Date: Tue, 28 Jun 1994 15:24:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Competitive Enterprise Institute Subject: CEI LIST - POLITICS COMES TO THE SMITHSONIAN To: Recipients of the CEI List POLITICS COMES TO THE SMITHSONIAN By Matthew C. Hoffman, CEI Policy Analyst appeared in the *Wall street Journal*, 6/24/94 This summer, tourists will inundate the halls of Smithsonian museums in Washington DC, to gawk at towering rockets, beautiful landscape paintings, and Archie Bunker's chair. The thousands of cultural artifacts and oddities that comprise "America's Attic" continue to draw crowds, despite a gradual change in the Smithsonian's character over the last half-decade. Each year the institution has come to resemble itself a little less. Each year, a portion of the national heritage it represents has been lost to an ongoing campaign of ideological revisionism. The reconstruction of the Smithsonian is especially evident in the Air and Space Museum, which is famous for its restored aircraft and rocketry. There, planetarium shows and nostalgic aviation exhibits have begun to reflect the Smithsonian's more enlightened approach to museum exhibits. Instead of providing a glimpse of the starry heavens, the museum's Einstein Planetarium looks at the genocidal rapacity of western explorers. "Exploring New Worlds," a recent planetarium show, educates visitors about Columbus' "encounter" with America ("discovery" is no longer politically correct). In what is essentially a propaganda film projected on a planetarium ceiling, the visitor is treated to images of exploring vessels and American Indians. This "encounter" between Europe and America led to "frantic exploration and exploitation by Europeans," the film explains. "Trade with the so-called new world, as well as outright plunder, filled royal coffers with gold." What's more, "millions of native Americans perished from new diseases that the Europeans brought with them. Sophisticated societies, religions, and whole nations were destroyed in a misguided attempt to convert them to allegedly superior ways. Yet only the weapons were superior." The Air and Space museum's new assault on exploration continues in "Where Next, Columbus?" -- an exhibit that asks the question with more trepidation than enthusiasm. It begins with an endless series of wall panels, which provide another penitent look at the "conquest" of America, accompanied by sparse illustrations of Conquistadors and Spanish sailing vessels. The visitor is reminded that "for the Native Americans, the encounter was an invasion. For the Europeans it was an opportunity for expansion and conquest." Another wall panel notes sadly that "exploration and power went hand in hand as local inhabitants were vanquished." Lest the visitor dismiss his connection to these cultural criminals as merely historical or genetic, the exhibit argues that the brutalities of European explorers should be understood as an indictment of the whole Western mindset. A wall panel explains that "exploration is a cultural enterprise. A society or nation *decides to explore* [italics theirs]... Explorers are actors in a drama that represents the choices of their culture." To illustrate the nature of this "cultural enterprise" a film of New Zealand natives being bullied by European mining prospectors is played on a video screen. Such videos, and occasionally a monochrome statue of an explorer or an obscure 15th-century relic under glass, do little to break the monotony of haranguing wall text. Having established the premise that exploration is a debased and unenlightened undertaking, the exhibit attempts to extend it to the theme of space travel. An interactive video display that features individuals discussing the purposes of space ventures, includes repeated appearances by an "environmental activist" who offers such sagacities as: "I would really regret the day that I looked in my telescope, and saw bulldozers on the moon. I think that we don't have the right to do that. We don't even know how the universe was created, or what created it, or who created it." Presumably when NASA answers these questions, it will be permitted to proceed. At the conclusion of the exhibit, a lighted display leaves the visitor with the profound question, "Does Mars Have Rights?" Below, the display asks, "Is human exploration of Mars an act of destiny or of arrogance? Historically, the arrival of explorers have not always been benign. The native ecology is disturbed by human presence, especially the microbes and technology that explorers bring with them. What may happen to Mars if we establish a presence there?" The Smithsonian's most ambitious reconstruction project, however, is that of its oldest museum, Arts and Industries. Since 1881, the museum has housed artifacts from the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, in a tribute to American technology and culture. Its exhibits include a restored Jupiter locomotive, towering iron turbines and hoisting machines, and various curiosities from the fifty states. American flags and tricolor banners drape from the walls and ceilings. The atmosphere is one of unapologetic celebration. The museum's exhibits have been slowly disappearing since 1991, when one of its four exhibit halls was cleared out and replaced with the "Experimental Gallery," a special forum for temporary exhibits. One of the Experimental Gallery's recent projects, "Etiquette of the Undercaste," had the distinction of being the first PG-13 exhibit in Smithsonian history; parents were advised not to allow children 12 and under to go through. Designed by housing activists, the exhibit purported to guide the visitor through the travails of a homeless person, although it better resembled a carnival funhouse. On an accompanying Walkman headset, the voices of transients provided narration. Visitors were required to enter by reclining on a simulated morgue drawer, which slid shut, symbolizing their death. "Reborn" inside the exhibit as crack babies and drawn inexorably to lives on the street, they listened to cursing voices urging them to commit short change scams, sell drugs, and drop out of school. At one point, the visitor lay on a hotel bed and listened to the sound of a prostitute having sex. A woman's voice asked: "Who is smarter, the girl who gets paid for it or the one who gives it away for free?" The Experimental Gallery was only the beginning in the long-term transformation of the Arts and Industries Museum. The Smithsonian, in fact, is slowly removing the contents of the surviving four wings, and shipping them off to shadowy warehouses. When the purge is complete, the building is to be renamed the National African-American Museum. In the place of its color-blind celebration of American culture and technology, the Smithsonian will carve out an ethnic enclave. What do visitors think of the new Smithsonian? Because the institution is heavily subsidized by the federal government, it has never been subject to the judgement of the market. The only vote of confidence allowed visitors is a donation box, recently placed in museums in an attempt to generate additional revenues. Smithsonian undersecretary Constance Berry Newman attributes their barrenness to an unobtrusive box design. "We were very subtle, so subtle that the public didn't get it," she explained to the Washington Post recently. Perhaps the Smithsonian administration doesn't get it. _______ __________ ___________ / | / | | | |__________ | | | | \ | | \ _______ |__________ ___________ COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE 1001 Connecticut Ave. NW #1250 Washington, DC 20036 202-331-1010, fax 202-331-0640 Permission to copy granted as long as these lines are left intact. To subscribe to the CEI list, send a message to cei@digex.com. "The Virtual Hand: CEI's guide to the information superhighway" is available for $5. CEI's monthly newsletter, "CEI UpDate," is free to contributors of $25.