Those, of course, are highly visible and involve strong feelings for honored dead, differences between populist and expert perspectives, and in turn, a politics of resentment and participation denied. All was quite amiable and civil - “collegial” -with a curious reticence to confront the many issues facing museums today beyond those inevitably raised by officially sponsored commemorations, as at the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Little Big Horn in Montana and the Holocaust Memorial in the nation’s capital. Instead, even in the afternoon session, conferees kept circling back to the tangled details of the contested exhibit of that symbolic bomber, Enola Gay. The 25 invited presenters and panelists were articulate and well-informed, but what they actually discussed was not how museums ought to function in a democracy, nor can I recall anyone mentioning an “identity crisis,” however that banalized metaphor is understood. Identity crisis of museums goes far beyond 'Enola Gay'Ī headline in the April 16 Ann Arbor News announced “Museums in ID crisis after ‘Enola Gay.’ ” It was followed by a report on a major conference being convened two days later by the Smithsonian and the University of Michigan entitled, “Presenting History: Museums in a Democratic Society.”
