethnicity. If anybody remembers 1983 in L.A., it was a heady time. The state of
California had actually money. That was revolutionary. [Laughter]
MR. BUNCH: It was also a time that the Olympics were coming. Suddenly culture was important.
Museums were being spruced up, new ideas were being embraced. People were coming together
to wrestle with the history of this country. For the California African
American Museum, oh what a time it was. It was a time to build a new building. I remember
thinking, "How am I going to raise the 3 million dollars it took to build the building?"
Oh, if all I had to do--well that's another story.
[Laughter] MR. BUNCH: It also allowed us to add to the
canon. Suddenly it was important to help people understand the role of African Americans in
Los Angeles, or Oakland, or in the Inland Empire. Suddenly it was important to help
people realize this amazing array of talent, of artists like Betye Saar, or photographers
like Carrie Mae Weems, or sculptors like Richard Hunt. In some ways it helped the museum learn
how to reach out to the state, how not just to be something for Southern California, but
how to develop relationships in Mendocino and all throughout
California. The point is that while that was important, and even innovative, that was important
and even innovative in 1984, I would argue that today museums that explore
race and ethnicity must do much, much more. That it's not enough simply to add to the
canon. In some ways, these institutions must answer the question, how are they of value
today? How does an institution demonstrate its worth? In essence, how do museums who
care about race and ethnicity go beyond me to history, history that simply places
people of color within the historical narrative. After all, it was once important to show that
there was early black involvement in Los Angeles, or that African American photographers existed,
but is that good enough today? Do these institutions by the work they do make their communities
better? Being of a community, being part of a community
isn't enough today. I think, since we're talking about the Newark Museum, as John Cotton Dana,
the great founder of the Newark Museum once wrote, "Museums must recognize
what the community needs and adjust their mission, their vision to those needs." In
essence, I would suggest that museums that wrestle with race and ethnicity don't need
to try to become community centers. Rather, what they need to become is centers of their
community, providing things that help the community survive and do what it needs to
do. I would also argue that museums today, if they want to
wrestle with this, have a great opportunity. That is to help the public embrace ambiguity.
Museums, as best we try, still often give simple answers to complex questions. Ethnically-specific
museums are often held captive by creating narratives that suggest a linear path to progress,
that want not to fall into the - - of victimization,
but sometimes by doing that eliminate some of the complexities, some of the challenges.
Yet, the histories of these communities, the cultures of these communities
are nothing if not ripe with ambiguity. If not full of shades of grey, if not full of
complexity, and pain, and unresolved issues. It is essential it seems to me that these
museums, and by extension all museums find ways to help our audiences become more comfortable
with complexity and ambiguity. Thirdly, I would argue that ethically
specific museums must build on their traditions. In many ways these were the most innovative
institutions in America. Remember, these are the institutions that made a commitment to
education and audience long before other museums cared about that. These are the institutions
that recognized the need to collect oral testimonies and preserve collections
that weren't considered high art, or worthy of these museums. Maybe more importantly,
these institutions always understood something the other museums
are now wrestling with, that culture, that museums are political. In essence, I would
argue most importantly what is the future of these institutions is that they must reclaim
their American-ness. They must demonstrate that while they are of a particular culture
and that that culture is important to a particular community, they must also show that their
history, that their presence casts a greater shadow that goes beyond their communities.
In some way, all of this shapes where the National Museum of the African American History
and Culture, what that is, because in some ways as we try to create this, the vision
for the museum really reflects those issues. First of all, it is a museum that
has to help Americans to remember. It has to help Americans to remember the people they
think they know, the kings, the - - troops, in new ways. It has to help Americans embrace
amazing stories of people they don't know, the enslaved woman who got up every morning
and fed her kid, and made sure the field didn't strip her of her humanity, or the family that
left Mississippi for the south side of Chicago in 1913, or people like my grandmother who
did wash, and washed other peoples floors to make sure her children, her grandchildren
wouldn't have to. In some ways, this museum has to do something that is hard for a place
like the Smithsonian. It has to help America confront its tortured racial past. This has
to be the place that makes you cry or at least ponder over slavery, over segregation. This
has to be the place that makes you realize that we haven't often lived up to
our stated ideals. It also has to be a place that allows you to find the joy that is in
this community. You've got to be able to tap your
toes to Duke Ellington or Aretha Franklin, or Celia Cruz, or somebody from the hip hop
world, I have no idea who it is. [Laughter]
MR. BUNCH: Somebody on my staff is 12, they will know.
[Laughter] MR. BUNCH: In some ways, if the museum only
helped people to remember, then I would argue it shouldn't
be a national museum. In some ways, a national museum needs to take African American culture
and clearly use it as a lens to explore what it means to be an American. Not what it means
for black people to be Americans, but what does African American culture mean and how
has it shaped, profoundly, the American experience. I mean, think about this. Often
when I go up on the hill and I get the chance to see Congressman Becerra, there are often
other members of congress who ask questions of me that say, "Well what are the
core values of this museum?" When I say, "Core American values like resiliency, spirituality,
optimism," and I say, "Often, the roots from these come from within this African American
community." In some ways, the story is simple. This has to be a museum that takes African
American culture and lets everybody realize, regardless of race, regardless of
whether they're from the North or the South, regardless of whether their family's been
here 200 years or came here 20 days ago, they are shaped in profound ways by the African
American experience. The third piece that is so crucial to this is the notion that there
are hundreds of institutions around this country that have explored this subject for
decades. It's foolish for us to act like they're not there. In many ways, the key of this museum
has to be a place of collaboration. A place that is a beacon, that takes advantage
of this fact that people will come to the Smithsonian but not go other places. We want
to be a beacon that draws you to Washington and then pushes you back to local museums.
In essence, I got it, I got the MIC I'm gone. [Laughter]
MR. BUNCH: In essence, the bottom line is pretty simple. The National Museum
of African American History and Culture has to be a place that on the one hand helps us
to remember, but its goal is simple. While it will build a signature green building,
while it will have wonderful artifacts and great exhibitions, the goal of the museum
is to make America better. In many ways the challenge for us all is to recognize
that we have an opportunity with these kinds of institutions to make America better. Thank
you very much. [Applause]
MR. SUAREZ: Finally we're joined by Konrad Ng, Director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific
American Program. KONRAD NG: Well, aloha if I may use a greeting
from my home state. I'm honored to have the opportunity to join colleagues who are as
passionate about the important role that museums play in our life as I am. Thank you to the
many people who helped realize today's event, with special thanks to Elizabeth, who is the
proverbial glue that held this project together. Finally, let me express my gratitude to the
National Museum of the American Indian for the privilege to speak. While this building
is a public space I also acknowledge that it is sacred ground. Almost 14 years ago to
this day, the Honorable Norman Mineta submitted to then Secretary of the Smithsonian Michael
Heyman the final report of the Smithsonian Asian
Pacific American National Advisory Group. This was a special task force created by Smithsonian
Provost, Dennnis O'Connor. The document was the outcome of a two-year study by a group
of prominent representatives from academia, the corporate sector, philanthropy, museums,
and included Senator Daniel Anoi [phonetic]. The report stated that "historical and
contemporary significance of our presence in the United States is largely absent from
the Smithsonian's collections, research, exhibitions, and current planning." This was 1998. "The
commitment to Asian Pacific Americans by the Smithsonian," they wrote, "would improve the
Smithsonian's standing as the agent of America's rich heritage
and improve the public's appreciation of the crucial roles that Asian Pacific Americans
have played in the United States and simultaneously empower Asian Pacific American
communities in their sense of inclusion." I'm always struck by these opening arguments.
Since the advisory group claimed that for Asian Pacific American communities the Smithsonian
Institution was, at least in the late 1990s, an ethnic and culturally specific American
museum vis-à-vis it's lack of inclusivity, and more importantly this absence was
affecting our civic health. Since the publication of that report the Asian population in the
U.S. has grown faster than any other race group in the United States, increasing by
over 43% between 2010, and composed of some 19 Asian and Pacific islands, groups who number
over 16 million people and constitute 10% or more of the population in many
U.S. cities. Yet, the Smithsonian's resource priorities often request support for what
we already have as opposed to asking for support for what we need, which are often the
objectives of mission critical initiatives. In this scenario Asian Pacific Americans history,
art, and culture, which is already generally absent from what we have, will continue to
be absent. The story is, of course, similar to the stories behind the creation of the
National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of African American
History and Culture, and the proposal for the National Museum of the American Latino.
Let me suggest something different, maybe even novel. Ethnic and culturally-specific
American museums are vehicles for sustaining relevance. They're sustaining the relevance
of museums by not only being relevant to a populist that they purport to
reflect, but they can have the force of relevance specific to the digital age. The current shift
towards digital platforms and technologies as the site for knowledge and learning
has meant that museums and their collections-based physical object ethos are lagging behind the
digital model of engagement. The challenge in the digital age, I suggest, is not the
adoption of technologies, platforms, and software that keeps pace with their changes, but how
may we adopt a progressive role for museums to play? Over the past year,
both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that minority communities, and
specifically Asian Americans are using digital media and technologies as a means of circumventing
the traditional media industries and markets that have historically excluded them. While
there are few bankable Asian American stars in film
and television and stereotypes continue to obscure the understanding of Asian American
life, or prevent our inclusion in discussions about American identity, a generation of
Asian Americans is flourishing on YouTube and other social media platforms. According
to reports, by the Pew Research Center's internet and American Life Project, English speaking
Asian Americans are internet users at higher rates than the national average. Now, my claim
is this: because of the historical exclusion from our institution and
industries of culture, minority subjects and communities like Asian Pacific Americans are
producing online cultures and partnerships that are as compelling and as important as
life in the offline world. In fact, online space is the only space that they can claim
as their own. Online life is where history is taking place. It's where ethnic identities
are being expressed, and it is as meaningful as the material objects collected to create
the museum. Now, when the Smithsonian commits itself to digitization, when museums commit
themselves to digitization it ought not to limit its activities to improving collections
management, as the collections themselves could be more diverse, or limit activities
to amplifying public engagement and incorporating the latest invention. It should devote resources
to how we may treat digital media as the vehicle for culture and heritage. To
paraphrase the work of a media studies scholar and colleague of mine, Lisa Nakamura [phonetic],
rather than bringing minority critiques to bear after the shouting is over, she said,
those with expertise in the fields of race and ethnicity can bring our experiences to
bear on digital media while it is still in formation. To spin a phrase
raised this morning, the paradigm of a master's house and what that is, and the master's tools
and what they are have shifted. Let me return to the topic of this panel, what is the
role of ethnic and culturally-specific American museums? Last week a woman at the Asian American
studies conference expressed to me that she did not view the Smithsonian as being relevant
to her. There were other venues for the preservation and importantly appreciation of her Asian
American heritage. As I was listening to her story I thought of
another colleague of mine, Chris Lou [phonetic] at the White House as the White House Cabinet
Secretary, he pondered these scenarios during a recent keynote address, would America have
a different understanding of immigration, migration, and citizenship, or the debates
around the dream act if we knew more about the Chinese exclusion act of 1882,
which occurred 130 years ago to this year? Would America have a different understanding
of the balance between freedom and security and the feelings of a South Asian Muslim or
Arab Americans in a post-9/11 world if we knew
more about executive order 9066, which led to the internment of Japanese American citizens
and immigrants which occurred 70 years ago to this year. Would America have a different
understanding of travesties like Trayvon Martin if we knew more about the death of Vincent
Chin which occurred 30 years ago to this year? Museums are the souls of our nation,
and they can be our conscious. Ethnic and culturally-specific American museums allow
us to rethink the sources and sites of the official story, including our own origin stories,
and they can widen the range of symbolic material used in the construction of American identity
in history. In this sense, the goal is not simply to preserve examples
of American exceptionalism, that is those proud and unique parts of the official story,
or suggest that Asian Americans exist as the model minority for the digital age. The goal
is to consider how digital media brings into be potent forms of heritage and collaboration,
and to bring to bear Asian Pacific American experiences of power and history. Now, I would
be remiss if I did not say that our stories do not exist in isolation. That Asian Pacific
Americans should and do see ourselves as part of the experience of American Indians,
African Americans, Latinos, and others, and we should be part of their museum plans too.
Asian Pacific American online life can be a tool for research, a method of preservation
of public good, and a way to reflect on the relevance of museums in the quest for knowledge
and their role in supporting our civic health in the digital age. Thank you.
[Applause] MR. SUAREZ: Well, gentlemen, you've given
us a lot to think about, and put a lot there on the table. From several
of the speakers we heard about the notion of exclusion, that one of the tasks that can
be taken on by culturally-specific museums is to answer historic exclusion from a master
narrative of history, or to fill in those gaps in an incomplete or previously erased
historical record. To the extent that these museums end up becoming like ethnic history
classes taught in high schools and universities where if you go to a high school in Tucson
or Phoenix and you duck your head in to look at the Mexican-American history class and
it's 25 Mexicans, even in a school that's majority Anglo, let's talk a little bit about
audience and how function meets audience. That
place that made you feel proud to be an American, that Lonnie your letter writer talked about,
don't you have to, as a museum designer, as someone who's conceptualizing a museum, don't
you have to take that seriously? Isn't that what a lot of the people who come to the mall
come for? Should they be warned in advance if you've decided to make a museum that doesn't
do that? MR. BUNCH: I think that I didn't say I wouldn't
do that. I mean, I think the most important thing is that for the first three years of
our existence all we did was get to know what
the public knew, what they wanted, what they feared, and what they cared about. So that,
in essence, the goal of this museum is to craft environments and moments that allow
publics to take maybe their fears or their concerns and recognize this is their story
as well. So, what has been most wonderful has been based on all the kind of
scientific sampling we've done, almost 70% of all white Americans say this is their story
too, or they're interested in hearing this as well. So the fears that somehow this
is ultimately become a black place for black people is not a fear I worry about. It's a
concern that we think about, but we realize the way you tell different stories so that
yes, there will be those stories that will be hard, but there'll also be stories that'll
make a father smile as he's telling his daughter about Jackie Robinson. We'll look at ways
to find that right balance and to find that tension.
MR. SUAREZ: Congressman, I'm glad you brought up Guy Gabaldon. His story's even cooler than
a lot of people realize. He was adopted not officially, but in the way that people used
to adopt people before social workers and paperwork was
involved, and he lived with a Japanese family through his entire teens. The way he got thousands
of Japanese on Saipan to surrender him was to tell them in Japanese that
just over the hill there were 10,000 U.S. Marines who were going to come kill them,
and he talked them all into surrendering night after night without firing a shot. A Mexican
kid from Boyle Heights who spoke Japanese. [Laughter]
MR. SUAREZ: Played by Jeffery Hunter who played Jesus.
[Laughter] MR. SUAREZ: In King of Kings, and de-Mexicanized
for the movies. It's a great story, but I'm not sure how we get that into a museum in
a consumable fashion. It's true, there has been a lot of history that's been written
out of history. How can museums function, physical places filled with physical artifacts
and various kinds of media, how can they function
as those gap fillers? I'd like everybody to weigh in on that. That's a big concern from
what was said across the panel. HON. MR. BECERRA: Ray, perhaps the best way
I can answer that is by just saying to me, a museum is not a place where you see dead
people and things of the past. To me, it's a living creature that lets me interact with
it and better understand who I am. When I go to the Museum of American History, when
I go to the Air and Space Museum, I've never flown a
plane, but I could certainly see myself in the cockpit of one of those vehicles. I could
certainly see myself wearing that top hat that Abraham Lincoln wore. I hope that that's
what every American who walks through whatever museum we have will feel when they get to
step into that place, that prison cell that Martin Luther King was in when he wrote that
wonderful letter, or experience what it was like to be on a fast as Cesar Chavez was trying
to fight for the rights of farmworkers and experience that. We're in there to live, and
maybe I can close it by saying this. I'm going to have to run after this and ask Eduardo
Diaz from the Latino Center to come in my place, but I remember 2008. A lot of folks
in this country, including the Latino community were saying, "Barack Obama wins the nation,
Latinos aren't going to vote for a black man. There's this black/brown tension going on.
There aren't a lot of Latinos who are going to want to vote for this guy." At the end
of the day, Barack Obama got more votes from the Latino community than Bill Clinton did.
Bill Clinton got more than I think any person that I can remember from the Latino community.
Why? Because Latinos lived Barack Obama's story, in Barack Obama Latinos saw
themselves. Certainly I know mothers and fathers saw their children in Barack Obama. The beauty
of America is that we're not going in to see dead people or learn about some far
away - - history artifact, we're there to learn about ourselves because we really are
them, and they really are us. Barack Obama is as much me as he is someone who considers
himself African American. I think that's the beauty of these museums, is they will continue
to tell that story but in a living, growing way. That's why I hope we do
this sooner than later, because my kids are going to get old soon, and I want them to
be able to go soon. [Applause]
MR. SUAREZ: Thank you. It was good to see you.
MR. KENNICOTT: You know, your earlier question, Ray, about how you get people to sort of go
in and break down the resistance to learning about
stuff that may make them uncomfortable, I think that we shouldn't, on a panel like this,
underestimate that problem. There's a lot of right minded thinking on
this panel, but that is a real problem. A lot of people, when they brings their kids
to Washington D.C., I think they feel like they don't want to go into a building where
it's going to be depressing, confrontation, or difficult. How do you get around that?
The reason I stressed in my remarks the importance of objects is I think that if you
present the museum as a collection of things first rather than as a collection of moral
lessons, you're much more likely to get people to come in the door. Then the moral lessons,
if they're to be taught, emerge from the things themselves. I was thinking of a PBS program
that I've seen a couple episodes of called History Detectives. It probably
makes academic historians wince, but it actually does a really good job of breaking down the
sort of resistance that you need to get people to listen to stories they wouldn't think of.
It begins with objects, and then there's a study of what this thing is, how is it used,
where did it come from. Through that process you learn a lot of stuff about Chinese American
history, about Latino American history. The narrative isn't one that begins with the moral
lesson and then finds the evidence for it, it's one in which the moral lesson really
becomes sort of obvious but not put forth in such a way that you're inclined to sort
of get your backup and resist it. I think the more museums think in those terms, the
more likely they are to get people to kind of make that first entry. Once they've done
that, I think 80% of the battle is over. MR. SUAREZ: I'm glad you brought up
History Detectives, because the only other mention of PBS was of Latino exclusion from
the war. [Laughter]
MR. SUAREZ: By Ken Burns, so at least this evens things up a slight bit. People
are ready for a downer, and it's one of the most crowded museums in Washington. People
flock to the Holocaust Museum, but it's a bad story about bad things that other people
did to other people. I'm wondering if that's centrally importantly different from the stories
of other people on this continent that also include great crimes and
great sins? MR. PRICE: Of course, one of the great challenges
is that when we first started creating the African American Museum, there was a core
that said make it the Holocaust Museum, as you've rightly framed it. One of the great
strengths of the Holocaust Museum is the bad guys
aren't American. What is really a challenge is to find out how do you balance the notion
of the kind of resiliencies, the notions of the perfectibility of the republic with
the realities of some of the stories that aren't pleasant, that are difficult. I think
the bottom like for us is that what people are telling us is no one wants to go to a
museum where you're depressed every time you turn the corner. What people want to do is
they want to understand their history. They want to understand who they are. They
want to understand complexity. The benefit of the Smithsonian is people will give you
that benefit of the doubt that they may not give at other institutions, because they're
coming to do the Smithsonian. One of the challenges is not to get them in the door, unlike some
places, but to make sure once they're in that you're able to tell a diversity of stories
that engage as well as prod.
MR. SUAREZ: Now, if you have some questions please head to the MICs, go ahead.
MR. NG: I think it's important that we try to expand the notion of the museum
beyond the idea of objects in a building. I think we're at the stage where more people
come to the Smithsonian online than they do through its doors. What's changing about that
is our relationship to the museum itself, its role in our life, and the way in which
we use it and feel some part of ownership to it. I
think there should be investments as I noted earlier. Not just leveraging what we got,
but trying to create a form of engagement that is in some ways culturally-specific and
ethnic-specific. That's where some communities are preserving their history. They've already
lost their faith, or they feel that in the institutions, or they feel that it's
too much of a steep climb to get back in. I just want to note that we shouldn't exclusively
think about space or objects. While that's always going to be part of the
equation, I think we need to be innovative about being online and moving beyond our reach.
MR. PENNEY: I just wanted to add that it seems to me too often in this kind of conversation
that we separate or sort of distinguish between stories that are stories of celebration versus
stories of critique. On the other hand, what our visitors tell us and I'm very interested
to hear the research that Dr. Bunch did, and - - familiar with, but what people are looking
for are stories that are meaningful to them, that relate to their lives. I very much appreciate
the opportunities that the web offers and online experiences, but in addition to that
there is a unique and powerful capacity that objects have as these kind of
time machines to transport people back to a particular time and place by virtue of contact
or relationship with the object. The difficulty that museums face is how do you
make those objects speak in a way that people can understand them? That's where museum craft
and storytelling comes into play. We know when we do it right it's not about making
people feel bad. To a certain degree it's making them feel more human. I think within
the kinds of narratives that we're talking about with all ranges of different Americans,
no matter their racial or ethnic background, there are stories there that are profound
human stories that can be told in museum spaces. As has been said before, it will really very
much contribute to a sense of being a human being, but also and dare I say being an American
as well. EDUARDO DIAZ: I just wanted to add something
to the discussion that also plays off a little bit of what David just said about objects,
and what I think I understand kind of what you're saying about experience. I'm Eduardo
Diaz for the Latino Center. I have a difficult job. I have to fill rather commodious shoes
that Congressman Becerra has left me to fill, but I'll do the best I can. I want to share
with you that the Center and the Smithsonian are preparing to receive this museum, hopefully
the National Museum of the American Latino, when it gets here, to have
a reasonable plan that deals with issues of collection, program exhibitions, and audience
development. I just wanted to share that with you. This is really very much a collaborative
piece. It's a very collaborative process I should say. Why? Because the Latino community
is everybody. We are black, we're Asian, we're indigenous, we're
European, we're every religious community possible, gay, lesbian, we are all of this.
As a result, we have an obligation I think to focus
on all of that diversity within this diversity, and happy to do so. It's funny, yesterday
we had a meeting that we had folks from Conrad's program, we had folks from the National Portrait
Gallery, we had folks from the National - - John Franklins joined us in - - other colleagues.
Folks from the Center for Folk Life and Cultural Heritage,
and of course the Latino Center to talk about a program about Joe Bataan Joe Bataan was
an Afro-Pilipino raised in East Harlem, and the king of Latin Soul.
[Laughter] [Applause]
MR. DIAZ: That's what our community is. It was a wonderful experience, and I hopefully
- - wonderful program when we celebrate in October, we do a month
that has to do with the contributions of Pilipino Americans. That's what I'm talking about.
We're all in this. We all have a piece of this story about who Joe Bataan was. That's
the way we're sort of approaching it. In terms of the objects, this museum has 12,000 plus
objects of central American, pre-Columbian - - . As archaeologists, unfortunately anthropologist
often have done, they get to Mesoamerica, talk about the Aztecs and the Mayans, and
whoop, next thing you know they're with the Incas. What about all the
stuff in the middle? What about all that stuff in the middle? These weren't just some sort
of Mayan knockoffs all of a sudden that were just living in Central America and did not
have an integral society - - civilizations. We're working with objects to tell a new story
and deal with a community that has been terribly underrepresented, including by us.
We have a tremendous challenge here. Fortunately we have a wonderful opportunity as well. I'm
pleased to say that the Smithsonian, at least within the Latino framework, is thinking
about this collaboratively, thinking about this in a multi-cultural way. Thanks Ray.
MR. SUAREZ: Thanks Eduardo. I should remind all guests that for all my prodding and what
might sound like skepticism, I'm always available to narrate the films that are cycling--
[Laughter] MR. SUAREZ: In the Smithsonian galleries.
Tell us who you are and where you're from. GRETCHEN JENNINGS: Hi, My name is Gretchen
Jennings [phonetic]. I worked for a number of years at the Smithsonian, and I now edit
a museum journal. I think that one of the biggest areas of inclusion and non-inclusion
that's going to be coming up is really between the people in general
and the authority of museums. More in line with what Mr. Ng is talking about, that in
fact, the talk today is of participatory museums of
shared museum authority. I think the Native American museum was probably ahead of its
time in bringing in the voices of the people and actually having them help to curate exhibits.
On the other hand, the Native American museum has been criticized, and I don't think this
is news to them. I think rightly so about some of the museology involved in putting
the objects together. In other words, some of the galleries are dark, cramped, in the
presentation there perhaps needed to be a little more coaching from the professional
museum side. I have a question, I guess, for some of the newer museums, Lonnie's museum
and the Hispanic museum and so forth. What are the structures that you are putting in
place to allow for the people to actually contribute in a sustentative way to the collections
and to the creation of exhibitions, number one? Number two - what have you learned
from the Native American museum experience about how to coach that and craft that so
that the exhibitions are good exhibitions and engaging to people? I'd be interested
in what any of the speakers have to say about this kind of tensions between having more
public participation, sustentative contribution, and then the museum
helping to modify that to make it accessible, engaging, and what an exhibition should be.
[Off MIC conversation] MR. BUNCH: In many ways, we've learned a lot
from a lot of places about the role of the public, about the role of community in shaping
its own history. We've done an awful lot, we've put a lot of structures in
place where one of the major things we've been doing is been collecting oral histories
through story core and places like that, and using those oral histories to shape some of
the choices of stories we tell, and using those
oral histories as strongly interpretative tools. I want to be really clear, to me, the
best word in a museum is tension. Tension is nothing to run away from. I'm trying to
find a tension between giving the audience what it wants and giving the audience what
it needs. I feel very strongly that there has to be a
strong curatorial voice that is no longer the curator's autocrat, but is part of that
tension with the audience. For us, it really is about making sure that we're taking advantage
of the best technologies to shape their experience in the museum, to add new content to the stories
that we want to tell based on some of the conversations we've had with the
public already. It's really important to me to make sure that we don't give up completely
the fact that scholarship has to always be the engine of what we do. Again, for me
it's the tension between what the public wants and what the public needs. If we can find
that right tension, then I think we'll be doing exactly what we need to do as an institution.
MR. DIAZ: Let me just also add. I think it's important for us, from a Latino perspective
to do programming leading up to exhibitions or leading
up to the establishing of a museum as a way of formally informing the process. The exhibition
that we will open in March of '13 on Central American ceramics at this museum is already
underway. The programming for it has already started. We're already engaging at the local
level, the Central American community here in the D.C. area. Why? They are the
largest Latino population in this region, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland. It would be
stupid to go forward with a project not consulting with them. This whole consultative process
that Dr. Thomas referred to today is very important
for us, in the same way that it was important for the National Museums of the American Indian.
Lonnie drew a distinction earlier in his remarks about the center of the community versus a
community center. I think however you want to look at that, the Latino effort here at
the Smithsonian has to lean towards a community center model. I don't
know that the strict museum capital M format is going to work for our community. We are
not a museum going crowd. That's just the reality. We have to pay attention to the dynamics
of how our community engages with art and culture. I'm not saying that to the exclusion,
I'm not caring about how others are going to engage. This future museum cannot be necessarily
by for, about, and only for Latinos. It has to be an opportunity like this museum that
we're in today to educate on the culture, the civilizations, the history those
contributions have on Native Americans. This museum is also called the National Museums
of the American Indian, America as in continent, not as in country. I think we need to always
remember that's why we're doing this exhibition in March of 2013. For me, community center
model, however you want to view that, wherever that leads you,
but it has to also be really about the experience and engaging community from the very beginning
as a way of informing the success of the project. MR. NG: Let me add that in my conversations
with Lonnie and Edo, that this is a unique opportunity as I mentioned where we can bring
in different voices while things are still in
formation. One of the things in our conversations that we've had professionally is how is it
that the communities which we see a shared history and exist between Latinos,
Asian American, African Americans, etcetera, how can that be there at the beginning? How
can we see those kinds of partnerships? I think that's something in which, with the
building of the American Indian it was focused on a real concept of that sense of sovereignty
and writing their own story. I think that what
we can learn from that, moving into these other museums that are being built, is how
can we bring in those partnerships as the beginning? That's not just consultation, that
actually means devoting resources from curatorial or scholarship. I take the point about the
power of objects, but you need to hire someone who understands it in a way that's
complete as opposed to just singular. It's really important that we would have these
conversations in the inception of these museums. JOHN FRANKLIN: John Franklin, The
National Museum of African American History and Culture. What I wanted to say earlier
was that indeed these museums did not exist in isolation. Collaboration is very important.
I wanted to ask Eduardo and Konrad to talk about what Eduardo already raise, this program
on Joe Bataan. I also wanted Lonnie to share with you the two collaborations we've had,
one with the American Indian and the current partnership
with Monticello. MR. BUNCH: I think that what is clear to me
is that I didn't want to run a museum project. I wanted to run a museum. The notion was to
basically say that the museum existed from the day we started. Part of that existence
allowed us to test ideas, to develop partnerships, so
that's why we opened a gallery in the Museums of American History. To be able to give not
only scholars an opportunity to do their work rather than, say, work a decade and then
you'll finally get to see your work, but it really allows us to learn from our audiences.
We've really made collaboration a core value of the museum. Part of what I know from being
at the Smithsonian so many years, and this is my third time back, that in essence the
Smithsonian has an amazing opportunity. It has an opportunity to give people
different portals into what it means to be an American. You can go through the air and
space museum, or the Smithsonian American Art Museum, or the Indian Museum, or the African
American Museum, and ultimately we're all giving you a comparable story, but through
very different lenses. What is also means to do that is that we have to do something
that we don't do all that often in the Smithsonian, which
is collaborate with each other. I think, for us, to begin to work with the Indian Museum
on the indivisible show looking at blacks and Indians, to work with the Latino Center,
for us this is all about not only improving what the Museum of African American History
and Culture can do, but also facilitating so that the Smithsonian is made better by
our presence. Ultimately, this is less about what it means simply for one museum, and more
about how it helps the Smithsonian be the kind of 21st
Century museum that people will still find meaning, people will still find important,
people will still be able to shape as we move into the future.
MR. SUAREZ: Yes Ms.? [Off MIC conversation]
TIFFANY: Hi, I'm Tiffany. I'm actually the director for DC APA Film Festival. We're in
our 13th year. The Smithsonian has always meant a
great deal to me. I actually have home videos of when I was two and three years old walking
in the Natural History Museum. I was wondering, although we're talking
about culturally-specific museums right now, how do each of these very American stories,
Latino American, Asian American, African American, how can we bring that altogether into the
American History Museum which already exists, which I know every third grader, fourth grader,
fifth grader takes busload trips into, instead of sending them to six different museums
that each have a specifically curated gallery about the Chinese Exclusion Act. Why don't
we have something that is all-American in the American History Museum?
[Applause] MR. BUNCH: That's a really important question.
The challenge is that it's impossible to do that. That in some ways, for many years, I
was in charge of all the curators at the Museum of American
History. The goal was to make sure that you tell as many of these stories as you can.
There are real practical reasons why it's difficult to do that. One is that I'd love
to have 90 million dollars when I was there and redo the whole museum. I think the other
issue is that the notion of the complexity of the past has grown over the last 40 years
because of scholarship. It's no longer simple to simply say we can peg the Latino story
in one gallery. Or, if we explore X we've checked
that off. In essence, what I hope will happen is through these collaborations there will
never be one place where you learn Asian American material, or you learn African American material,
but rather there is the opportunity for the conversation within the Smithsonian so that
every museum will play aspects of that out, but every
museums shoulders are not broad enough to carry it to the level that maybe you can do
in a new Latino museum. For us, the goal is trying to find a balance. To make sure
wherever you go you're touched by the rich diversity of America, but recognizing that
you can go other places and to go very deeply. If you look at the Museums of American History
and you see that there are two helicopters in that exhibit talking about Vietnam, but
if you really want to know about helicopters you better go to Air and Space
Museum, and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's the strength of the Smithsonian.
MR. DIAZ: I was just going to add that part of it, I think, has to do with what Lonnie's
talking about, and what Phil knows a lot about, and that's architecture. The building has
issues, I don't know if we can fix those. Those are big and very
expensive fixes. It really actually ties into something that Dr. Price said this morning,
that was the whole dichotomy between temple and forum. That museum tends to look like
and act like a temple when it really needs to
be a forum. If we want to really engage I think the kind of dynamic engagement that
Dr. Price was talking about this morning tends towards the latter, should be the latter.
How do we create a welcoming space that allows for that interaction? From a Latino perspective,
I will tell you that we're thankful at this point that we're going
to be hopefully seating new curatorial support focused on Latino issues and content around
the institution. We don't have a Latino museum, so it's not going to stay with us. We're going
to be placing Latino curators institutionally so that we can, in a way, integrate. For me,
it's almost more important to be about integration than it necessarily is
to be about diversity per-se. Diversity - - separateness. The integration is a way in which we can weave
those Latino stories into this telling of American art. Chicano artists
are American artists. Guy Gabaldon was an American hero. These are American stories,
and this is the thing that's been repeated quite a few times this day. I think that's
what it's about, so the sooner we can get there I think will make for a much more interesting
experience. MR. SUAREZ: Quick final comments from Phillip
or David? MR. KENNICOTT: I'd just like to respond to
the last question. I think one of the more interesting things that's going to happen
if we do down a path where we have more ethnically or culturally-specific museums is what role
does the so called "big house" play? What's going to happen there? How will it's mission
change? Will it be a kind of aggregator of narratives from other museums? Will it try
to do a kind of slightly tweaked master narrative that takes into account the stuff that's been
learned in the other places? I think there's a lot of opportunity there. I can imagine,
say, in 15 years, say there are four or five new museums, either Smithsonian or not, that
are looking at history from particular ethnic perspectives or culturally-specific perspectives.
It'd be really interesting to take an event and have each
of those museums tell that event in an exhibition that might actually all have the same name.
Then, let people actually move from the American History Museum to the Latino American Museum
or the African American Museum of History and Culture, and hear the same story. Is it
going to be four different orchestras playing the same symphony, or is
it going to be something radically different that you don't even recognize the same event
in these four different presentations? I think we'll learn a lot from that experience.
MR. PENNEY: I think I saw that movie. [Laughter]
MR. PENNEY: I think it's an issue of granularity. The difficult task that the Museum of American
History has is scope. What I hear in that question is a fear that given the fact that
we've created these other culturally focused or ethnically-centered museums, will that
become then the museum of white history here at the Smithsonian? Some would argue, well,
that's what it was. [Laughter]
MR. PENNEY: I take the point we just heard, the scholarship here at the Smithsonian is
engaging in that master narrative. It's engaging it from a
number of different directions. In terms of how we're going to portray that narrative,
in pieces here, pieces there, different perspectives, that will have an impact on
the larger narrative of American History that's addressed over there. It already has and will
continue to have. I always like to think that life is short but museums are long. We like
to see change happen very quickly. Taking the longer view just in the context of my
career, I see a tremendous amount of change in the way that those narratives are
being positioned within those museums charged with developing those master narratives. I'm
very encouraged for what will happen over there, over time, or what's happening there
right now. MR. NG: I'd like to just add my thoughts on
that. I mean, it's a challenge that certainly all the
Smithsonian museums face in terms of engaging a changing demographic regardless if it's
a helicopter or something else like a heritage and the like, although those aren't
exclusive of each other. I will say this, that I know that if there aren't meaningful
efforts to reflect the demography that has projected the change and is going to change,
say for example, the inclusion and recognition of Asian Americans and their notion and understanding
of history and our culture. We're going to see people wanting that space.
We're going to see communities, like Asian American communities asking for a space and
asking, "Where are we?" If we don't address that, if we don't consider our notion of museum
ology as beyond objects in a building, we don't change both of those cultures we're
going to be continuing this discussion. I can sense that. I can see that from the community
and obviously from your question and the organization
that you're affiliated with. It's something that both you and I know.
MR. SUAREZ: Please thank Eduardo Diaz, Phillip Kennecott, David Penney, Lonnie
Bunch, and Konrad Ng. [Applause]