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]
