The Commercial that Only Aired Once

            September 11, 2001— everyone remembers where they were at the exact moment they heard the news that America had been attacked. Specifically, I remember being in my third grade classroom when my teacher told us that we were not allowed outside for recess that day. I have a vague memory of her mentioning an attack in New York City, but as an elementary school student I was more worried that I was missing some solid time on the swing set, and it was not until I saw one of my teachers crying in the hallway that I realized that something awful had happened. That day holds a different memory for everyone but as Americans we all share the sense of loss, tragedy, and heartbreak as a country. Within her book Tourists of History, Marita Sturken reaches into these moments of tragedy and pulls out the reaction that typically overlooked; how do these events affect our consumer culture? 

            By looking at devastating American events such as the Oklahoma City Bombing which occurred on April 19, 1995 and the September 11^th attack, Sturken brings to light how Americans continue to process and interact with the tragedy through the purchase of mass produced goods. Beginning with the description of two snow globes, one from Oklahoma City and the other from the 9/11 Memorial, she describes the significance that seemingly cheap knick-knacks truly hold. Not only are such trinkets evidence of a tourist’s visit to a site of importance but a conscious effort to remember. While few realize the irony that their actions as a consumer hold, Sturken enlightens us that many of the mementos we purchase to memorialize an event we identify as unique to the United States are often made in a foreign country, thus connecting our tragedy to the global market. In this nuanced view of Americans’ relationship with tragedy, the ordinary becomes pieces of a larger narrative that connects bombings to teddy bears, duct tape to the Department of Homeland Security, and commercials to uplifting tales. 

            It is evident within American society today that we are constantly overwhelmed with advertising campaigns, media breaks, and an overall need to purchase. As a society we are faced with the pressures to buy at every turn. 

Even Marilyn Mason feels the pressure sometimes

          The argument that Sturken appears to make throughout her book is that in times of crisis Americans require a great deal of retail therapy, even flooding to places like Wal-Mart to seek solace in times of need. The pressure to buy then takes on a whole new meaning. To the untrained eye this may appear as a nation just satisfying their consumer needs, but in a world seeped in patriotism they are rather fulfilling a duty to their country. The ability to purchase mass-produced goods can be viewed, according to Sturken, as a motivational symbol that the American people will not be kept down even if they are not aware of the movement they are taking part in. Advertisers are not unaware of the opportunity to send a message in times of national crisis, directing their campaigns to include a heartfelt message about the tragedy or a political message to the nation. In efforts to ease and reassure the public companies are marketing a sense of comfort rather than just goods to the people in dire need.

            There is no other company that knows how to pull on the heartstrings of Americans like Budweiser and their famous Clydesdale horses. Only two months after the September 11^th attack Budweiser released a Super Bowl commercial that emoted solidarity to a nation torn by tragedy. The commercial follows the Budweiser Clydesdale horses through New York City and into Battery Park where they give a breath taking bow in honor of those who lost their lives. In a news story aired on the 14^th anniversary of 9/11, a Chicago news station interviewed the creative brains behind the poignant commercial and revealed the heartfelt process and the many hoops the team had to jump through that led to its production. “The True Story behind the 9/11 Budweiser Commercial that Only Aired One Time,” details what it took to make such an iconic commercial that touched all those who saw it during Super Bowl XXXVI. The full commercial was aired only once during the 2002 Super Bowl with an edited version shown again in 2011 for the 10^th anniversary of the tragedy. 

                               The original commercial, aired February 3,2002

Those Clydesdale horses hit you right in the feels :(

As a company based in St. Louis, Missouri, Anheuser-Busch’s tribute to an event in New York City represents a connection that reaches across the country and ties together Americans in times of crisis. The Budweiser brand is well-known for their ability to create commercials that touch the hearts of its consumers while simultaneously advertising their product. What makes the 9/11 commercial different from all the others, however, is the absence of the brand name until the very last seconds. This purposeful omission speaks to the true message of the commercial. Rather than attempting to just market their product to a mass audience, the Budweiser Clydesdale horses’ bow towards New York City is a sign of strength among the American people in the wake of the detrimental attack. “Deemed one of the most highly effective ads of all time,” the commercial created by Anheuser-Busch establishes the link between consumerism and tragedy that Sturken describes in her study. The ability for a beer company to help a hurting city heal through such an advertisement portrays the deep connection our country establishes between purchasing power and patriotism. As addressed in Tourists of History, there are times in our country’s history when the consumption of mass-produced goods is seen as evidence that as Americans we will not be held down, and as in the Budweiser commercial there is also the important message that “We’ll Never Forget.” It is this connection that makes the Budweiser commercial so powerful. A company using their marketing power during the year’s biggest night for advertising for a heartfelt message of condolence to the American people truly shows how emotionally intertwined we are as a country.

Reading Tourists of History as well as watching the news story depicting the Anheuser-Busch 9/11 commercial brought me to question many aspects of America’s consumer culture and the influence that commercials have over our daily lives. We are all aware of the power that media and advertisers have over the choices we make throughout our days but that makes me wonder, what if this power could be used for good rather than evil? While we have begun to see an increase in advertisements against smoking and bullying, how else could positive and uplifting messages be utilized more often? Could social problems facing today’s youth possibly be addressed more positively in the media? Our country may not be ready for such an influx of moving commercials to hit their televisions, but who says that positive messages are only needed after a tragedy? 

From History to the Mainstream

In 1969, New York police raided an inn in Greenwich Village known as the Stonewall Inn, a prominent LGBT bar at the time. Despite being a common occurrence for such an establishment, the raid attracted a large crowd that responded rather violently. This event became known as the Stonewall Riots, and is regarded as one of the most important events in the push for LGBT rights in the United States. The actual bar itself closed, to be replaced 20 years later by a bar with the simple name of “Stonewall.” This bar gained recognition as a national landmark while the surrounding area is included on the U.S. Register of Historic Places. Recently, there is even a push for Christopher Park, a “narrow green wedge” across the street from the bar, to be commemorated as a national park.¹

Slightly more recent, though, is the release of a movie about the Stonewall Riots directed by Roland Emmerich and simply titled Stonewall. At the moment, it’s not doing so well either financially or critically.  Despite its $17 million budget, it has only managed to bring in slightly under $200 thousand. And, on the critical front, it stumbled almost immediately after trailers came out showing the completely fictional Danny Winters: a generically handsome white guy from Indiana, as the protagonist taking center stage in a struggle that involved numerous African Americans, Latinos, women, and transgendered people. Emmerich responded to the resulting controversy by noting that, at that point at least, “it wasn’t about the film, it was about the trailer.”² Shortly after saying this, the film released and the controversy and the critics didn’t stop.

With the black museum movement detailed in From Storefront to Monument, you can find several similar problems facing the LGBT and African American communities when it comes to the public history. These include the need to address stereotypes, the gendering of their particular histories, and pushing against the prolonged history of degradation these particular communities have dealt with. And, when creating a form of public history, whether through a museum movement or a Hollywood production, these issues need to be addressed in a hopefully satisfactory way. Stonewall, as the controversy and the criticism show, didn’t.

The issue that I found most relevant, though, was that of mass appeal. Namely, both the myriad of museums looked at in the reading and the film needed to decide how much importance they needed to place on attracting as many people as possible. Rather than keep their respective pieces of public history isolated to the particular minority group affected and the issues affecting them, the question of whether they should work to gain a more mainstream audience was fielded. And with that came the question of how to actually appeal to the predominately white and, in the film’s case, straight and cisgendered mainstream was brought up.

For the museums, this was a question that pertained to two general aspects: their location and the exhibits they displayed. Location, in addition to the symbolic importance we saw with the building of the Holocaust Museum, also determines who is going to be able to actually visit the museum. If it’s on the Mall, it gains a national significance and audience but you lose the significance of having it located somewhere close to the black community like with the DuSable Museum in Chicago. There was also the issue of the Mall being rather close to the former location of a prominent slave market. For the exhibits, these museums often looked at topics that were controversial, emotionally difficult, or, in the case of the Rats exhibit, tied closely to the everyday lives of the people living nearby, but it was suggested that they start using exhibits that would garner more mass appeal. Rita Organ, a former staff member of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati noted that “It was as important ’to educate non-African-Americans about us’ as it was to educate African Americans about themselves.”³

And it because of that concept of needing to educate the proverbial non-African-American that Danny Winters was created. Emmerich, in his efforts to not make a film just for the LGBT audience, but also for straight people, he decided to use the “straight-acting” Danny as an “easy in” for this expanded audience.⁴ The idea being that they’re more likely to empathize and/or sympathize with him when he gets mistreated because of how otherwise normal he is. If this is all there was to it, there likely wouldn’t have been as much of an issue as it turned out to be. Had Danny simply been created to provide a more accessible, if dramatized, look inside the Stonewall Riots and the Gay Liberation movement, it would have given audiences a chance to learn about a not-that-well-known historical event from a perspective that was largely similar to their own except for a few relevant changes.

Turns out there's a reason movies are rated low on trustworthiness.

This turned out not to be the case, as evidenced by backlash that followed the film. Danny, instead of simply being an observer that would help ease audiences into this particular subculture and historical event, takes a very proactive role in things. And, in doing so, he takes away from the actions of the actual people who took part in the events. One of the better examples of this can be seen in the trailer where he throws a brick that actually starts the riot. Now there are contradictory accounts on who threw this particular brick, but any of these would have been more acceptable than giving the role to the newly created fictional character.

Now while the suggestions of Rita Organ and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati to appeal to a wider audience (hopefully) didn’t detract from the historical accuracy of their exhibits, Emmerich and Stonewall can’t say the same. Mark Segal, who was actually at the Stonewall Riots, noted in his review that the film is not for “people seeking good LGBT history, nor for a community who wishes to see its history portrayed with dignity and respect.”⁵ In the attempt to bring this historical event to the mainstream, actual history was lost. And this issue of mass appeal is something that all forms of public history need to address. How much effort should be put in to attract the more mainstream audiences? What sorts of changes will be made to do so? And what parts of history should you be willing to set aside in your efforts?

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<sup>1. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/nyregion/lawmakers-seek-national-park-in-honor-of-stonewall.html?_r=0↩
2. http://www.buzzfeed.com/shannonkeating/director-roland-emmerich-discusses-stonewall-controversy#.sdM8poPG↩  
3. Andrea A. Burns. From Storefront to Monument: Tracing the Public History of the Black Museum Movement. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013. 154.↩  
4. http://www.buzzfeed.com/shannonkeating/director-roland-emmerich-discusses-stonewall-controversy#.sdM8poPG↩  
5. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/stonewall-movie/↩</sup>

Strange Bedfellows Oppose Women’s History Museum Commission: The Politics of Museum Building

In 1996, a group of likeminded organizers coalesced as a nonprofit called the National Women’s History Museum (NWHM) and began a concerted effort to push for a national museum of women’s history on or near the country’s most sacred site of memorialization, the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

At first glance, this would appear to be a rather innocuous campaign. That’s because it is tempting to think we have reached a point in our society when the idea of calling special attention to the contributions, daily experiences, and past and present challenges of women in the United States would not fan the flames of contention. Unfortunately, that has not proven to be true.

Case in point: today, nearly twenty years later, a bill to establish a privately funded, bipartisan commission to explore the feasibility of just such a museum is stalled in Congress. For that, we can thank two male GOP senators, who cite monetary concerns as the primary driver behind their decision to block the commission’s formation. A spokesperson for Tom Cobum, one of the two senators leading the anti-museum charge, explained his positioning:

While a women’s museum celebrating the accomplishments and contributions of women is certainly worthwhile, Congress should not be involved in its planning, construction or maintenance. [The bill] does not appropriate money for the commission, but congressional involvement at any point will likely lead to future federal appropriations for the museum.

Sen. Cobum's reasoning seems to ignore the fact that the commission-via-Congress track is par for the course in D.C. museum building. As we read in Preserving Memory, the Holocaust Museum went this route, as did the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is receiving federal funding toward its completion to the tune of $250 million. Museums dedicated to other marginalized groups like the American Indian also receive government money, as do museums dedicated to the—dare I say, less-critical—histories of design, portraiture, and postal services. To this I say:

Just as there were numerous voices in opposition to the building of a Holocaust museum on U.S. soil—many for political and even anti-Semitic reasons—evidence suggests that the politics of reproduction may be the real reason the senators are blocking the bill’s passage. In 2010, they first put a hold on the bill following a request from the conservative group Concerned Women for America, which pointed to a concern that a woman’s history museum would celebrate abortion rights. And more recently, in 2014, Michele Bachmann announced on the floor of Congress that she would not support a bill for a bipartisan committee out of fear that the resulting museum would “enshrine the radical feminist movement that stands against the pro-life movement, the pro-family movement, and pro-traditional marriage movement.”

Ironically though, it’s not just conservatives railing against the proposed museum; a group of liberal-minded historians are also opposed to the bill as it is currently written, albeit for very different reasons.

It seems that the nonprofit leading the charge for the bill, the NWHM, has in the past shown little regard for the expertise and contributions of historians and little concern for presenting through its exhibits a reinterpretation of history that applies gender as a category of analysis. Rather, to the dismay of women’s historians, it seems that the NWHM is intent on building an apolitical museum that will serve as a sort of women’s hall of fame—a tribute to a predicable cast of mainly white, middle- and upper-class women’s history all-stars (e.g., Abagail Adams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony) with a smattering of women of color (e.g., Harriet Tubman and Ida B. Wells) likely thrown in for good measure.

Given that a number of Republican presidential hopefuls were hard-pressed to name even one accomplished American woman in a recent debate setting, perhaps an all-star museum isn't the worst thing in the world. Perhaps it would have some educational value. But I and many professional historians think we can do better and that we have a duty to do better.

Women’s historians have made attempts to reach out to the NWHM to lend consultation services, but to no avail. According to an article published by History News Network:

Aware that the museum did not have any professional historians on staff, the scholars did what they could to try to improve NWHM’s presentation of women's history but were repeatedly rebuffed. They were refused even one seat on the museum’s board and only rarely consulted about substantive issues. Finally, in March 2014, those who had been asked to advise were summarily dismissed.

That the bill currently before Congress does not require that even one professional historian sit on the women’s history museum commission is deeply concerning to women’s historians who have much at stake if a museum that undermines the integrity of their work and decades of academic progress is built on such a public national stage. In response, historians started a petition requesting substantive changes to the bill’s wording. Among the requested changes, the petition states “it should be stipulated that four of the [commission] members be historians of American women, four be museum experts, and four have experience in public or elected service, preferably with regard to women’s history, or in fundraising.”

In considering the historians’ concern about the quality and nature of exhibits the proposed museum would present under the NMWH’s leadership, I am reminded of Elie Wiesel’s concern in Preserving Memory that a misrepresentation or sub-par representation of the Holocaust would be a greater disservice to the victims and the cause of remembrance than no museum at all. If a national women’s museum is at risk of presenting an “add women and stir” version of women’s history, then I questions its value. It would be a far greater asset if it challenged visitors to think critically about history as it has traditionally been presented to them. Rather than avoid potentially decisive, political issues like reproductive rights, a museum worth its weight would present the history of the controversy and a narrative of both sides’ position.

Unfortunately, museums that rely on public funding and even private donations cannot afford to risk offending any vocal segment of the public lest their sources of funding dry up out of fear of association. That is to say, where money is a factor, there are politics at play. This reality should also call into question museums’ reputation as one of the most highly credible sources of historical information, as indicated by the survey conducted in The Presence of the Past. While it’s true that most museums won’t present outward lies, politics may dictate a certain amount of information shrouding or misleading interpretations of history, or the propagation of a certain political agenda. If nothing else, the intensity of the politics that preceded the construction of the Holocaust Museum and that continue to surround the proposed national women’s museum should cause us to visit and evaluate museums with a more critical eye moving forward.

How Far is Too Far?

        “Work sets you free.” This infamous phase wrought in iron on the gate leading into Auschwitz misled countless victims who were heading to their death. Auschwitz, now a museum and memorial, is a popular tourist attraction, bringing in over 1.5 million visitors this past year. In an article titled “Auschwitz ‘Showers’ Highlight Challenge of Balancing Tourism and Memory,” it takes the serious topic of death at Auschwitz and makes us question, how far is too far? 

        Auschwitz, a place for solemn remembrance, was recently faced with the controversy of the installation of mist showers (pictured above) that some would argue are comparable to gas showers used by Germans to execute the Jews en masse. Though the Auschwitz Memorial stated that the showers were installed to combat the overbearing heat at Auschwitz, this did not sit well with some of the public. In this case there is a fine line between respect and spectacle. Did the museum cross that line? 

       The Auschwitz Museum’s Facebook post about the incident expresses that the mist showers installed by the museum, and the fake shower used by the Germans are not related, due to the fact that Germans administered poison gas in a different way. Many of the comments that can be read on the Facebook post support the museum’s decision of using mist showers as a cooling station, but the critics are still vocal. The way that gas chambers are portrayed in media is one of the reasons why some think mist showers are similar to gas chambers.

        The misconception regarding the mist showers is reminiscent of a scene from Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. The scene shows women being sheered and forced into a chamber-like room, where they assume that they are about to be gassed, but in all actuality it is simply a shower.

        This tense clip from Schindler’s List illustrates the fearful reality in which victims of the Holocaust lived, constantly wondering if at any moment it would be their last. Spielberg’s movie, based on a true story, is an example of how the public can get ideas from media and be outraged by something that would otherwise be considered innocuous, such as a mist shower. The article poses a similar moral dilemma regarding what to do with Auschwitz itself. The gas chambers of the death camp are in a state of decay and require reinforcement and renovation to continue to stand. Though, from the standpoint of a museum or a person working to preserve the history of the site, it makes sense to reinforce the structure, it could also be viewed as allowing a structure that marked the end of millions of lives to continue to stand, whereas it should be allowed to decompose and have the remnants erased by nature and time. The article asks “do you stop the hair from disintegrating or not?” Is it going too far to fortify such a horrific site and allow it to stand forever as a constant reminder of the extent of human cruelty, or is reinforcing the gas chambers an attempt to provide a glimpse into history and hopefully provide closure and healing to the families of the victims and educate the world?

        Something else stood out from the shower scene in Schindler’s List: the women getting their hair cut. In our reading for the week, Edward T. Linenthal’s Preserving Memory, creators of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum proposed displaying human hair in the museum, and naturally it met objections from both survivors of the Holocaust and museum staff. Witnessing how hair is butchered from their heads, one can see how shameful of a process it was, and what it was used for is even worse. Used to make yarn, socks and stockings, even furniture, hair was nothing more than a resource for Reich agencies. Once again it begs the question, how far is too far? Unlike other items given to the USHMM from Auschwitz, such as shoes, hair brushes and suitcases, hair physically belonged to a human being with emotions. To use hair in an exhibit would be borderline insensitive due to the fact that it was an intimate part of someone, which was forcefully taken.

        Two questions were stressed throughout Preserving Memory; what is the purpose of this museum, and how will it preserve the memory of those affected with integrity. Both questions are essential to this book because they provide the framework of understanding the relevance of the museum and its effectiveness in translating such an abhorrent episode of history into creating a place of healing and learning. It is important to understand the purpose of a museum because if a museum serves no purpose, then it is a pointless collective of objects and a waste of time. It is important to ask if the museum will preserve the memory of those affected with integrity, especially in dealing with a period of time like the Holocaust. Millions of people were killed and it is one of the most brutal genocides in human history. As such, it remains a sensitive issue and preserving their memory without integrity would come across as if those in charge were satirizing the Holocaust and its ghastly history, which would be going too far. 

        It is important to never forget the dark periods of human history, as those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. The efforts of the Auschwitz Memorial and the United States Holocaust Museum and Memorial have made great strides in preserving the history and creating spaces dedicated to learning and healing. Their efforts, as good-intentioned as they are, though, do and will spark up controversy as they skirt the line of good taste. In dealing with details and sites that exhibit such a grizzly part of history, it is important to ask to what extent those in control should go to preserve history. It is important to ask, whether it is mist showers that invoke mental images of gas chambers or efforts to preserve said gas chambers for their historical value, is this going too far? Does this add to the museum’s purpose? Does this preserve the memory of those affected with integrity? Yes, it is important to have sites where we can learn about the awful parts of human history, but when it comes to presenting something like the Holocaust, a word synonymous with death, in great detail, what are we willing to accept and how far is too far?

Cabinets of Curiosities: How Disability was kept in a box

Cabinets of Curiosities:

 How Disability was kept in a box

         
             Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder is a work that explores the meanings that we attach to museums and the objects that make them up. In this book, Lawrence Weschler explores the fascinating place that is Los Angeles’s Museum of Jurassic Technology, which has been described in magazines like Smithsonian Magazine as having a “sense of familiarity – provided by the careful presentation, the informative text, the low lighting, the thrill of discovery – yet there’s something wholly different there… It is comforting and unsettling at the same time.” This strange museum is a source of wonder and puzzlement, as one simultaneously is induced to what I felt was irrational interest in exhibits such as a horn of a woman named Mary Davis. The rational part of my mind, however, said that this was a hoax, and the more I read in Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder I was sure that this work was supposed to be a caution against trusting any old museum and the need for strong academic review of objects. But as time went on, I realized it was in many ways the opposite.

                Instead of a caution against small museums and the necessity of academic review, what Weschler manages to capture about the Museum of Jurassic Technology is its dual nature of strangeness and wonder, its dual nature of careful labeling and tentative grasp of facts, and its dual nature of both being serious and absurd. Coming out of the book, it seemed like it would be important to try and re-evaluate what I value in a museum.               

               Looking around on various small museum websites, I stumbled across an exhibition that took place last year in the United Kingdom created through a program called “Stories of Different Kind” through the Research Centre for Museums & Galleries and various museums in the United Kingdom and even the Smithsonian in the United States. Entitled “Cabinet of Curiosities: How Disability was kept in a box,” this exhibit was presented by Mat Fraser, an actor, artist, and activist for disability rights and related causes.

                Fraser and his colleagues used their access to numerous collections at various museums to try and create a new narrative on how disability is perceived by the general public as well as how it is portrayed in museums. Mat Fraser himself is the personification of the type of change sought by this effort, a man born with Phocomelia, a very rare birth defect which affects the formation of limbs, which in Fraser’s case affected the growth and length of his arms. However, Fraser is the sort of militant personality that has turned him into an activist and force for the voice of people with so-called disabilities. As he says in his presentation, the way in which people view people with disabilities, and the way in which museums present disabilities and disability history comes down to a few ways, two of which Fraser finds rather offensive and demeaning. The first kind which he calls the medical model of disability presents people with disabilities as objects of pity and in a medical sense objects that need to be fixed and made normal. The second which he calls the charity model of disability is that any disabled person is in need of charity and that disabled people are represented as brave and admirable solely because they live with their disabilities. Instead he prefers a social model where things like equal access are emphasized such as wheel chair ramps, and more importantly equal representation in both the workplace and in the media. For example, Fraser notes that in an exhibit on education he’d like to see a man with one arm as the teacher, something that one doesn’t see almost ever today. Most of all, he wants disabled people to be treated as whole people, not people with something wrong with them.

                Fraser’s presentation takes items from various collections, and then he comments on the labels attached to the items or their history, often with humor and sarcasm. Many items feature personal narratives of disabled people and their experiences. Notably Fraser intersperses his presentation of items with ear piercing rock music and even a rap, giving his presentation a kind of unorthodox yet appealing kind of air. Fraser was able to convey his anger and frustration with the state of the understanding of disability in our society, yet he was also able to bring humor and hope for the future. Like the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Fraser seems to encourage questioning of museums and their objects. In an interview, he states that “I was always taught to question what I was told… what else is in the story of this artifact what I am being shown… all these questions open up.”

                Both Fraser and Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder got me thinking about the museum we recently attended, the Museum of disAbility History, and how it portrays the many artifacts and tells the narrative of disabled peoples. Looking back with the mindset of Fraser, to me at least, it seems that the actual voice of the disabled people themselves was not heard in the exhibits of the museum. There was many wonderful tools used by disabled peoples, boards telling the history of doctors and hospitals, and examples of media portrayal of people with disabilities, but I can’t recall very many times in which the words of the disabled people were heard on how they felt that they were being treated. Their views on their own disabilities, their surroundings, their media portrayals, these were all absent. And thinking about the Weschler book, I can’t help but feel a there was a lack of wonder invoked by many of the exhibits. While they were interesting and well presented, to me at least it seemed very straightforward and scientific in a way, and lacked any sense of intrigue. Perhaps it is just me, and it probably is for the best that their exhibits be careful with a delicate topic like disability, but one wonders if there could be a way to apply some of the lessons of Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder to such a museum.

                I’ll leave you with two videos of the Cabinet of Curiosities presentation.  The first is a short 3 minute clip from one of the presentations, while the other is just over an hour long and is the entire presentation. I encourage you if you have the time to watch the entire thing, but between the interview and the short clip I think the gist of the presentation is fairly well represented. I hope that I have brought some of the ideas of Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder and the more general way in which objects are presented to the surface and change the way in which we approach narrative in a museum setting. 

Don't worry, the audio starts back up around 1:15 in.

            The second video I have been unable to find an easy way to get at on any video hosting site, so just go to this article and scroll halfway down, and watch it here.