Curating America's Painful Past: Memory, Museums, and the National Imagination 2020048508, 9780700632398, 9780700632404, 0700632395

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction. The National Mall and Memory of Painful Past
1. Framing Painful Past for the Nation: The Smithsonian Museum of American History
2. American Liberation, Part I: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
3. American Liberation, Part II: The National Museum of African American History and Culture
4. Remembering and Forgetting Genocide: The National Museum of the American Indian
Conclusion. Looking Back, Moving Forward
Notes
References
Index
Back Cover

Citation preview

curating america’s painful past

CultureAmerica Erika Doss Philip J. Deloria Series Editors Karal Ann Marling Editor Emerita

curating america’s painful past memory, museums, and the national imagination

TIM GRUENEWALD

university press of kansas

© 2021 by the University

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Press of Kansas All rights reserved

Names: Gruenewald, Tim, author. Title: Curating America’s painful past : memory, museums,

Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66045), which was organized by the Kansas

and the national imagination / Tim Gruenewald. Description: Lawrence : University Press of Kansas, 2021 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020048508

Board of Regents and is

ISBN 9780700632398 (cloth)

operated and funded by

ISBN 9780700632404 (epub)

Emporia State University,

Subjects: LCSH: Smithsonian Institution. | Historical

Fort Hays State University,

museums—United States—Case studies. | Museums—

Kansas State University,

Curatorship—United States—Case studies. | Museums

Pittsburg State University,

and minorities—United States—Case studies. |Collective

the University of Kansas,

memory—United States. | Mall, The (Washington, D.C.)

and Wichita State University.

| United States—Historiography. Classification: LCC E175.4 .G78 2021 | DDC 907.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048508.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

To Herbert Kellman And to the memory of my father, Edgar Grünewald (1937–2021)

contents

Preface and Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The National Mall and Memory of Painful Past 1 1 Framing Painful Past for the Nation: The Smithsonian Museum of American History 39 2 American Liberation, Part I: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 80 3 American Liberation, Part II: The National Museum of African American History and Culture 111 4 Remembering and Forgetting Genocide: The National Museum of the American Indian 150 Conclusion: Looking Back, Moving Forward 195 Notes 215 References 247 Index 261

preface and acknowledgments

This project began during a road trip in February 2001 when I moved from Atlanta to Seattle. One of the few planned stops along the way was Wounded Knee, South Dakota. On my final approach to the remote location, I got stuck in ankle-deep mud on an unpaved road. I had to turn around. Little did I know that this experience would become a key allegory for teaching America’s memory discourse about its painful past. When I finally arrived at the Wounded Knee site, I was surprised, to put it mildly. The only indication that a massacre had occurred there was a vandalized sign and a small memorial. The monument, like the mass grave, was behind a simple chain-link fence, which at the time seemed woefully inadequate to me. The rusty sign was graffitied and riddled with bullet holes. The word “Massacre” was written on a piece of board screwed to the sign, presumably covering the word “Battle” (figure P.1). The text describing the events below the title had remained unchanged. I was the only visitor to the site on that day. It was a deeply moving experience, in part because of the unique nature of the memory site, the living cemetery around the mass grave, and the solitude of the endless grasslands surrounding all of it (figure P.2). In the early afternoon I continued west and soon passed a road sign announcing Mount Rushmore. I spontaneously decided to take the turn and found myself at the iconic site some two hours after leaving Wounded Knee. The contrast was stunning: massive parking garages; imperial granite architecture, which included a museum and a large amphitheater; an avenue of state flags; and, of course, the mountain carving itself. In addition, I found tourists and the commercial infrastructure to match one of the United States’ most popular destinations that attracts some four million visitors per year (figure P.3). I felt that I had learned more about America’s fraught relationship with its painful past on that day than during many years of studying American culture and history. I decided to return and capture this experience in a documentary film. Eight years later, I spent the better part of a summer in South Dakota to film and interview at Wounded Knee and Mount Rushmore. Only then

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Figure P.1. Graffitied and vandalized sign titled “Massacre of Wounded Knee,” June 2009. Film still from Sacred Ground.

Figure P.2. Mass grave with chain-link fence and surrounding grasslands at Wounded Knee. Production still from Sacred Ground, June 2009. Photo credit: Ludwig Schmidtpeter.

did I learn about the troubled relationship between the two memory sites. The views among the Oglala Lakota on Wounded Knee exposed my naivete. Memory at the site was much more complex than I could have imagined, and opinions were as varied as the people I talked with. However, their disdain for Mount Rushmore was unanimous. In their view, Mount

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Figure P.3. Granite, flags, and mass tourism at Mount Rushmore, July 2009. Film still from Sacred Ground.

Rushmore represented a terrible insult on top of the injury that had been done to them. The US government had carved the faces of men who symbolize their painful past into the Black Hills, into the very rocks and spires that are the most sacred place in the world to the Lakota, including the very victims and survivors of the Wounded Knee Massacre and their descendants. Meanwhile, that same monument had become a mass pilgrimage site of American patriotism and the setting for one of the nation’s most prominent celebrations of Independence Day. We portrayed these incompatible memory discourses in the film Sacred Ground, which was released in 2015. It explores the contrasting memories and mythologies about the American past, including the collective violence perpetrated at Wounded Knee. I would have never embarked on this film project and much less completed it without my collaborator and friend Ludwig Schmidtpeter, who contributed his extraordinary visual and artistic talent and codirected Sacred Ground. I thank all interviewees and especially the three main characters in our film, who generously taught us about memory of the painful past and the relationship of that past to pain in the present. From local historian and storyteller Larry Swalley, I learned about Lakota conceptions of time and history, the notion of a past that reaches into the present and the future. Tom McCann, the director of Re-Member, a nonprofit dedicated to service and teaching about painful past, told us about statistics of poverty and

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life expectancy on the Pine Ridge Reservation that were hard to fathom. (Very little of those conditions have changed in the decade since then.) Finally, author Mark St. Pierre explained the systemic nature of poverty on the reservation caused by the relationship with the outside world, which is directly related to the violence and injustice of the past. Together, they taught me how the pain on Pine Ridge today was deeply rooted in the past. And certainly, remembering the painful past would not guarantee anything, but it seemed obvious that memory was a prerequisite on the way to change. The discourse of Mount Rushmore epitomized that American society at large was not yet willing to face its painful past. In a sense this book is a sequel to the film in the form of academic writing. It seeks to pull into focus the stark tensions between national memory of collective violence and a patriotic imagination of national history. The book brings this inquiry from the periphery of rural South Dakota to the political center of power and the monumental core of the United States on the National Mall. Focusing on the nation’s most popular historical museums, the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the book examines how they remember and frame America’s painful past in the hyperpatriotic context of the National Mall. This project and my entire research program on memory have grown out of my initial collaboration and discussions with Ludwig, for which I am deeply grateful. Writing criticism of the museum exhibitions often felt unfair toward all those who embark on the incredibly difficult and exhausting task of creating exhibitions about the darkest chapters in history and to those who work around them every day to make them available to us. I am immensely grateful to those memory workers for the grueling job that they accomplish. I critically engage with them in a spirit of respect and collaboration. There is no correct way to represent traumatic and violent histories. Collective violence and trauma, whether individual or communal, defies narrative formulation. Struggling with this defiance is the pulse of coming to terms with the past. As a scholar and avid patron of the four museums, I do suggest there are ways of representing the painful past that are more

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vigilant in avoiding national storylines that efface continuity of injustice into the present, and which would challenge American exceptionalism. However, I do admire all four museums and the Smithsonian Institution as a cultural project that invites careful scrutiny of its strategies and debate over alternative methods of representing lived history. In their distinguished and impressive existence, all four museums are milestones in the ongoing historical struggle to manifest inclusive democratic civility. As institutions, they all demonstrate crucial national and world-historic importance not only in how they attract people in to appreciate their stunning architectural spaces and exhibitions but also in how they embolden patrons to reflect on the implications of exhibition methods that build senses of national futurity in recognition of the past. From the early beginnings of this project, I have incurred many professional, intellectual, and personal debts that I would like to acknowledge. My interest in memory of difficult past began while studying and later teaching representations of collective violence in film and television. Of my early mentors in film studies at Emory, I am particularly grateful to David A. Cook, Matthew Bernstein, and Angela Dalle Vacche. At the University of Washington, I was fortunate to meet and learn from Rick Gray, Eric Ames, and especially Sabine Wilke. I am immensely indebted to Mara Wade at the University of Illinois for giving me the opportunity to teach a course on representations of the Holocaust and for introducing me to Herbert Kellman, professor emeritus of musicology and medieval studies. Born in 1930 in Berlin, Professor Kellman generously shared the memory of his family’s tragically painful past with me and my students. I admire how he was able to look back and face the horror clearly and at the same time be open and kind to all. I also thank my colleagues Laurie Johnson, Anke Pinkert, Carl Hendrik Niekerk, Robert Jenkins, and my office neighbor Yasemin Yildiz for their warm welcome and the inspiring intellectual exchange at Urbana-Champaign. There, I also met Michael Rothberg whose work on multidirectional memory later became very important for working through my understanding of competitive and contradictory memory “at the center” on the National Mall. After I moved to the University of Hong Kong, Kendall A. Johnson be-

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came a key mentor, colleague, and friend. First, as director of American studies and later as head of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, he supported both the film and the book project, without which neither could have been completed. I developed many ideas during conversations we had over the years. He read several chapters and provided crucial advice especially for framing the argument in the introduction and for chapter 3 on the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I am also indebted to my other colleagues in American studies with whom I have discussed various aspects of the project over the years. I owe particular thanks to Staci Ford, Selina Lei-Henderson, Patrick McGraw, Monica Lee Steinberg, and Bárbara Fernández Melleda. My academic home for the past eight years has been the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, and the project has benefited greatly from the school’s research support and from conversations with colleagues representing a broad variety of area studies and disciplines including Roland Vogt, Stefan Auer, James Fichter, Mercedes Vasquez Vasquez, Wayne Christaudo, Timothy Unverzagt Goddard, Daniel Poch, Facil Tesfaye, Loretta Kim, and Su Yun Kim. I am especially thankful to former dean Kam Louie and Louise Edwards for their support during the early years of my tenure. I am particularly grateful to DAAD visiting scholar Andreas Leutzsch, whose perspectives on memory and memorials often challenged me to rethink my positions. Special thanks are also due to Sander Gilman, who gave valuable advice during the early stages. The interim heads of school John Wong, Stephen Chu, and especially Dixon Wong helped create the necessary space for research and writing. Former publisher of HKU Press Michael Duckworth provided vital guidance for revising the manuscript. Across the Faculty of Arts at HKU, I was lucky to find several colleagues with shared interests for intellectual exchange, collaborations, and good company: Aaron Han Joon, Gray Kochhar-Lindgren, Jessica Valdez, Yeewan Koon, Roslyn L. Hammers, David Pomfret, Xu Guoqi, Daniel Chua, Kofi Yakpo, Giorgio Biancorosso, and Otto Heim. I am particularly grateful to Gina Marchetti and Adam Jaworski for mentorship and advice over many years. Since I arrived, we hosted several visiting Fulbright professors at HKU in American studies. I collaborated closely with many of them, and all

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enriched my understanding about memory of painful past in the United States. They were Monica Chiu, Haiming Liu, Scott Laderman, George Wang, Valerie Soe, Grace Wang, Daniel Meissner, and Mary Louise BuleyMeissner. Acknowledgments are also due to the US Consulate of Hong Kong and Macau and the Hong Kong America Center for administering and supporting the Fulbright exchange in American studies and for supporting our annual Fulbright conferences, which brought dozens more scholars to HKU from the United States. Living and working in Hong Kong affords the opportunity to regularly meet brilliant thinkers who pass through to take up visiting positions or to give lectures. I have benefited immensely from conversations with Scott Lash, Toby Miller, Ackbar Abbas, Penny von Eschen, Wimal Dissanayake, Rebecca Adelman, Stacy Takacs, Thomas Foster, Russ Castronovo, Steven C. Tracy, Greta de Jong, and Qiao Li. In 2017 I had the great fortune of collaborating in bringing the Kinsey Collection of African American History and Culture to the University Museum and Gallery at HKU. While the Kinsey Collection focuses on historically marginalized achievements of African Americans in the arts and in history, the collection also included invaluable objects from painful chapters in the African American past. Profound thanks to Bernard, Shirley, and Khalil Kinsey for sharing their collection and for demonstrating the importance of public memory for nurturing healthy collective identities. I am profoundly grateful to Faculty of Arts dean Derek Collins, who worked enthusiastically and tirelessly on bringing the Kinsey Collection to Hong Kong. During this project, I met museum curator Chris Mattison and museum director Florian Knothe, who both became friends and collaborators and provided much valuable advice on my own research in museum studies. In 2018 we hosted Erika Doss to give a lecture on unwanted memorials in the United States. Our conversations about the National Mall helped me understand better the “militarization” of memory on the Mall, which impacted my readings of every museum discussed in this book. Erika gave valuable advice and encouraged a submission to the book series CultureAmerica that she coedits with Philip J. Deloria at the University Press of Kansas. I am extremely appreciative of the outstanding team at

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the press, which was equally efficient, professional, and kindhearted during the difficult time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bethany Mowry took an immediate interest in the project and shepherded it expeditiously through the review process. Kelly Chrisman Jacques helped keep the project on track through the production, and Lori Rider did an outstanding job with copyediting. Many thanks also to Karl Janssen for the cover design and Michael Kehoe for helping find the audience for the book. I am most grateful to one anonymous reviewer and to Nicole Maurantonio for detailed feedback, which helped improve the manuscript significantly. At HKU I also thank my research assistant Ian Paolo Villareal for his hard work on verifying references. Sections of chapter 3 appeared in an article in the Journal of American Culture. I thank the anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback and the journal for permission to reuse parts of the article in revised form. Earlier iterations of the research were presented at various conferences and invited lectures. Part of the methodology was presented at the inaugural Memory Studies Organization conference in Amsterdam, an early version of chapter 3 was presented at the Memory Studies Organization conference in Copenhagen, and the argument on nationalism and memory on the Mall was presented at the International Association for Media and Communication Research in Cartagena. I thank Matthew Boswell for the invitation to present an early version of the book’s core argument in the Sadler Seminar series at the University of Leeds and in a master class for graduate students, which both yielded lively and fruitful discussions. I am also grateful to Fu Meirong and Wang Zhenping for the invitation to present a lecture on memory of terror and nationalism at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Field research for this book took place over the course of four years with annual trips to Washington, DC, which would have been impossible without substantial research funding. Research and writing for this book were supported by a Seed Grant for Basic Research from HKU and an Early Career Scheme grant of the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong (project number 27603716), which in addition to travel and research funding also provided teaching relief. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the support of my family. My grand-

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mother Edith was the first person to show me how to take responsibility for a painful past of collective violence. She passed on her honesty and frankness about the past to my mother Ruth. I could not have embarked on this project without my parents’ loving support of my path through academia across three continents. My mother and my father Edgar were both dedicated teachers. My father taught politics and civics education in secondary school in a small town near Frankfurt. His lessons included teaching about the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. He regularly took his students on field trips to concentration camp memorials. I first glimpsed into the abyss of the past through the books on his shelf. I dedicate this book to his memory and to Herbert Kellman. Born a few years apart in the 1930s in Germany, they never met, but I think they would have enjoyed each other’s company because they were quite alike in many ways. I know they would have agreed about the imperative to remember and teach a past almost too painful to face. A source of joy throughout my years overseas has been to travel back home and spend time with my godson Linus and his brothers Luk and Elmar. It has been equally delightful to visit my goddaughter Emma and her sister Johanna (enormous thank-you to their parents Alex and Katja for their friendship and for feeding me so well during my stays!). Spending time in the Black Forest with Johnny and Andrea has been my favorite oasis for the past thirty years. Our vacations with my brother Thomas, his wife Joanna and their wonderful children Livia, Vincent, Hannah, Valentin, and Joshua are highlights of each year. We are truly lucky to have them in our lives. The greatest debt of all—and it is not close!—I owe to my wife Saskia Witteborn. She is a brilliant scholar, the first and best critic of my ideas. She has made tremendous sacrifices during my many extended absences for research and filmmaking. When we are together any pain is cut in half and all the joy is more than doubled.

curating america’s painful past

introduction the national mall and memory of painful past

Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced. James Baldwin, “As Much Truth as One Can Bear,” New York Times Book Review, January 14, 1962 That this country, like every other country, has its tragic past does not sit well with the founding, and still all-powerful, belief in American exceptionalism. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

On May 25, 2020, four police officers killed George Floyd on a street in Minneapolis during an arrest. Onlookers captured the event on their mobile devices and it hit the screens around the world. The horrific videos caused mass declarations that Black Lives Matter in protests that erupted across the United States and quickly spread around the world. The stunning velocity with which the video clip of Mr. Floyd’s murder went viral inspired the momentum of protests that major media outlets broadcast in real time. Just as stunning was the sense that this was a rerun. Technological innovation did not outpace the injustices of the past. It brought audiences back once again to confront racial inequity in the present. A consensus seemed to emerge about the relationship between past and present. Public figures as diverse as Apple CEO Tim Cook, conservative commentator David French, filmmaker Michael Moore, presidential candidate

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Joe Biden, secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie G. Bunch, and countless others appealed to the nation to finally face its past.1 During his eulogy, Rev. Al Sharpton linked Mr. Floyd’s death to the painful past of African Americans stretching back to the arrival of the privateer The White Lion in 1619 with twenty enslaved Africans on board: “George Floyd’s story has been the story of black folks because ever since 401 years ago, the reason we could never be who we wanted and dreamed of being is you kept your knee on our neck.”2 Sharpton specified the oppression as systemic discrimination in education, business, the criminal justice system, and politics. In his open letter on the Apple website, Tim Cook put it plainly: “That painful past is still present today.”3 He too connected racial inequity in all aspects of daily life in the United States to its painful history. Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch, founding director of the first Smithsonian museum to feature a comprehensive exhibition on slavery, implored the public in his online statement to finally learn from history.4 Former senior fellow at the National Review Institute David French demanded a reframing of the national past from his readers: “The central and salient consideration of American racial politics shouldn’t center around pride in how far we’ve come, but in humble realization of how much farther we have to go.”5 Such appeals expressed the widespread frustration that the nation in 2020 still was unable to acknowledge its painful past by considering it as a matter of social justice. Had America’s national memory not changed fundamentally more than half a century ago during the cultural shifts of the 1960s? In 2016 Lonnie Bunch finally oversaw the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Twelve years earlier, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) had opened. Both museums were crucial additions to the discourse on the National Mall. They are milestones in the nation’s struggle with its past. Yet crucial aspects of America’s painful past still remain suppressed in the national imagination. Since 1993, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) has remembered and memorialized the Holocaust next to the National Mall and near the Washington Monument. Elie Wiesel delivered a speech at the dedication and expressed his hope for the museum: “For the dead

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and the living, we must bear witness. For not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are also responsible for what we are doing with these memories.”6 His vision was to link the past with the present, to undertake the work of remembrance for the dead and the living. At that time, the United States had no national museums dedicated to the memory of its own national pain. Systematic crimes against humanity committed over centuries on US soil were not remembered on the National Mall. Susan Sontag interpreted this omission at the example of slavery: “To have a museum chronicling the great crime that was African slavery in the United States of America would be to acknowledge that the evil was here. Americans prefer to picture the evil that was there, and from which the United States—a unique nation, one without any certifiably wicked leaders throughout its entire history—is exempt.” In other words, such a museum, Sontag believed, would fundamentally undermine “the belief in American exceptionalism.”7 Now, museums remember America’s painful past on the National Mall. In addition to the NMAAHC and the NMAI, the National Museum of American History (NMAH), established in 1963, has added new exhibitions engaging with difficult history in America. Do these museums reflect a transformation of collective memory in the United States? Ultimately, this book seeks to remind the reader of the profound impact that projects of national memory can have on facing the past as a matter of present justice. Museums represent the past primarily through storytelling and visualization. Therefore, I focus on close readings of narrative and visual rhetoric across the museums. Given the recent additions to the Mall, the question is no longer if but how the museums face the nation’s painful past. Which narrative and visual devices are similar and how do they differ? What aspects of US history do the museums emphasize, and what are their blind spots? Reading the museums as multimedia texts can provide answers to these questions. Using memory studies to compare these sites means thinking about more than the rhetoric of museum space. It includes reflecting on the National Mall and how these institutions gained their footprint there. Comparison also raises questions about the relationship of painful US

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history and the imagination of African American, Native American, and Jewish culture. All three museums walk side by side in the challenge of facing the painful past, but they forge different paths in how they attempt to avoid reducing culture to their respective traumatic histories. Finally, the independence of these sites’ operations should not occlude the ways that they are in implicit conversation with each other in a broader national and international context of memory, memorial, and museum discourse. Memory studies methodologies help create comparisons between them that are critically productive. All these sites have played some role in setting up a national relationship to memory of painful pasts—and can play a vital role in future processes of coming to terms with the past. The museums offer vibrant multimedia displays of engaging the past; the goal is to consider the assumptions behind how they do this, and the relative degrees of impact they have and could have in regard to addressing enduring injustices from the past. Remembering the painful past on the National Mall is challenging because it clashes with progressive idealization of the nation that attempts to resolve injustice in patriotic imagination. The museums, I argue, use a variety of narrative and visual strategies to solve the challenge of integrating the nation’s painful and traumatic stories with memory discourse on the National Mall. Three of the four museums examined in this study present conventional, linear narratives of progress and liberation: the NMAH, the USHMM, and the NMAAHC. They employ teleological narratives to frame US history as a struggle for liberty, one of the United States’ core national mythologies. The exhibition narratives and visual displays value those who contribute to the progress toward liberty. They become part of the national imagination. Anything and anyone obstructing this path is presented as alien and foreign to the national community. By and large, all three museums relegate painful experience to the past. They provide at least some narrative closure and thereby obfuscate the connection between painful past and social inequity in the present. Another shared narrative emphasis across those three museums is a focus on the US military past, reflecting what Erika Doss has described as a militarization of the National Mall.8 Military veterans are almost universally celebrated, and the US military is presented as a key agent in the struggle for liberty.

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The NMAI breaks with this rhetoric as it eschews linear historical narratives. Instead, following its commitment to a multitude of indigenous voices across the Americas, the NMAI favors circular and rhizomatic narrative structures. The museum’s core focus is on survivance, which limits its attention to persecution of the past. The NMAI does not provide narrative closure; there are no end points of liberation in the Native American time line. Naturally, the NMAI also deviates in its memory of US military history, reflecting the American Indian Wars. Yet even the NMAI cannot avoid the militarization of the Mall entirely. Its only memorial does not remember victims of past oppression but is dedicated to American Indian veterans who fought on behalf of the United States. Another focus of this study is the memory of collective violence and atrocities. The transatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, or forced relocation threaten the national imagination of the United States as a force for good that is cultivated on the Mall. Here, a close look at the USHMM is productive. Its Holocaust exhibition is a benchmark for narrating largescale collective violence in museums that has impacted the rhetoric of atrocities in museums worldwide.9 We will see that each of the three museums dealing with US domestic history responds to the challenge of remembering such agonizing history in a different way. How they remember and omit collective violence provides insight into what kind of memory is possible on the Mall and what remains taboo. The same applies to what I call nonnarrative memorial spaces that are common in memorial museums dedicated to difficult history. Again, each museum has their own approach to memorialization, approaches that in aggregate speak loudly about who is and is not granted a memorial space on the National Mall. In short, this book explores how four of the nation’s most popular historical museums package the pain of the past for the dominant national imagination in the United States. A comparative analysis will assess degrees of effectiveness of different approaches to narrative and visual rhetoric of national pain. It will register importances of locality, institutionalization, and internationalism to the way national museums remember and forget. Tracing the limitations of their efforts may open up the possibility of a different “national exceptionalism” born of a commitment to facing the past as a transformative potential for enacting justice.

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I come to my conclusions reluctantly as I don’t want to belittle the progress that has been made in including memory of the painful past on the Mall. The establishment of the NMAAHC and the NMAI were crucial achievements in this process. More importantly, they give presence to two groups on the Mall that for too long in US history have been marginalized by the national imagination. My criticism of the NMAAHC and the NMAI in chapters 3 and 4 could lead to the impression that I am placing the burden of remembering painful past in the United States on the shoulders of these two institutions. This is not my intention at all. Difficult history should be remembered throughout the Mall at the places that are symbolically connected to the painful past and at the sites where collective violence took place. For example, slavery should be remembered at all buildings and monuments for which slave labor was used, at locations on the Mall where human beings were bought and sold, and at the memorials dedicated to the Founding Fathers who practiced slavery. Several tribes lived in the Chesapeake area at the time of colonization, including the Piscataway, Pamunkey, Nentego (Nanticoke), Mattaponi, Chickahominy, Monacan, and Powhatan. All of them should be remembered on multiple locations on the Mall so this local history cannot be overlooked. No visitor should ever leave the Mall without knowing who had lived in this area, and which peoples and cultures were displaced so that the capital and the national treasure that is the Mall could be built. Finally, the Mall is not just a local place but a national space. As I will elaborate in the conclusion, two national memorials should be built, dedicated to Native American and African American victims in US history. A recognition is needed for the unique and foundational role of collective violence against both groups during the establishment and growth of the nation. However, none of this exists on the Mall as of 2020. Therefore, assessing the state of memory of the painful past at the national center must look at where it can be found, which is primarily at the four museums discussed in this book. Despite this approach, this study’s ultimate demand is that memory of the painful past should be ubiquitous throughout the National Mall, just as it has permeated US history. Without this honest look back, a more just and equal future cannot emerge.

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Museums, Painful Past, and the National Mall A look at the National Mall outside of the museums examined in this study reveals a marginalization of painful national memory. Especially, tragic Native American or African American history continues to be virtually invisible. Even today, neither the place of the Mall nor the space of national imagination allocates much room to “the evil that was here.” Slavery, for example, was omnipresent on and around the site of today’s National Mall before the Civil War. As Abraham Lincoln summarized in 1854: “In view from the windows of the Capitol, a sort of negro-livery stable, where droves of negroes were collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to Southern markets, precisely like droves of horses, had been openly maintained for fifty years.”10 Chained Africans were a common sight, with human beings sold at slave markets and auctions and held captive in slave pens. Yet, no significant memorial and no monument reminds the visitor of this chapter of local and national history today. Likewise, there is no memorial anywhere on the Mall dedicated to the peoples that lived in the area for some eleven thousand years before European colonization. When John Smith sailed up the Potomac in 1608, he encountered about three hundred Nacotchtank people, who lived in villages east of the river and had developed a farming economy about a thousand years earlier. In the eighteenth century, they were entirely replaced by Europeans as Washington became a colonial outpost.11 Despite hundreds of historical markers on or around the National Mall, there is barely a mention of a tribe or any Native American past. Thus, the vast majority of the millions who visit the capital city every year will leave knowing nothing of these local histories that cannot be disentangled from national history. Many of the tourists who spend much of their time visiting monuments and historical sites on the Mall will learn little if anything about this tragic and painful past and will hardly find a reason to reevaluate US national ideologies. In effect, the nation’s painful past is largely quarantined in historical museums on the National Mall.12 The arrival of the NMAI, the NMAAHC, and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (NMPJ) in Montgomery, Alabama, as well as many

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INTRODUCTION

smaller museums, memorials, and monuments around the country, indicates an increasing willingness to acknowledge painful past in the United States at large. Prominent examples for this trend include the President’s House Memorial in Philadelphia (2010) about George Washington’s slaves living in the first executive mansion of the United States; the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial in Duluth, Minnesota (2003), which is a lynching memorial about the murder of three African American men in 1920; the Ancestral Burial Ground National Monument in New York City (2007), where an estimated ten to twenty thousand enslaved Africans were buried; and the Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism during World War II in Washington, DC (2000), which memorializes the Japanese internment camps during World War II.13 In 2018 the NMPJ and the complementary Legacy Museum: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration opened in Montgomery as the largest and most significant memorial and museum dedicated to the victims of white supremacy in the United States to date. Most of these memory spaces and many others like them have emerged during the past two decades, which can be explained by four main factors. First, the cultural transformations of the 1960s revised memory of the nation’s past to allow for perspectives of minorities and marginalized groups including the painful experiences they had to endure. Influential revisionist histories of the United States helped raise consciousness of minorities, which strengthened social movements including the civil rights movement and the American Indian Movement.14 Second, the experience of the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement fundamentally questioned the United States’ self-image as an innocent and benevolent power. Atrocities committed by US soldiers, civilian casualties, and criticism of the war itself were widely discussed in society, which fueled a vocal protest movement. Third, by 2000 the United States was firmly in the midst of a demographic change, which will see the white population decrease from about 90 percent in 1950 to less than half by 2050. By 2000, the nonwhite US population had more than doubled and with it the number of stakeholders with an interest in marginalized painful histories of minorities. Fourth, also around the turn of the millennium, Europe and the United States were experiencing a memory boom characterized by an increasing

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interest in the past, which found expression in public culture, academic discourse, and a proliferation of memory sites.15 Yet memory in public places, especially on the National Mall, has been slow to attend to painful history in comparison with US culture. For example, African American authors like Frederick Douglass or Sojourner Truth have remembered the suffering of bondage in slave narratives in the nineteenth century. Many modern authors of the twentieth century such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou to name just a few have brilliantly reflected on the legacies of racism and discrimination. Spiritual leaders, politicians, academics, and social activists have made the connection between the painful past and injustice of the present in many publications.16 With some delay, difficult and traumatic histories were also reflected in popular culture, for example, in movie and television narratives. While the miniseries Roots brought the topic of slavery to the small screen already during the 1970s, arguably the first realistic attempt to represent chattel slavery on US plantations in a major Hollywood motion picture did not come until the adaptation of Solomon Northup’s slave narrative Twelve Years a Slave in 2013.17 Yet museums and memorials have been laggards, not leaders, regarding memory of painful past in the United States. In addition, memory on the National Mall and in its historical museums has been lagging behind memory in public places elsewhere. For contested and painful pasts to be remembered in central public places, a broader consensus is required. The more prominent a public place is, the more difficult it is to achieve such an agreement over the past. No memory site in the United States is more central or more prominent than the National Mall. Consider, for example, that Sojourner Truth was the first Black woman to be honored with a statue in Congress only in 2009. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was not dedicated until 2011. As mentioned, explicit memory of slavery, Jim Crow, or injustice toward Native Americans remains largely absent outside of the museums on the Mall. While the aforementioned distributed memory throughout US culture, the country, and its periphery is crucial for changing a consensus about the past, memory sites at the center reflect the state of that consensus at present. As Roy Rosenzweig and

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INTRODUCTION

David Thelen concluded from their survey of memory sites: “Americans put more trust in history museums and historic sites than in any other sources for exploring the past.”18 And since memory of painful past on the Mall is virtually limited to its historical museums, they will serve as the main case studies for the book. The immediate context of the museums matters. Three museums are close to the Washington Monument: the NMAH, the USHMM, and the NMAAHC. The fourth museum, the NMAI, sits next to the US Capitol Building (see figure I.1). They are surrounded by other Smithsonian museums on the Mall dedicated to anthropology, science and technology, and fine art. Like most museums in Washington, DC, the four museums offer free entrance. National museums with attention to history contribute to shaping the collective imagination of national identity. In the physical world these museums present the most detailed narratives of the nation’s past. They command material spaces for communicating those narratives to the public that are unique in scale and enjoy privileged central locations. As such, these museums are test cases for observing if and how histories of collective violence and pain are remembered or forgotten in the United States today. Few public spaces in the United States are more regulated than the National Mall. This applies especially to building a permanent structure, which requires legislative action by Congress and often the support of the sitting president. Naturally, no institution controls all details of a monument or a museum, but it would also be naive to assume that the influence of the US government is not significant given its role in establishing and funding national memory sites on the Mall. Given that new structures on the Mall usually require bipartisan support, they could be viewed as the nation’s lowest common denominator. In his acclaimed history of the Mall, Kirk Savage called it “the monumental core of the nation.” Savage saw the Mall as the nation’s main expression of its civil religion, which “functions somewhat like a pilgrimage site, where communities of believers actually come together in the act of occupying a holy site, seeing a relic, reenacting a sacred event.”19 Indeed, more than 25 million people visit the National Mall each year, making it the most visited site administered by the National Park Service.20 On any given day, families, tour groups,

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Figure I.1. Map of the National Mall with the four museums included in this study. Modified public domain image. Created by the National Park Service and modified by Evelyn Lo.

and school groups from around the country can be seen visiting the iconic monuments, memorials, and museums on the Mall, often wearing uniform T-shirts to emphasize the communal nature of their visit. No doubt, for many people seeing the iconic national sites in person is a once-in-alifetime experience, likely to leave a lasting impression. The institutional bodies governing these museums make strong claims about their role as authorities over the interpretation of national history for the public. For example, the Smithsonian Institution, which oversees three of the museums examined in this book (NMAH, NMAI, and NMAAHC), announces itself on its website as the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex and claims as its mission simply “the increase and diffusion of knowledge.”21 The USHMM defines itself as “America’s national institution for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history.”22 The interpretation of difficult past is contested and often controversial especially with regard to the relationship of that past to the present. Consider, for example, the controversial issues of reparations for slavery or Native American land rights matters. Given the museums’ claim to present “knowledge” to the public, this study seeks to answer how much space such a claim allows for the inevitable contradictions, ambiguities, and controversies in the context of the dominant national discourse on the Mall. The four museums discussed in this book also derive their impact on the national imagination from their popularity. In addition to seeing the iconic monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, millions visit one or more of the Mall’s museums each

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INTRODUCTION

year. The NMAH is the third most popular museum of the Smithsonian Institution, with 4.1 million visitors in 2018, behind only the National Air and Space Museum (6.2 million) and the National Museum of Natural History (4.8 million). Altogether, the four museums discussed in the following chapters attracted nearly 9 million visitors in 2018, including 1.9 million for the NMAAHC, 1.1 million for the NMAI, and 1.7 million for the USHMM.23 I will begin the discussion with the NMAH, the nation’s most popular and most comprehensive history museum. Founded in 1964, it is also the oldest museum examined and will serve as an introduction to the imagination of the nation and to the memory of the painful past at the monumental core of the nation. For decades, it was the only museum on US history on the National Mall and hence the only museum where painful narratives could be represented in detail. As a museum that is dedicated to American history as a whole and not focused on any particular historic event or ethnic group like the other museums, the NMAH is a useful benchmark for the dominant imagination of US history and identity in this study. Each of the remaining three chapters is dedicated to one national museum presenting a different chapter of painful history and specific narrative approaches to situating that painful past in relation with the national imaginary. The second chapter provides an analysis of the USHMM. Opened in 1993, it is the first national memorial museum and the first museum dedicated exclusively to atrocities of the past. Just as Holocaust remembrance has become paradigmatic for remembrance of painful past globally, the USHMM has presented a model for the remembrance of crimes against humanity in the United States with significant impact on the museums discussed in the subsequent chapters. Whether they adopt or reject the narrative and visual approaches of the Holocaust Museum, they cannot escape its influence. The third chapter examines the NMAAHC. Opened in 2016, the museum presented the first comprehensive account on the National Mall of atrocities committed against African Americans. My reading will focus on the museum’s historical exhibition, which is located on three levels below ground. It cannot be stated often enough how important it is to finally have an extensive and detailed exhibition on slavery and segregation on

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the National Mall. While the initial reception of the museum’s treatment of the painful past has been overwhelmingly positive, my attention to narrative structure in the context of national discourse opens up a more critical reading of the museum. The fourth chapter turns to the NMAI, breaking with the chronology of the previous three chapters. This allows us to consider the NMAI in contrast with the other three museums, from which it deviates regarding its narrative and visual strategies. Opened in 2004, the NMAI presented the first detailed history from a Native American perspective on the National Mall. In addition, it attempted to decolonize the language of museums, rejecting many narrative conventions of historical exhibitions. Its innovative approach triggered much criticism that led to a reversal in the museum’s strategy. The permanent exhibitions of the first generation were replaced with more traditional narratives paying more attention to the relationship between Native Americans and the United States. In comparison to the other national museums dealing with the painful past, one of the most striking differences is the absence of a memorial space dedicated to the memory of vast numbers of indigenous victims to European colonization throughout the Americas and to US expansion across the continent. I will conclude this study with a thought experiment imagining the recently opened NMPJ and the Legacy Museum situated centrally on the National Mall where the National World War II Memorial is located now. This invites a comparison of how they remember US painful history in contrast to the museums discussed in the previous chapters. I will end with considering how such a memory site would change the meaning of the iconic monuments and the current national imagination on the National Mall. Narrative and Visual Rhetoric of Memory Places and Museums My argument in this study is based on an interdisciplinary reading of museums focusing on visual and narrative rhetoric combining methods from communication, film, and visual studies. In their volume Places of Public Memory, Greg Dickinson, Carole Blair, and Brian Ott explain that memory places such as museums and memorials “are always already rhetorical.

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INTRODUCTION

They assume an identity precisely in being recognizable—as named, bordered, and invented in particular ways. They are rendered recognizable by symbolic, and often material, intervention.”24 Investigating the rhetoric of a memory place seeks to understand how “memories achieve durability over time or compelling force in a particular context.” Dickinson et al. suggest several important rhetorical characteristics of memory places that I will examine throughout this study. First, attention to place itself is paramount. The museums in question are well-known tourist destinations, and traveling to the National Mall is a significant investment for most people. The Mall elicits a sense of importance and saturates its museums with authority to speak about the nation. Second, “memory places construct preferred public identities for visitors by specific rhetorical means.” With the exception of the NMAI, the museums examined in the following chapters privilege national identity. How do they connect visitors through visual and narrative rhetoric to US national communities of the past? How do they create a sense of continuity? Third, memory places “are characterized by an extraordinary partiality.” Major museums are rare, highly visible, and seemingly permanent, and they demand significant investments of funds and symbolic space. The stories they select are automatically privileged and imbued with importance for the national community. What are the museums in question partial to? What can we learn from the museums’ rhetoric about their biases regarding the nation’s painful past? Fourth, and most importantly, memory places usually employ “various memory techné.”25 This is particularly true for museums, which utilize objects, monuments, words, images, sounds, videos, and so on. What is more, the architecture and spatial arrangement of exhibitions further determines the experience of the visitors. To analyze the complex multimedia narratives of museums, I will borrow from analytical tools and concepts developed in film studies. Especially in historical museums, exhibitions are often experienced sequentially, as are almost all of those discussed in the subsequent chapters. As visitors move through an exhibition, they experience audiovisual media, displays, objects, and explanatory text similar to the experience of a film. The curator, aided by museum architecture, selects and arranges the material often in a linear fashion, not unlike the director or editor of

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a film, even though the visitors might be seen as assistant directors who have control over the tempo of the storytelling and may pause, rewind, and “replay” a section. In short, museum exhibitions are structurally similar to filmic texts, which makes it productive to analyze museum exhibitions by taking advantage of the terminology, methods, and theories that have been developed in film studies. Historical museum exhibitions tell stories, and therefore narrative construction is one of the main ways museums package the past and shape visitor experiences. Three of the museums discussed, the NMAH, the USHMM, and the NMAAHC, organize their main historical exhibitions with narrative structures that share many characteristics with mainstream Hollywood story lines. Most importantly, they present history as chronological, linear, and teleological chains of events that are in a causeand-effect relationship.26 In their seminal study on classical Hollywood cinema, David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Christine Thompson explain how such a narrative structure reflects American ideology: “It is easy to see in the goal-oriented protagonist a reflection of an ideology of American individualism and enterprise, but it is the peculiar accomplishment of the classical cinema to translate this ideology into a rigorous chain of cause and effect.”27 While the museum narratives examined in the book do not feature a single protagonist like most Hollywood films, they by and large present history as propelled forward by individual, goal-oriented agents. Moreover, history is depicted as a narrative chain with cause-and-effect relations and a teleological trajectory of progress. Whereas classical Hollywood narratives usually move toward a climax and conflict resolution, the exhibitions examined in this book (with the exception of those of the NMAI) progress toward a greater realization of key national values such as liberty and freedom. Such narrative imagination in museums follows “long-established patterns of presenting American history as a relentless forward movement of technological and cultural progress,” as Fath Davis Ruffins has argued.28 The problem with such teleological narratives is that they tend to ignore or marginalize social issues or events contradicting the narrative of progress. Moreover, anyone and anything presented to obstruct progress is morally devalued and may be excluded from the national community.

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INTRODUCTION

For narratives of any kind we need to be mindful of narrative perspective.29 This applies especially in the case of narratives on contested topics such as painful memories, since narrative perspective determines what is presented and what is left out. Bordwell et al. have called narrative perspective in classical Hollywood invisible, omnipresent, and omniscient.30 Virtually all historical exhibitions use an omniscient narrative voice that recedes into the background and does not announce itself to the visitor. It creates the appearance that the information presented is objective. Such seeming objectivity is, of course, illusory because a curator or curatorial team selected and arranged the narrative, and any outcome necessarily reflects the perspective of that person or group. For example, when a museum decides to involve nonprofessional curators as the NMAI did, this is an important strategic decision impacting the outcome. Throughout my analysis, beginnings and endings of exhibitions are of particular interest as they frame the experience, set the tone, and provide the final impression before leaving the narrative space. Similar to conventional narrative film, the beginning sets up the expectations for the narrative, and the ending brings the narrative chain to a conclusion.31 For example, significant elevator rides preface the main exhibitions at the USHMM and the NMAAHC. In both cases, the experience is carefully designed and merits attention as it orients the viewer before entering the exhibition. The historical exhibition at the NMAAHC concludes with the inauguration of Barack Obama as the climax of African American history, while the exhibition The Price of Freedom at the NMAH ends with a tribute to the Unknown Soldier as the ultimate hero of America’s struggle for freedom. Equally important as linear narratives are what I call nonnarrative, sacred spaces. Memorial museums usually include nonnarrative memorial spaces of remembrance.32 Roger Friedland and Richard D. Hecht have built on the work of religious historian Mircea Eliade to understand the intersection of memory, power, and sacred place. According to them, sacral power intersects with the profane world at a sacred place, which is invested with authority. At museums, sacred memory places interrupt the flow of linear time in historical exhibitions. “They are places where the beginning of time presses into the present and the present bleeds into

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the end of time. . . . They are intensely present.” Sacred memory places are saturated with history, but “the very limitations of space allow transcendence on the wings of memory.” The overwhelming detail and affect of history cannot be processed in its totality. Sparse and ritualistic space allows visitors to process and move beyond the mundane detail of history. Memory shapes the materiality of the sacred place and opens up a reconfiguration of collective and individual identity.33 A cinematic analogy to sacred spaces would be Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the time-image as opposed to the movement-image, which is more aligned with the linear, cause-and-effect narratives of Hollywood or the conventional historical exhibition.34 The time-image or the crystalline image “is no longer the empirical progression of time as succession of presents,” Deleuze explains, but time’s “constitutive dividing in two into a present which is passing and a past which is preserved, the strict contemporaneity of the present with the past that it will be, of the past with the present that it has been.”35 Likewise, the nonnarrative memorial space is a memory place where the memories and affect of traumatic histories encountered in the historical exhibition merges with the present experience of the visitor.36 D. N. Rodowick elucidates how memory works in the time-image, which also applies to nonnarrative memorial spaces: “For each actual description (physical and object-related), there corresponds a virtual memory-image (mental and subjective) recollected from chains of associations and memories of past experiences. Each time a virtual image is called up in relation to an actual description, the object depicted is deformed and created anew, widening and deepening the mental picture it inspires.”37 Such memorial spaces allow the visitor to transcend the separation between past and present. They provide a space for the affective work demanded by the memory of painful pasts. All of the museums discussed here include such spaces, except for the NMAI. These spaces are reminiscent of sacred spaces of worship or reflection such as churches, temples, or meditation rooms. They are largely empty, abstract, and quiet spaces, often functioning as memorial spaces within the museums. They frequently feature quotations from sacred texts or from historical figures who have been elevated to quasi-sainthood of American civil religion. Nonnarrative

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INTRODUCTION

memorial spaces are usually situated and intended to be visited after the experience of the historical exhibitions. As such, their meaning and effect on the visitor is framed by the preceding narrative. At the same time the presence (or absence) and specifics of a nonnarrative space impacts the meaning of the overall historical narrative. For example, the nonnarrative space in the USHMM is dedicated to the memory of Holocaust victims, whereas the nonnarrative space in the NMAAHC celebrates universal ideals of justice, liberation, and freedom. Thus, in the first instance the focus is on the horror inflicted on the victims, while in the latter progress is emphasized. I argue that such nonnarrative spaces are particularly revealing of a museum’s overall relation vis-à-vis the history that it represents. Here, a museum reveals its intentions beyond the logic of narrative. Such sacred, nonnarrative spaces elevate the object of veneration to a transcendental level. As in many historical films, exhibition narratives emerge from the combination of many smaller stories. The sequencing of those is carefully constructed and communicates meanings that are not made explicit but emerge from juxtaposition, not unlike editing or montage in film.38 The same applies to the sequential arrangement of visual displays or objects. As Russian formalist director Lev Kuleshov famously remarked: “What is important is not what is shot in a given piece, but how the pieces in a film succeed one another, how they are structured.”39 While I am certainly not advocating a direct application of Russian montage theory to the reading of museums, sequencing of narratives and visuals in museums is meaningful and deserves attention. Ricoeur uses a similar concept of meaning making in his theory of hermeneutic imagination, as Richard Kearny explains: “It is the ‘semantic shock’ engendered by the coming together of two different meanings which produces a new meaning.”40 For example, during the elevator ride at the Holocaust Museum, visitors see a video with concentration camp images and a voiceover by an American soldier describing his experience encountering and liberating a camp. This is followed by a large-scale photograph showing Dwight D. Eisenhower and other soldiers looking on the charred remains of victims. The image by itself merely communicates the horror of the Holocaust, perhaps connoting that the liberation came too late. Together with the preceding video,

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the meaning of the image is changed. Now the aspect of US interference with the horror is emphasized and the notion of the US military as liberators is seeded. As Kearney summarizes Ricoeur’s theory of imagination, “what matters in imagination is less the content than the function of images.”41 Visual interpretation of museum spaces is particularly important for this study. As Eilean Hooper-Greenhill argues, “Visual representations are a key element in symbolising and sustaining national communal bonds.” Through selection and presentation of images, museums do not merely represent a nation’s past but generate new political and social imaginations as they “produce a view of the nation’s history.”42 A useful film concept for analyzing visuals in museum exhibitions is mise-en-scène, the arrangement of objects in front of the camera.43 Museum displays stage objects, images, texts, and more in a comparable way to generate meanings, and interpretations of visual spaces need to attend to visual composition. Consider, for example, the complex arrangement of the Thomas Jefferson statue in the NMAAHC, discussed in detail in chapter 3. The display on its own would be a rather one-dimensional critique of Jefferson as a slave owner. However, the way in which the display is visually dwarfed by the quotation “All Men Are Created Equal . . .” behind the statue reframes the meaning, which is further complicated as the different perspectives on the display are considered from levels 2 and 3 of the historical exhibition.44 The complex mise-en-scène inverts the meaning that could be attributed to the display perceived in isolation. Finally, my reading of museums employs a hermeneutic model of interpretation developed by thinkers such as Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Gadamer, and Ricoeur.45 While a discussion of this tradition goes beyond the scope of this introduction, Hooper-Greenhill provides a helpful summary of hermeneutic theory in the context of museum interpretation. She emphasizes the active role of the museum visitor in the creation of meaning and explains the process through the hermeneutic circle. The visitor considers a detail of a visual or an exhibition and relates it to the whole of the museum experience, which again informs the understanding of the detail. Likewise, the visitor interprets details from the museum visit by relating them to previous knowledge of the past, which is changed by the ex-

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INTRODUCTION

perience. The revised view of the past, in turn, impacts the understanding of the exhibition in the present. Further, Hooper-Greenhill stresses that interpretation is by no means an individual process exclusively: “Our individual strategies for making sense of experience are enabled, limited and mediated through our place in the social world.” We belong to an interpretive community situated in a particular place and time. Interpretation is also undertaken by someone else for the visitor by means of selection, exhibition design, explanatory texts, and so on.46 Narrative construction itself is a form of interpretation.47 Therefore, my reading of museums oscillates between the interpretation of museum spaces and an analysis of the interpretations provided by museum professionals. Enduring National Pain Curating America’s Painful Past is about memory of national pain and why it matters. For the purpose of this study, I define national pain as crimes against humanity and large-scale, systematic oppression or discrimination of the past that continues to have a significant negative impact in the United States today. National pain is like a cancer that has been growing for a long time. Some deny it ever existed, others believe it has long been cured, and yet others argue it has never really been in remission. Some are suffering from the pain that past events continue to cause. What I call “painful past” in this study has often been referred to as difficult history. In her study on interpreting difficult history at museums, Julia Rose has emphasized three important aspects: first, remembering difficult histories contributes to self-awareness as an important component of collective memory; second, it elicits resistance as it relates to memories of suffering and oppression; and finally, it can help us understand “the formation of historical and current social structures.”48 All three aspects are important considerations for the following, but I am particularly motivated by the connection to the present. Therefore, I am using the term “painful past” to emphasize that difficult histories can afflict societies and cause pain to individuals in the present. Such social disorders don’t affect everybody, and some feel the pain more than others. However, like a disease, if left untreated, the pain caused by difficult histories is likely to spread and

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get worse. A precondition for successful treatment is understanding the causes of pain. In the case of national pain rooted in the past, a diagnosis has to begin with acknowledgment of its causes, which requires remembering difficult histories. Often painful past involves collective violence, which the World Health Organization (WHO) defines in its World Report on Violence and Health as “the instrumental use of violence by people who identify themselves as members of a group—whether this group is transitory or has a more permanent identity—against another group or set of individuals, in order to achieve political, economic or social objectives.”49 The report discusses devastating effects on victimized groups in three categories: increased mortality, increased morbidity, and increased disability.50 The WHO paints a dismal picture of the immediate effects of collective violence but fails to consider the enduring consequences, as Michael Harris Bond explains: “It does not include the lost opportunities—psychological, interpersonal, economic, social, and political—that trail in the wake of collective violence.”51 One interest of the present study is precisely how this “trail” of historical atrocities as the link between past and present pain is remembered on the National Mall. In the United States, two racially defined groups were subject to longer-lasting and more systematic collective violence than any other: Native Americans and African Americans. Extensive literature in the social sciences and the humanities chronicles enduring structural discrimination in the United States and its historical roots. To further illustrate my concept of enduring pain, let me briefly introduce three examples. First, several recent book-length studies demonstrate in detail racial inequalities in the American education system. While Brown v. Board of Education outlawed racial segregation of public schools in 1954, the practice continued due to school funding through property taxes. As education scholar Bruce D. Baker argues, “for decades real estate developers in collaboration with state and local policy makers engaged in formal policies and practices that codified and exacerbated racial and economic segregation of neighborhoods.”52 Baker describes in great detail the unsurprising relationship between school funding and educational outcomes. This educational inequality along the lines of race and class invalidates

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INTRODUCTION

the American dream itself, namely, the promise of equal opportunity to achieve upward mobility. As Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane conclude in their study on the same topic, “growing inequality in educational outcomes call into question America’s vision of itself as a land of growth and opportunity.”53 With regard to the NMAAHC, for example, the question arises in how far the museum communicates enduring inequity in education and reveals how it undermines the American ideal of equal opportunity. Another example would be systemic discrimination in the US legal system and law enforcement, which has been documented, for example, by scholars of critical race theory in the legal field such as Derrick Bell, Patricia Williams, and Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw.54 Frustrated with the slow progress following the civil rights movement, Bell showed already in 1973 in the now classic textbook Race, Racism, and American Law systemic racial bias in jurisprudence concerning public education, employment, law enforcement, voting rights, property and housing, adoption, and public facilities. Bell explains this structural discrimination within the legal code and its application as deeply rooted in US history reaching back to the founding of the nation and the Constitution of the United States.55 One of the most egregious manifestations of structural discrimination in the United States today can be found in prisons. Despite a significant decline by 31 percent during the Obama presidency, the rate of imprisonment for Black adults remains nearly six times higher than that of adult whites, and for Black males ages 18–19 it is a staggering twelve times higher.56 Michelle Alexander examined the issue in her acclaimed study The New Jim Crow. She explains the systemic racial discrimination in the US penal system as a response to the successes of the civil rights movement: Once again, in response to a major disruption in the prevailing racial order—this time the civil rights gains of the 1960s—a new system of racialized social control was created by exploiting the vulnerabilities and racial resentments of poor and working-class whites. More than 2 million people found themselves behind bars at the turn of the twentyfirst century, and millions more were relegated to the margins of mainstream society, banished to a political and social space not unlike Jim

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Crow, where discrimination in employment, housing, and access to education was perfectly legal, and where they could be denied the right to vote.57 Alexander continues to map the devastating effects of mass incarceration on the African American community. She too emphasizes the historic roots and parallels to the past such as legalized discrimination, political disenfranchisement, and racial segregation.58 In the book’s foreword Cornell West calls this “a dark and ugly reality that has been in place for decades and that is continuous with the racist underside of American history from the advent of slavery onward.”59 Again, this poses the question for the NMAAHC whether it is possible to show in the context of the National Mall that racial discrimination in the application of the law is not just relegated to the past but continues in the present. As a third and final example of racial inequity with deep roots in US history, consider poverty among Native Americans. According to the Census Bureau, the median per capita income for American Indian and Alaska Native households was $39,719 compared to $57,617 for the nation as a whole and $66,440 for white households in 2016. The poverty level was 26.2 percent, the highest of any racial group in the United States.60 However, this tells only part of the story, because wealth disparity between American Indian tribes is also significant, ranging from $54,014 for Alaska Native tribes to $32,946 for the Sioux, with a poverty rate as high as 85.9 percent for single female households with children under the age of five.61 What is worse, wealth disparity among the Sioux, for example, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, is also enormous. Cynically, literally one of the very poorest communities in the United States is located within eyesight of a mass grave from one of the worst massacres of Native Americans. In 2017 the median household income in Wounded Knee, South Dakota, was $7,292 with an average of 4.7 persons per family, which equals $1,551 income per person per year. Unsurprisingly, the poverty rate in Wounded Knee was 96.4 percent with an estimated 100 percent of children living below the poverty line.62 The effects of these levels of extreme poverty on the reservation are devastating, with unemployment rates upward of 80 percent and alcoholism rates around 90 percent, leading to disastrous con-

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INTRODUCTION

sequences for health and a life expectancy far below the national average. Infrastructure for basic public services, health care, or economic activity that one would expect anywhere in the developed world is virtually nonexistent. For the NMAI, such glaring inequality presents a formidable challenge, especially given its context on the National Mall. Representing an honest and full picture of poverty common among many Native American communities and its complex and long history would deliver a devastating blow to the story of national triumph dominating the Mall. It would display the existence of a developing nation–level standard of living among descendants of victims of collective violence within the United States. As Wounded Knee, South Dakota, symbolizes, Native American poverty is deeply rooted in history. While scholarship on this topic cites a multitude of contemporary reasons for the persistence of poverty in Indian country, most scholars emphasize historical factors as its origin.63 In a recent study on the lack of opportunity in the labor market for Native Americans, James J. Davis et al. emphasize the role of past US policies, some horrifically traumatic, in creating Native American poverty. They cite the policy of forced removal during the nineteenth century and the Dawes Act of 1887, which resulted in the breaking up of reservation lands and the loss of Native control over millions of acres, as significant historical factors: “This laid the groundwork for entrenched deprivation for over a century, and for the sake of American economic expansion.”64 As with slavery, the pain inflicted on Native Americans during the nineteenth century contributed significantly to the emergence of US economic might. Countless studies could be cited detailing the effects of past pain on the present and future. In short, there is virtually no debate that atrocities occurred in US history and that there is a link to social and economic inequities in the present. Since these phenomena play out in the realm of human societies, these processes are complex and impossible to quantify precisely. Yet there is only a discussion of degree and extent but not about the basic nature of the relationship between past pain such as collective violence, discrimination, or oppression and racial injustice in the present. The question for national museums dedicated to American history is whether they are able to explore this link between past pain and present injustice. Can such memory be presented on the National Mall given that

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it would question core tenets of US national ideology such as equal opportunity, equality before the law, or equal access to the American dream? Acknowledging Painful Past, Social Justice, and Museums Remembering and narrating painful past serves important political and social functions. Confronting persistent social problems rooted in past injustice requires acknowledgment of painful past. It is a necessary precondition for beginning the process of rectifying present social injustice in a meaningful and systematic way.65 At the national level, acknowledgment requires a formal admission and apology by the government. This could then lead to expressions in public space, for example, through a national memorial dedicated to the victims as a statement about and reminder of this acknowledgment. A government apology is necessary because an official statement by the authority that committed, facilitated, or tolerated injustices in the past, or by its successor institution, indicates a public admission of what happened and an assumption of responsibility for past injustice. Following such an apology, a government, representing all citizens of a nation, is then able to pass and enact legislation to address the consequences of past injustice in the present. Prominent recent examples would be the 2008 apology of Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper following the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement of 2006, in which he states: “The government of Canada sincerely apologizes and asks the forgiveness of the Aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly. We are sorry.”66 An example of a national memorial acknowledging a government atrocity of the past would be the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin or the Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism during World War II in Washington, DC. The latter was preceded by a government apology in 1988, when President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which granted reparations to Japanese Americans who had been detained in internment camps during World War II. In 2009 President Obama signed a joint resolution of the 111th Congress “to acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the Federal Government regarding Indian tribes

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and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States.” It was criticized for including a disclaimer stating that “nothing in this Joint Resolution . . . authorizes or supports any claim against the United States.”67 S.J. Res. 14 has not impacted government policy, indicating that there is no political will yet to address the injustice that has been acknowledged. A movement to establish a national memorial for Native American victims of government policies would be one way to impact the political will in order to make possible such policy changes in the future. Such a memorial does not exist, and there is currently no initiative to establish one. A similar apology for slavery and segregation was passed as a resolution in the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2008 and 2009, respectively.68 The Senate resolution includes a disclaimer analogous to the one in the apology to Native Americans. An apology hardly appears sincere if it is accompanied by a provision barring action to mitigate adverse effects resulting from the wrong that is being apologized for. In a study of the two congressional and eight similar state resolutions, Angelique Davis concludes that “they all failed to provide concrete remedial measures or recognize the need to further study the historical and ongoing effects of the European Slave Trade and slavery on the United States as a whole and, most importantly, the status and well-being of African Americans.”69 The failure to consider seriously reparations for slavery and segregation or for forced removal and broken treaties with Native Americans is more evidence for the inadequacy of national acknowledgment of past wrongs. This is where museums and memorials can play a productive role in helping create public support for sincere acknowledgment and apology. In recent decades, ethical considerations have moved to the center of attention in museum studies and museum practice, as Richard Sandell and Eithne Nightingale argue in a volume on museums and social justice. They omit a justification for the need of museums to contribute to social justice and instead cite a wealth of research “that now evidences the long-held view that museums have social value . . . ; that audiences gain learning and therapeutic benefits from participation . . . ; that the narratives they construct and the moral standpoints they adopt have social effects and consequences and that museums are highly valued pub-

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lic forums for encountering and negotiating contested social issues.”70 Nightingale and Sandell’s discussion of the relation between museums and social justice describes what I argue should be expected especially of museums concerned with the memory of painful past. The authors emphasize that museums “shape as well as reflect social and political relations” and “positively impact lived experiences of those who experience discrimination and prejudice.” In short, they support the notion “that museums can contribute towards more just, equitable and fair societies.”71 Likewise, Tristram Besterman has argued that the ethical museum is responsive to social change and has a responsibility to the people that comprise its stakeholders.72 David Fleming, who was director of the National Museums Liverpool (NML) from 2001 until 2018, emphasizes the importance of leadership for changing museums to be more attuned to the goal of social justice.73 Such leadership may manifest through mission and value statements. Early in Fleming’s tenure at the NML, a revised strategic document was drafted that would capture the orientation of the organization toward social justice. The museum’s mission was to “change lives,” and the main values were stated as five beliefs. In addition to traditional goals such as educating the public, the core beliefs included a commitment to be an agent of social justice.74 Fleming stresses the importance of governance and museum leadership for the organizational orientation toward social justice to succeed. At the NML this manifested in training of staff, a zero-tolerance policy regarding discrimination, and the prioritization of new initiatives such as the development of the International Slavery Museum. The latter opened in 2007 and reflects its dedication to social justice in its mission statement: “We are a campaigning museum that actively engages with contemporary human rights issues.”75 As Paul Williams has argued, memorial museums dedicated to the memory of atrocities follow the maxim “never again” and strive to produce “agents of present and future political vigilance.”76 For this study, I assume a commitment to social justice as a standard for museums dedicated to painful pasts. The more injustices of the past adversely affect people in the present, the more urgent a dedication to social justice becomes. Contribution to social justice can manifest in mul-

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INTRODUCTION

tiple ways such as collaborations with related organizations, legislative lobbying, and organization of related public events, to name just a few examples. Most importantly, museums can contribute to the important work of acknowledging painful past. To this end, museums should provide an unambiguous and comprehensive account in their narrative exhibitions. Should it be warranted, museums also need to communicate how injustices of the past affect the present. The success of acknowledgment ultimately depends on effective visual and narrative rhetoric. National historical museums, especially those belonging to national bodies such as the Smithsonian Institution, can thus contribute to shaping a consensus about the past and help create a political climate in which political acknowledgment becomes possible. Only then policies such as reparations or return of tribal lands, which would ameliorate lingering pain from the past, become possible. The Zero-Sum of Memory This study is concerned with memory at the national center understood spatially and figuratively. By definition, space at the center is limited. Michael Rothberg distinguished between competitive and complementary approaches to memory. Denouncing the former, he proposed his influential theory of multidirectional memory in response to criticism of Holocaust memory on the National Mall similar to that of Susan Sontag. Rothberg cites Walter Ben Michaels’s objection expressed in an essay in American Literary History: “Why should what the Germans did to the Jews be treated as a crucial event in American history, especially when, given the absence of any commemoration of American racism on the Mall, what Americans did to Black people is not?”77 First, in a response to Michaels in the same issue and later in the introduction to Multidirectional Memory, Rothberg criticized what he called a zero-sum logic of memory.78 According to Rothberg, this approach assumes that public memory space is a limited resource, and therefore groups of past injustice, for example, compete for remembrance of their victimization in public discourse: “I argue that memory and representation don’t actually obey the same logic of scarcity as real estate development.”79 At least in part, this insight applies

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to the realm of ideas or immaterial memory. The theory of multidirectional memory opened up a productive relationship between Holocaust memory and postcolonial memory as suggested in Rothberg’s work, which presented an attractive alternative model to divisive identity politics. Instead of competition between marginalized groups, previously obscured connections could become apparent and alliances possible. However, this study is to a large extent concerned with material expressions of memory in the physical spaces of museums. Memory on the National Mall is not yet multidirectional since the Mall literally is a piece of real estate, and not just any, but the nation’s most symbolically charged and contested piece of land. While the memory boom has furnished a “memorial mania” across the country, as Erika Doss has shown, inclusion and recognition through remembrance on the National Mall remains elusive and a sign of special recognition within the national imagination.80 To be fair, Rothberg also conceded in his epilogue that “real estate and all it implies about symbolic, political, and economic power” does matter after all.81 However, space is also limited in the realm of immaterial memory. For example, space in national discourse, understood as attention to a specific topic on a national scale, is limited, and the National Mall is the ultimate reification of this limitation of ideas. Consequently, any change, any addition to the Mall has always been contentious from the outset, as Savage has shown.82 Following Rothberg’s logic of multidirectional memory, one might see the remembrance of the persecution of Jews next to the National Mall as a precedent that contributed to the establishment of memory sites dedicated to painful Native American and African American histories. In a literal sense the USHMM did not prevent memory of other victimized groups but added urgency to the debate about national remembrance of slavery or persecution of Native Americans. After all, today the NMAI and the NMAAHC exist. The objections of Sontag and Michaels could be seen as contributions to a debate that made a case for the necessity of those two museums. However, the mere existence of the two museums does not automatically settle the question in favor of multidirectional memory. The crucial question in need of answering is now: how do the museums remember African American and Native American past? One important part

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INTRODUCTION

of answering this question is how their remembrance of painful histories compares to Holocaust memory and the exhibitions of the USHMM. How do the NMAI and the NMAAHC position themselves vis-à-vis the USHMM and its relation to US national ideology? Most importantly, how do they remember collective violence in relation to the dominant national imagination of the National Mall? Collective Memory, Painful Past, and the National Imagination The present study investigates the relationship between collective memory and the national imagination. Conceptually this approach is rooted in modern theory on collective memory. While it is the individual who remembers, Maurice Halbwachs posits, those memories depend on the social context. Memories are for the most part acquired socially through others or through institutions such as national museums. In addition to his emphasis on collective memory, two aspects of Halbwachs’s thought are particularly relevant for my inquiry into memory of painful past. First, he highlights the importance of the present for remembering the past: “Everything seems to indicate that the past is not preserved but is reconstructed on the basis of the present.” He explains that the reconstruction of the past needs to conform with “the predominant thoughts of the society.”83 In analogy, representations of painful histories in national museums tell us as much about national ideologies of our time as they instruct us about what happened in the past. “Museums are major apparatuses in the creation of national identities,” as Eilean Hooper-Greenhill asserts.84 Second, Halbwachs argues that one consequence of the social nature of memory is the requirement for memory to contribute to social unity and continuity, which can lead to distortion of the past in order to satisfy this need. In service of social cohesion, “society tends to erase from its memory all that might separate individuals, or that might distance groups from each other.”85 This biased nature of collective memory is still reflected in the marginalization of painful past in US national memory discourse today. At the same time, when painful histories are represented in museums, exhibitions tend to minimize the “distance” between social groups to facilitate integration of the painful past within the national imagination. The

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discourse of the National Mall exerts a particularly strong influence on its museums to conform within the confines of the national imagination. Pierre Nora’s work on national memory provides another anchor for this study. Specifically, his concept of lieu de mémoire applies to my project in two senses of the term. For one, the new museums are in the process of becoming important sites on the National Mall alongside iconic national monuments or “crucial centers of national memory,” as Nora calls them. Nora distinguishes between a narrow and broad definition of the term. The narrow meaning of the term emphasizes the identification of national memory sites and wants to “reveal the existence of invisible bonds tying them all together.” The broader sense foregrounds the implicit memory discourse of the site itself and aims to discover “latent or hidden aspects of national memory and its whole spectrum of sources, regardless of their nature.”86 Both aspects are reflected in my approach as I see the museums discussed here as belonging to a web of memory sites across the nation that shape “national memory,” using Nora’s vocabulary, or the dominant national imagination and its ideologies, as I describe in this study. In his monumental three-volume work Realms of Memory, Nora and his collaborators collected and interpreted the important memory sites of France.87 Nora hoped thus to present a new history of France informed by memory that would respond to the civic needs of society and inaugurate a new approach to national history. Following this example, my study attempts to answer the question of how national history museums in the United States integrate (or omit) hidden memories of pain from their reconstructions of American history and to what extent they present such memory to serve the civic needs of contemporary US society. Another important concept that I am borrowing from Nora is that of domestic decolonization, which has led to an upsurge of memory that Nora called “minority memories” of ethnic minorities with “reserves of memory but little or no historical capital.” In the United States, the emergence of minority memories in the wake of the cultural revolutions of the 1960s changed the nature of the reciprocal relationship between national history and collective memory. According to Nora, remembering previously repressed painful past impacts conceptions of national history: “The quest for memory is the search for one’s history.”88 Looking at recent

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INTRODUCTION

museums and exhibitions will help clarify the relationship between such “minority memories” in the United States with the national imagination as it is presented on the National Mall. Susan Sontag formulates a similar idea in slightly different terms, reminding us that collective memory is in some sense a misnomer: “What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened.” Referring to iconic historic images such as the astronaut walking on the moon, Sontag argues that dominant ideologies choose which images represent “Important Historical Moments” that trigger common ideas and feelings.89 The museum exhibitions on painful histories studied here should expand the archive of “Important Historical Moments” in US history. Whether the museums in question succeed or fail in this endeavor is one of this study’s key questions. My interest in the relationship between painful past and the national imagination is in part motivated by recent political successes of nationalist politicians in the United States and around the world. Nationalist discourse tends to marginalize or reject the memory of painful past. Already in 1983, Benedict Anderson felt compelled to justify his interest in nationalism when he wrote in Imagined Communities: “The reality is quite plain: the ‘end of the era of nationalism,’ so long prophesied, is not remotely in sight. Indeed, nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time.”90 Despite the emergence of the Internet and the “Rise of the Network Society,”91 which has connected people around the world in unprecedented ways and has accelerated globalization, Anderson’s claim remains relevant today. Likewise, the central tenets of his theory of nationalism still apply. Anderson calls the national community “imagined” because it is composed of strangers who have little if anything in common. What is more, the national community is imagined as a powerful bond because “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation . . . the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.” Considering that millions are willing to die for the nation, Anderson wonders what makes this imagined connection so powerful and suggests culture as one of the main factors.92 This book enters the discussion exactly at the intersection of culture and “inequality and exploitation” to show how histories of pain are remembered in national cultural institutions without threatening the

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national bond. The conundrum becomes particularly puzzling in the most extreme cases where this pain was inflicted on racial minorities undermining “comradeship” across racial and ethnic groups. Anderson dedicates one chapter each to the significance of imperialism and racism for the formation of European nation-states in the nineteenth century. A vast body of literature has discussed the pain that US imperialism and racism has caused in North America, Hawaii, and around the globe, as well as the importance of both for the development of the US nation-state and its national ideologies.93 Anderson offers moderate hope that we are not doomed to endlessly repeat the painful past by invoking Walter Benjamin’s famous reading of Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus as the Angel of History and “do our slow best to learn the real, and imagined, experience of the past.” The Angel of History is propelled into the future but is facing the past, seeing the endless amount of pain piling up in history. Anderson asks us instead to face the future and to employ history in order to navigate “the obscurity ahead.”94 Benjamin’s visual allegory undergirds my own project as it attempts to reveal how memory of the painful past extends into the present moment and impacts the future. We must look both ways at the same time if there is to be any hope of mitigating the effects of past pain on the future. The task of this study is to evaluate if and how the national museums discussed here make painful experiences of the national past usable for shaping the future. Forgetting and National Identity Remembering always automatically requires forgetting. This applies to individual and collective memory, as Andreas Huyssen wrote: “Inevitably, every act of memory carries with it a dimension of betrayal, forgetting, and absence.”95 Even the most detailed historical exhibitions such as those in the USHMM and NMAAHC select only an infinitesimal fraction from the totality of past events. Therefore, any given exhibition, just like any history book, oral history, or documentary series, must exclude almost all of the past and thus contributes to forgetting. While on the individual level nearly all forgetting is a necessary and continuous unconscious process, in the realm of public memory forgetting is at least in part deliberate and

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INTRODUCTION

driven by ideology. In the case of major national museums, the curation involves museum exhibition experts, historians, advisory panels, and external consultants. While certainly not all that is left out can be actively considered, some omissions should be, and the logic of selection deserves scrutiny. Theoreticians of collective memory have reflected on the role that forgetting plays in forging national narratives and identities. Anderson argues that nations, like individuals, tend to neglect the continuity between past, present, and future and in its place create the need for a “narrative of identity,” which results in deliberate forgetting and narrative reconstruction. Anderson explains via the example of violent deaths that national biography reframes such losses as national sacrifice, which “must be remembered / forgotten as ‘our own.’”96 This nature of national memory can be observed throughout the Mall at numerous war memorials dedicated to the sacrifice of soldiers. By contrast, the present study asks how victims of the nation are remembered/forgotten. Paul Connerton distinguishes seven types of forgetting, of which two are enacted by the state and can be observed in state apparatuses such as national museums: repressive erasure and prescriptive forgetting. While the latter is more common in totalitarian regimes, repressive erasure can also be encrypted nonviolently within public memory places such as museums. Repressive erasure can be employed to forget painful pasts at odds with contemporary ideologies or collective identities. Whereas the dominant ideology of national museums is explicit, what is left out remains hidden. As Connerton explains: “In exhibiting a master narrative, the museum’s spatial script is overt in its acts of celebratory remembrance, covert in its acts of editing out and erasure.”97 Critical analysis of public memory places is required to draw attention to what has been erased from public memory. For example, remembering the slave trade, which occurred on and near the National Mall, would undermine the imagination of liberty and freedom that are celebrated throughout the Mall as core national values. The same applies to the lack of local Nacotchtank history. This study examines how repressive erasure at historical museums contributes to the construction of a national master narrative. Paul Ricoeur provides helpful clarification on the uses and abuses of memory in his landmark study Memory, History, Forgetting. Since an “ex-

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haustive memory” is impossible and therefore forgetting is inevitable, it is often the result of “a strategy of evasion motivated by an obscure will not to inform oneself.” Ricoeur is interested in how memory becomes ideological through narrative manipulation, which is directly relevant to the present study. He is particularly critical when memory narratives create collective identities through “official” history: “The prime danger, at the end of this path, lies in the handling of authorized, imposed, celebrated, commemorated history—of official history.”98 Ricoeur’s key example was the forgetting in the aftermath of World War II, particularly with regard to the purging of Vichy collaboration from national history in postwar France.99 A similar kind of deliberate forgetting can be observed for much of US history with regard to the remembrance of painful past within “official” US history, the current state of which is the subject of this book. Memory Boom, Affect, and the National Imagination The museums discussed in this book also have to be seen in the context of a surge in public memory in Europe and the United States that began during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Already in the mid-1990s, Andreas Huyssen diagnosed a memory boom manifest in culture, including an increasing popularity of museums that he called “museummania.”100 Jay Winter explained the memory boom in part by an increase in Holocaust remembrance, identity politics, and remembrance of war. The subsequent boom in memorials in the United States and elsewhere suggests that this trend has continued, if not accelerated.101 An entire new academic field of memory studies has emerged as further evidence to the continuing interest in memory.102 A number of scholars have researched the national memory discourse in the United States and have contributed several theoretical arguments that inform my understanding of the relationship between painful memories and national ideology in museums. Shortly after Winter’s essay, Allison Landsberg introduced the concept of prosthetic memory, which she used to describe a proliferation of mediated experiences through the emergence of mass media in the early twentieth century. Those experiences could produce memories of experiences that people did not live through themselves. The visceral experi-

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INTRODUCTION

ence created by the cinematic apparatus or experiential exhibitions are her prime example, as film can affect the body of the viewer and thus create memories that are “worn on the body.” The memories created by some of the exhibitions examined in this book, for example, at the USHMM, also fall into this category and could be described as prosthetic. According to Landsberg, film has the potential “to teach viewers how to identify with the other especially in the face of difference.”103 Museum exhibitions along with other forms of mediated experiences (for example, novels, nonfiction books, documentary films, and virtual reality experiences) also have this potential. In fact, creating a relationship with the other across vast differences of experiences is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite for changing what can be imagined politically to address the lingering adverse effect of the painful past on the present. Marita Sturken has presented a less optimistic perspective on mass memory culture in the United States. Her work focuses on the proliferation of history through tourism and consumerism. Sturken includes museum exhibitions as examples, and some of her observations resurface in the museums examined here. One of her key insights in Tourists of History concerns the continuing belief in American exceptionalism, which is maintained by mass cultural remembrance discourse. She emphasizes innocence as a key component of American exceptionalism: “The self-image of the United States as innocent has been key to national identity throughout much of American history. This belief in innocence affirms the image of the United States as a country of pure intentions to which terrible things can happen, but which itself never provokes or initiates attack.”104 Sturken argues that the belief in American innocence is instable and requires constant reaffirmation, which she sees as one factor motivating tourism of history in the United States. The National Mall and the museums discussed in this book are the most popular destinations of history tourism in the United States. The Mall is replete with affirmation of American purity and benevolence. Sturken also finds in her study a depoliticization of tourist sites of history, which matches my finding that the museums on the Mall are reluctant to connect painful past with inequity in the present.105 Instead, the USHMM and to some extent the NMAAHC

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attempt to overwhelm visitors through a combination of detailed description of historical pain and affective identification. Indeed, summoning affect is a predominant approach of the museums discussed in this study, with the exception of the NMAI. This contrasts with a first impression of the detailed history exhibitions such as those at the Holocaust Museum or the African American Museum. Using the rational language of historiography undergirded by countless items of apparent material evidence, these exhibitions present a seemingly objective narrative of the past.106 However, the museums present narrative perspectives, for example, of an African slave or a concentration camp prisoner, and create visitor identification as they personalize larger historical events. Visitors’ experiences are then emotionally charged by emphasizing tragic individual stories of loss or suffering. By contrast, the NMAH uses individual stories of tragic heroes and emotionally charged national symbols such as the national flag to foster identification with the national community. In her study on public feeling and memory in the United States, Erika Doss has argued that memorials give expression to “social and political interests” and therefore “possess enormous power and influence,” yielding “fresh insights about American history, memory, and self.”107 These claims also apply in part to the museums studied in this book. Whereas Doss focuses on the wide proliferation of memorials throughout the country, I argue that memory discourse at the center has a relatively outsized influence on the national imagination. Doss finds a broad spectrum of emotions that makes memorials impactful: grief (e.g., temporary memorials for tragedies), fear (e.g., terrorism memorials), gratitude (e.g., World War II memorials), shame (e.g., lynching memorials), and anger (contesting memorialization as, for example, in the case of Civil War memorials). All of these emotions are also evoked by respective exhibits in the museums discussed in the following chapters. Of those, grief is a crucial emotion in the remembrance of national pain, which is marshaled along with sadness for victims of slavery, segregation, racism, and the Holocaust. At the same time, exhibitions are less designed to elicit anger, which could reasonably be directed at the perpetrators of atrocities in the past.

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INTRODUCTION

Grief over death and violence committed against fellow members of the national community is potentially a powerful force for large-scale mobilization. Doss emphasizes the potential of grief “to mobilize social and political action,” which makes it threatening to authorities and explains their desire to control it.108 The NMAAHC and the USHMM provide striking examples of how grief is used strategically as it is channeled in support of national pride through narrative framing.109 This contrasts with grief ’s potential to generate outrage or shame over the nation’s and the state’s complicity. Likewise, anger could be a response to exhibitions describing failure to prevent atrocities in the past or to prevent the continuity of past injustice in the present. Instead, national pride becomes the second central emotion next to grief in the national historical museums, with the exception of the NMAI. The NMAI largely forgoes the exploitation of grief for the victims of the atrocities committed against the indigenous populations across the Americas. Neither grief for victims nor national shame features prominently in the NMAI. Yet elsewhere on the Mall, affect is a key instrument in how painful past is remembered in a way that strengthens national collective identity. Hence, my analysis will be attentive to the emotions employed in the museum exhibitions. In the same way that affective impact is illuminating, its absence at the NMAI is also revealing about its approach to memory of Native American past and US history. In summary, I explore how the high-stakes project of remembering national pain is currently executed at the central location of national memory. Some of the nation’s painful chapters could destabilize cornerstones of American national ideology. Other chapters elicit grief for victims and would be well suited for strengthening the bonds of the imagined national community. Thus my intention is to make visible how historical museums employ narrative and visual strategies to reconcile national pain of the past with the national imagination in the present. In doing so, we will discover how some of those strategies are employed across the museums, such as an emphasis on honoring military veterans, how some reappear in different forms such as the use of nonnarrative memorial spaces, and how yet others contrast with each other. This book, in short, critiques the museums’ successes and failures in reckoning with the nation’s difficult histories.

one

framing painful past for the nation the smithsonian museum of american history

1 Like no other museum discussed in this book, the National Museum of American History (NMAH) is dedicated to framing the US national imagination as it is explicitly tasked with representing national history. For this study, the NMAH serves as a benchmark for how a museum narrative and visual rhetoric fosters nationalism and patriotism. Not dedicated to any specific group like the other museums, the NMAH sets a standard for framing painful past from a national perspective against which to evaluate the other museums. As the oldest, the largest, and the only one covering American history at large, the NMAH defines its mission as presenting the most comprehensive approach to US history of any national museum: “Through incomparable collections, rigorous research, and dynamic public outreach, we explore the infinite richness and complexity of American history. We help people understand the past in order to make sense of the present and shape a more humane future.”1 The museum’s aspiration to help the visitor “understand the past” in order to comprehend the present and “shape a more humane future” suggests commitment to promoting social justice. At the same time, the wording is kept vague enough to accommodate viewpoints opposed to a more activist role. Either way, such an emphasis calls for a particular focus on the painful chapters of US history, on the injustices and on collective violence committed in the nation.

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Achieving the goal of contributing to a more “humane future” should benefit from knowing and reflecting on the inhumanity of the past. In short, the NMAH serves as a useful starting point for examining the intersection of the US national imagination with memory of painful past. The museum should provide a useful indication of how a national museum frames painful past in the context of the National Mall. The NMAH is the nation’s most popular historical museum, normally attracting circa 4 million visitors each year, although that number dropped to 2.8 million in 2019.2 Of the museums discussed in this book, the NMAH features the largest exhibition space and houses the largest collection of more than 1.8 million items, including some of the most famous objects from US history. Visitors are especially attracted to the museum by this comprehensive material compendium from the American past, which includes popular culture, politics, and economic history. They crowd particularly around a select group of famous large-scale objects such as the John Bull locomotive or Julia Child’s home kitchen and iconic relics such as Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz or Abraham Lincoln’s top hat. The museum also features the most celebrated national flag in the United States, the Star-Spangled Banner, which is displayed in one of the museum’s most prominent exhibitions. The museum stages such iconic objects in a way that imbues them with a sacred aura. Exhibitions take advantage of such national iconic symbols to construct a narrative supporting tenets of American national ideology such as liberty and freedom. In addition to key objects embodying the national imagination, this chapter focuses on how the NMAH approaches the nation’s difficult histories and painful past through its display and arrangement of historical objects. African American and Native American history are American history and should be expected to feature prominently in the museum, including particularly painful memories of slavery or forced removal. One could imagine an argument for minimizing Native American and African American history in the NMAH because both groups have a Smithsonian museum dedicated in part to representing their history. Such an argument should be rejected because it would present a distorted version of US history that reduces rather than explores the complexity mentioned in the museum’s mission statement. In addition, Americans of European descent dominate

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the exhibitions of most of the Smithsonian’s other museums, and it would be equally nonsensical to exclude European American history from the NMAH because it is also represented elsewhere. To be sure, the NMAH does not follow such a flawed logic. However, three of the museum’s flagship exhibitions focus on US military history, which bolster patriotism and foreground military heroism. These exhibitions relegate painful aspects of military history to the margins, including Native American and African American experiences, even though they are closely related to America’s wars. US military history offers a unique occasion to explore the agonizing complexities in America’s past. While I am focusing in this chapter on the representation of African American and Native American past, this approach could include the painful experiences of soldiers during and after wars such as the difficulties of reintegrating into civilian society while suffering from PTSD, which has received much attention since the Vietnam War.3 Likewise, the suffering of veterans’ families and of women during the war should be included in the memory of war.4 Such painful experiences are largely excluded on the National Mall and at the NMAH, which is a missed opportunity to explore the “complexity” in the American military history. Instead, the NMAH’s treatment of war presents the national story as a struggle on a path toward attainment and defense of American ideals, driven forward by individual war heroes against enemies of national progress from inside or outside. The United States has been at war for much of its history. Wars have marked the pivotal moments of US history, such as the Revolutionary War, the American Indian Wars, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Vietnam War. While the museum’s narrative focus on wars is hardly surprising, it is important to remember that for some of those conflicts racial injustice was pivotal during the wars and in their aftermaths. A comprehensive discussion of the entire museum cannot be accomplished in the scope of this chapter. It is also not possible to take into account past temporary exhibitions dedicated to the painful past.5 Instead, I will focus on the museum’s long-term exhibitions on US wars, which are among the museum’s most famous exhibitions, have been shown for decades, and can be expected to remain on display for the foreseeable future. Particular attention will be paid to how the museum

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stages memory of war to imagine the nation. The second focus will be on whether the museum includes or excludes the difficult past discussed in chapters 3 and 4, that is, how the museum remembers the wars’ impact on Native Americans and African Americans. I will begin the discussion with a look at how the NMAH presents the relationship between wars and the nation in The Star-Spangled Banner exhibit. This exhibit represents one of the key nonnarrative memory spaces in Washington, DC, for understanding how national museums construct the national identity. I argue that the NMAH repeatedly ties the origin of the nation and the national imagination to war. It presents war itself as the foundation of the nation. The emphasis on military struggle for central American values of freedom and liberty integrates seamlessly with the militarized discourse of the National Mall. The meaning of freedom, of course, depends to a large extent on the perspective of those affected by violent conflict. The freedom of one group as presented in the exhibitions often is tied to the suppression of freedom to another. As we will see throughout this book, US national museums aim to present and preserve a national story consistent with the founding ideals of liberation and freedom despite the fact that the founding and expansion of the nation depended on the denial of freedom to many. The key question for this chapter is to evaluate to what extent the museum accounts for those complexities and contradictions in the nation’s battles for “freedom.” We will start these considerations with one of the most important celebrations of the national flag anywhere in the United States. The Star-Spangled Banner: Sacrifice and National Origin In a city rife with national symbols, the Star-Spangled Banner exhibition stands out even on the National Mall. Few objects, if any, can match this national flag with regard to its importance to the national imagination. Since the first flag of the United States is lost, over time the Star-Spangled Banner was deliberately promoted to become the most venerated historic embodiment of the national flag since its donation to the Smithsonian Institution. Throughout the history of its display, its increasing value as a national treasure is reflected in its careful treatment and nearly perma-

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nent presentation to the public. Loaned to the Smithsonian in 1907 by its owner, Eben Appleton, the flag was hung on the outside of the Smithsonian Building to be exhibited to the public and then stored in a case in the Arts and Industries Building’s Hall of History. It was presented next to George Washington’s military artifacts, which already indicated its national importance.6 For the following fifty years, it was continuously presented with the exception of a few years during World War II, when it was moved for safekeeping outside the capital along with other national treasures from 1942 to 1944. In 1964 the display of the flag was significantly upgraded as it moved to the new National Museum of History and Technology, which included a dedicated Flag Hall where the flag hung until 1999.7 After a massive, ten-year restoration project at a cost of more than $40 million and a major renovation of the museum that was completed in 2008, the Star-Spangled Banner is, more than ever, the centerpiece of the NMAH. Located in the center of the building, the flag is now lying on an altarlike display protected by a climate-controlled glass case at a ten-degree angle to be seen in full by the public (see figure 1.1). The mythology of the Star-Spangled Banner is enhanced in an article of the Smithsonian magazine, which claims that during the nation’s first years the national flag had no particular significance until this particular flag was hoisted: “That all changed in 1813, when one enormous flag, pieced together on the floor of a Baltimore brewery, was first hoisted over the federal garrison at Fort McHenry. In time the banner would take on larger meaning, set on a path to glory by a young lawyer named Francis Scott Key, passing into one family’s private possession and emerging as a public treasure.”8 Thus the article claims that the exalted symbolic significance of the US national flag began because this particular flag inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” which eventually would become the national anthem. The manner of the flag’s presentation ensures that anyone is made aware of the object’s special status. Although completely sealed off by a protective glass cover, it is permanently guarded by museum staff, who periodically remind the visitors that photography is strictly forbidden (even if nobody holds a camera). The light is dim and the viewers automatically lower their voices. The national significance is further amplified through

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Figure 1.1. Presentation of the Star-Spangled Banner with Francis Scott Key’s lyrics of the national anthem at the National Museum of American History.

the national anthem as its text is shown in a large font above the flag, and the melody of the anthem is heard at low volume in the background. Mise-en-scène, soundscape, and lighting all contribute to the quasisacred atmosphere of the display. The presentation of the flag in its current exhibition can only be described as intending to evoke a transcendent experience, comparable only to the presentation of the Charters of Freedom at the National Archive.9 Like a religious experience, the mise-en-scène is designed to fill the visitor with awe and deference. Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle have pointed out that the US national flag has attained the status of a sacred object: “How does the flag operate in American life? Religiously, in a word.”10 They see the flag as the main totem of American nationalism and argue that violent sacrifice is at the center of the national imagination, which the flag helps cover up: In American civil religion, the flag is the ritual instrument of group cohesion. It transforms the bodies of insiders and outsiders who meet at a border of violence. This is the kernel of the totem myth, endlessly reenacted in patriotic life and ritual, and always most powerfully in the

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presence of the flag. Though the structure of totem myth is as familiar to Americans as anything can be, it remains largely unacknowledged. Though it governs our political culture, we do not recognize it. When it threatens to surface, it is vigorously denied. What it conceals is that blood sacrifice preserves the nation.11 The context of the flag in the exhibition itself confirms its interpretation as a sacred object that derives its meaning as a national totem from violence in its history. The flag is preceded by an exhibition on the story of the War of 1812 and the Battle of Baltimore, which is referenced in the national anthem lyrics. The exhibition concludes with several images of the national flag’s use, many of which are in a military context. The exhibition consists of three chapters and an epilogue: the War of 1812, the display of the flag, and the history of the flag. The first chapter connects the idea of sacrifice to the flag, which begins with the fall of the capital city and the burning of the White House. The backdrop of the display is fiery red to evoke the violence of the siege, and sounds of explosions suggest the shelling of the young nation’s capital. The emotional impact of the assault is emphasized in the display text: “Every American heart is bursting with shame and indignation at the catastrophe.” The following text panel drives home the theme of violence and raises the stakes with a depiction of the Battle of Baltimore. The nation itself appears threatened: “America’s future seemed more uncertain than ever as the British set their sights on Baltimore, Maryland, a vital seaport. On September 13, 1814, British warships began firing bombs and rockets on Fort McHenry, which protected the city’s harbor. The bombardment continued for twenty-five hours, while the nation awaited news of Baltimore’s fate.” The viewer is positioned to take the perspective of Francis Scott Key, who observed the battle from a few miles away and saw in the early hours of September 14 the flag waving above Fort McHenry. The sight moved him to write “a song celebrating ‘that star-spangled banner’ as a symbol of America’s triumph and endurance.” Marvin and Ingle explain the process by which blood sacrifice of the kind described in the exhibition and captured by Key establishes the nation and creates the flag’s symbolic meaning:

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The flag symbolizes the sacrificed body of the citizen. This label has meaning only in reference to the group that defines it, the nation. Blood sacrifice links the citizen to the nation. It is a ritual in the most profound sense, for it creates the nation from the flesh of its citizens. The flag is the sign and agent of the nation formed in blood sacrifice. Still, raising a piece of cloth and calling it a flag will not declare territory and form groups, at least not territory that will be respected, or groups that will endure and fight to produce borders. The power of a flag must be sacrificially established.12 A near constant stream of visitors passes through and stops at the flag as if to pay respect. Thanks to the narrative framing, which recalls the “perilous fight,” the “rockets’ red glare,” and the “bombs bursting in air,” visitors are reminded of the sacrifice by those who defended the nation’s freedom against the former colonial power. At the same time, the exhibition carefully avoids that Native Americans and some six hundred freed slaves battled on the side of the British, desperately fighting for their own freedom in the War of 1812. It would be important to include such complexity because it illustrates key contradictions inherent to the founding of the nation, contradictions that persist even two centuries later. The presentation of the flag itself is followed by two brief narratives on the making of the flag and its history as a family heirloom. This section ends with a reaffirmation of the Star-Spangled Banner as the “national treasure that inspired the song that became the national anthem and established the American flag as the country’s most significant symbol.” This concluding caption is accompanied by a slideshow of images of the national flag being displayed at moments of historical significance. While the montage includes a few images from African American history such as a voting rights march in Selma, Alabama, and others refer to Native American history, most images depict military uses of the flag, including at Arlington National Cemetery, showing World War I recruits, or a group photo of World War II veterans. Two of the most famous and symbolically charged instances of flag raising are included: the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima and amid the debris of Ground Zero after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, once again reinforcing the connection

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between blood sacrifice for the nation and the symbolic value of the flag. The exhibit of the Star-Spangled Banner is located so that visitors arriving through the main entry on the National Mall will encounter it first. The exhibit establishes a rhetoric of combining veneration with military history, which will be encountered again in the subsequent chapters on the USHMM, the NMAAHC, and the NMAI, albeit to a different degree in each case. Attention to how the US flag is used rhetorically and to how US military heroism of the past is framed will yield insight into each museum’s strategy for constructing the national imagination. America’s Wars: Whose Freedom? The museum’s chronology begins at the top floor and descends back to the ground floor as it progresses through the exhibitions. Unlike the other museums discussed in this book, the starting point is not explicitly recommended or clearly prescribed by the NMAH’s architecture, but it is a likely sequence for two reasons. First, to start at the beginning of U.S. history, one needs to begin at the top floor. Second, The Gunboat Philadelphia and The Price of Freedom are among the museum’s more popular exhibitions, in addition to the Star-Spangled Banner. Because of the prominent location of the latter near the entrance, many visitors are drawn to the iconic national flag as they enter the museum. In this way, they begin their tour of the museum with a strong exposure to national symbolism and its connection with war, which is further reinforced by the two main exhibitions on America’s wars. The gunboat Philadelphia is one of the largest objects of the museum and has been on display since its opening in 1965. Its dimensions are such that it had to be placed into position before the completion of the building in 1964. The gunboat is the oldest surviving US fighting vessel, and since it dates back to the Revolutionary War, it is also among the museum’s oldest objects of US history on display. Similar to the Star-Spangled Banner exhibition, the presentation of the Philadelphia emphasizes sacrifice for the nation. An introductory text describes the strategic significance of the gunboat and its seven sister ships, which were built in 1776 and are considered to be the first US navy. Their military objective was to prevent the

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“British plans to isolate New England by splitting the colonies along the Hudson River.” The exhibition’s text panel concludes with a description of the battle that sunk the boat: The opponents met at Valcour Island, near the New York shore, on October 11, 1776. Heavily outnumbered, [Benedict] Arnold lost the twoday battle; the Philadelphia was hit and sank on the first day. Although Continental forces lost, they succeeded in delaying the British until the following year, when the Americans were better prepared. The strategic position of the Philadelphia and her sister ships is described as a lost cause, yet General Arnold accepted the challenge against all odds. Sacrificing itself against a much superior naval force, the small flotilla made a decisive difference in the war: “This allowed the newly formed Continental army to regroup during the winter, then achieve victory at Saratoga, New York, in the autumn of 1777, which helped bring in support from France.” Thus, the self-sacrifice of the displayed boat and its crew is presented as an example of what is required to form and defend a new nation. Two panels displayed next to the story of the battle describe contrasting conduct in the face of the Philadelphia’s example. The contrast illustrates desirable and unacceptable behavior toward the nation. The first is a brief anecdote about Joseph Bettys, one of the Philadelphia’s crew members, “who was rewarded for bravery at Valcour Island [and] became a raider for the British; in 1782 he was captured, tried, and executed for treason and spying.” Regardless of Bettys’s previous merits, betraying the nation carries the ultimate punishment, death. A second text panel is titled “A Reenlistment Location,” which explains that the Philadelphia served as a place for reenlistment ceremonies of US soldiers who stood in front of the gunboat to “swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Placing these two panels next to each other emphasizes the exhibition’s didactic appeal in support of sacrifice for the nation. Honoring military sacrifice of life and limb is a dominant theme throughout the National Mall, including at the NMAAHC and the NMAI. A key question will be how those museums’ remembrance of the sacrifice of military veterans compares with the memory of African American and Native American victims during the founding and rise of the United States.

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Like The Gunboat Philadelphia, the exhibition The Star Spangled Banner does not mention any African Americans or Native Americans, although it would have been an excellent opportunity to at least introduce their role during the War of 1812. Much was at stake for both groups, and they fought on both sides of the war. Native Americans had learned the lessons from the French and Indian War (1756–1763) and the Revolutionary War (1775–1783), which had devastating consequences for many native nations. In the War of 1812, they fought mostly on the side of the British in a coalition led by the Shawnee war chief Tecumseh. He had built a coalition of more than two dozen nations hoping to stop the further advance of American settlements on Native American territory.13 Tecumseh was killed and his effort defeated at the Battle of the Thames in 1813. This loss led to the settlement of much of the interior of the North American continent and to the removal of many woodland nations to the west. The war was a pivotal point in US and Native American history, enabling the expansion of the former and bringing terrible suffering for the latter.14 The Star Spangled Banner exhibition would have been an obvious opportunity to introduce the idea that the original inhabitants of North America fought the establishment of the new nation, mostly allying themselves with the British, and that they did so with great political and military skill. It would be a powerful reminder of the victimization of the “first Americans” so that the new Americans could colonize and prosper. Similar to Native Americans, the War of 1812 affected African Americans in an existential manner. They too fought on both sides of the war, but unlike Native Americans, they sided in much greater number with the United States, making up 15 to 20 percent of the naval corps.15 It is a complex and surprising history since the British offered enslaved people freedom and more than four thousand slaves were freed during the War of 1812, which constitutes the largest case of emancipation in the United States until the Civil War.16 Some of the freed slaves joined the ranks of the British to strike back at their former masters.17 Black men, women, and children who were able to reach British-controlled territory were considered free, and even after they lost the war, the British refused the request of Americans to return them. Again, by excluding these narratives, the exhibition misses an opportunity to refine the understanding about how the ideal of freedom was implemented unequally during the nation’s early wars. It would certainly

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be detrimental to the exhibition’s patriotism to consider that the enemy of the United States freed many of America’s slaves. It is not a simple story given that some Blacks chose to fight alongside their masters on the side of the United States. However, it would be important to understand that the conflict, which the museum emphasizes as the inspiration for the national anthem, also included African Americans who fought against that flag to achieve freedom from slavery. Surprisingly, the NMAAHC follows the NMAH in neglecting important aspects of African American participation. While the NMAAHC’s exhibition Double Victory mentions that African Americans fought during the War of 1812, it minimizes that some fought on the side of the British and that the British liberated slaves against the will of the United States. Directly after The Gunboat Philadelphia exhibition, visitors encounter one of the museum’s largest exhibitions called The Price of Freedom: Americans at War, covering circa eighteen thousand square feet. It is a popular exhibition with a steady stream of visitors making for a crowded experience on most days in dimly lit and narrow gallery spaces. Highlights include George Washington’s sword and scabbard and George Armstrong Custer’s buckskin coat. The exhibition presents a wealth of information and objects focusing on twelve wars plus various recent conflicts including the Global War on Terror. As its subtitle suggests, The Price of Freedom presents military history of the United States, which it recounts in linear and chronological order. The NMAH’s website claims: “The heart of the story is the impact of war on citizen soldiers, their families, and communities.”18 In the following discussion, it will be of particular interest if the exhibition also includes marginalized African American and Native American communities. The exhibition is framed by two visual displays paying tribute to individual heroism. The entrance is marked by a large projection display that takes up the theme of the national flag in a collage with a screen mimicking the appearance of a flag. The composition features the word “Freedom” of the title prominently in the center to announce the exhibition’s ideological leitmotif (see figure 1.2). The visual collage already prefigures main themes of the exhibition. Two large close-ups of individual soldiers, one male, the other female, are presented as the main figures on either side

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Figure 1.2. The Price of Freedom exhibition entrance display.

as the heroes of the narrative. The display is racialized as the individual heroes are white, whereas minorities are represented on a much smaller scale as groups framed in long shots below the two main figures. The visual composition presents minorities as collectivized objects rather than as individuals with agency in US military history (see figures 1.3 and 1.4), in stark contrast to the celebration of military heroism in the NMAI and the NMAAHC.19 The exhibition concludes with a life-size image of a soldier saluting at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington. Again, the individual soldier appears to be white. The Price of Freedom presents an excellent opportunity to analyze the museum’s representation of difficult past since the Indian Wars and the Civil War were fought over the freedom of Native Americans and African Americans, respectively. Throughout this book, it is of interest to discern how museums define freedom and how they remember the impact of US military conflict on African Americans and Native Americans. Another aspect of America’s painful past is how US wars and covert military action have affected civilian populations in other countries. The latter topic alone, of course, is the subject of many studies.20 While it is not the focus of this book, we will look briefly at this aspect here since it is central to

Figure 1.3. Detail of the visual montage at the entrance of The Price of Freedom featuring Native American fighters.

Figure 1.4. Detail of the visual montage at the entrance of The Price of Freedom featuring an African American family.

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understanding the framing of the painful past for this exhibition and for sites of national remembrance in general. Shortly after the opening of The Price of Freedom, Scott Boehm accused the exhibition of patriotic propaganda. Boehm argues that it presents a “triumphalist reading of U.S. military campaigns as a perennial struggle for freedom from tyranny,” which had long been disproven but had been “granted new currency by the Bush administration in the shadow of 9/11.” In addition, Boehm reports a controversy over the use of the term “freedom” within the museum’s curatorial staff as some rejected the association of the US military with a struggle for freedom. Analyzing the financing of the exhibition through private donations and influence by politicians on curatorial decisions, Boehm concludes that “the privatization of public space privileges triumphalist interpretive frameworks when militantly patriotic donors demand a say in how their money is spent.”21 Much of Boehm’s excellent analysis focuses on the representation of US wars overseas, especially the Vietnam War and the wars after September 11. My reading of the exhibition complements his by turning the attention to the remembrance of the wars in North America and the representation of Native and African Americans. The exhibition opens with wars during the colonial period. This section includes several references to Native Americans, starting from the introductory text: “Wars erupted frequently in North America in the 1600s and 1700s as rival empires clashed with each other and with resident Indians.” In the section on the French and Indian War, the exhibition does not explain the motivations of Native Americans but only lists the Native American nations involved. Importantly, it also does not mention on which side they fought. The Revolutionary War section, again, does not provide many details about the role of Native Americans, although they fought on both sides of the conflict. Some Native Americans sensed correctly that a new strong nation on the American continent would be even more disastrous for them than the British colonization had already been. Given the negative experiences Native Americans had already had with Europeans, this was a complex and difficult decision that is discussed neither here nor in the NMAI.22 The exhibition features two notable mentions of Native Americans.

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First, a text explains: “Both the British and the Americans considered the Iroquois ‘unreliable’ allies, recognizing that Indian nations entered their alliances to protect their own people, territory, and autonomy.” Although the text puts quotation marks around “unreliable,” this is a problematic formulation as it echoes a classic prejudice against Native Americans.23 Such a speculation could easily be perceived as confirmation that one could not trust “uncivilized Indians” since they could not be relied on to honor a pledge of allegiance. However, the text does not speculate about how Native Americans perceived the British or the Americans, which were certainly also acting in their own interest and perhaps with less noble aims than simply to defend their people and their autonomy. The second mention of Native Americans is a short video on the topic of “Divided Loyalties.” In a series of first-person accounts, the exhibition explores motivations of people for choosing sides during the Revolutionary War. The videos also include Doonyontat, a Wyandot chief. The short film presents a speech that Doonyontat gave at a council held by Col. Daniel Brodhead in 1779, in which he changed his allegiance from the British to the United States. In the speech he faults the British for the suffering of US soldiers and declares: “Brother, as God puts all our hearts right, I now give thanks to God Almighty, to the chief of the Americans, to my old father the King of France, and to you, brother.” Again, this is a peculiar choice. While most Native Americans sided with the British, this position opposing the United States is not explored. Instead, Doonyontat is presented as the only Native American for this war, and he explains his shift of allegiance with a divine intervention. In other words, those who follow the will of God support the War of Independence. This presentation gives no explanation for Doonyontat’s decision and no exploration of the reasoning behind many Native Americans’ decision to support the British in the first place. Again, the fact that many Native Americans perceived the rise of the new nation as a threat remains ignored. The section on the War of Independence stresses George Washington’s iconic status as the military leader, first president, and father of the nation. While he, of course, was the key figure of the American Revolution, it is not mentioned that he was also extremely wealthy and that this wealth was largely tied to slaves he owned after his marriage to the widow Martha

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Dandridge Custis. Ironically, a large headline of the exhibit exclaims: “George Washington came to personify the revolutionary cause—the preservation of American liberty.” Biographer Fritz Hirschfeld, who overall celebrates Washington as “a man of pride and honor,” concedes that “Washington could have done much more during his lifetime to bring about emancipation of slaves, had he wanted to,” and he even speculates that Washington could have prevented the Civil War had he done so.24 Instead of exploring such contradictions in Washington’s biography, the exhibition celebrates his “commanding presence” and military heroism by displaying a number of his personal items such as a complete uniform, his epaulets, and his battle sword. Ignoring this contradiction in George Washington’s biography, the exhibition inevitably leads to an incomplete picture, which ignores the pain caused by the founding of the nation and instead embraces the national ideology of liberation unquestioned. Surprisingly, this deep contradiction in the biography of the nation’s most important founder also remains largely unexplored in the NMAAHC.25 African Americans are not mentioned at all in the War of Independence exhibition despite their participation and the enormous stakes involved for enslaved Africans, fugitives, and free Blacks as discussed above. Similar to The Gunboat Philadelphia exhibition, ignoring African Americans’ role in the Revolutionary War is particularly troublesome given that the exhibition emphasizes the ideals of the American Revolution. In a caption attached to the facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, the exhibition interprets the document: “The Declaration of Independence explained to the world why Americans went to war and proclaimed their ideals of liberty.” A second panel elaborates the key message: We believe that . . . • All men are created equal • Government requires the consent of the governed • Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are our rights Given these proclaimed beliefs, the obvious question is how Native and African Americans positioned themselves in relation to the cause. This question is ignored, but it would be indispensable for exploring the complexity of the Revolutionary War.

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The relation of Native and African Americans to the new nation is raised only after the section on the War of Independence when the exhibition turns to the US Constitution. In three displays, three questions are raised. The first asks about women’s suffrage, and the second turns to the issue of slavery: “Should enslaved Africans and African Americans be free?” A brief explanation states that 20 percent of the population was of African descent, that most of them were enslaved, and that five thousand fought on the side of the United States in hopes of gaining personal freedom. This information raises more questions than it answers. Did any of them fight on the British side? What happened to those who fought on the American side after the war? How did slaveholders see the participation of men whom they considered their property? These questions and many more remain unexplored. Instead, we see two answers to the question quoted above by contemporaries. The first answer derives from a petition of Africans to the New Hampshire legislature and is affirmative. It pleads for emancipation of slaves “in a land gloriously contending for the sweets of freedom.” The second answer quotes a petition by slaveholders who argued that freeing the slaves would bring poverty to free citizens, crime and violence, neglect to Black children, and “sure and final Ruin to this once happy, free, and flourishing Country.” Astonishingly, the exhibition does not take sides but presents both answers equally. The third question asks about Native American sovereignty: “Should the sovereignty of Indians be recognized?” The brief context adds that the Revolutionary War was followed by a hundred years “of conflict and resistance as American Indians faced threats to their lands, their peoples, and their rights.” Again, two alternative contemporaneous answers are presented. The affirmative answer quotes the Northwest Ordinance, an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States from 1887, which sought to regulate the westward expansion of the new country. The selected quotation includes the remarkable proclamation that “their land and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be disturbed.” Likewise, the negative answer, which is a statement by Gen. Josiah Harmar to Secretary of War Henry Knox, should be shocking to any observer and demands a more thorough exploration since it amounts to nothing less

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than the threat of genocide: “I was determined to impress upon them [the Miami Nation] as much as possible the majesty of the United States; and at the same time that they were informed that it was the wish of Congress to live in peace & friendship with them, likewise to let them know that if they persisted in being hostile that a body of troops would march to their towns and sweep them off the face of the earth.” Again, such a quotation raises a number of further questions that demand attention. How representative was this view of Native Americans at the time? Was the position of the US government better represented by the sentiment of the Northwest Ordinance or by General Harmar’s statement? Finally, how should we remember Native American history in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War? Which point of view, if any, turned into policy? Here, such questions remain unexplored, but the exhibition returns to these issues indirectly in the following section titled “Wars of Expansion,” which addresses three conflicts with Native Americans: the Creek Indian War, the Trail of Tears, and the Battle of Little Bighorn, as well as one conflict over slavery, Bleeding Kansas. Overall, “Wars of Expansion” presents the wars with Native American nations in an abbreviated fashion, listing neither the number of conflicts nor the amount of casualties on either side. In general, the wars with Native Americans are represented in a fairly neutral fashion. Given the forced removal of an entire ethnic group, the repeated violation of treaties, and the overall devastating effect of US policy toward Native Americans in the course of the nineteenth century, this is a puzzling decision that can only be understood in the context of an exhibition that overall aims to celebrate the US military and promote patriotism. I will focus on the representation of Andrew Jackson and his policy of removal, as well as George Armstrong Custer and the wars with the Lakota, to illustrate the exhibition’s questionable bias. The section on the Indian Wars is visually dominated by a mural showing a map of the United States, several portraits, a headline, and two prominently displayed quotations. The headline reads: “In the 1830s, the U.S. government forced eastern Indian tribes to resettle in the West.” Quotations from Andrew Jackson and Tecumseh provide two opposing perspectives on this policy. The Jackson quotation sounds perfectly reasonable,

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as if he had the Native Americans’ best interests at heart: “[Removal] will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and . . . to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.” This proposal might sound quite acceptable to an uninformed reader. The American West generally carries positive connotations in the United States, so what would be wrong with moving west?26 Further, to “liberate” them from the encroachment of white settlement could be seen as being in their own best interests. The ethnocentric stereotypes in Jackson’s statement that Native Americans are savage, that they need to be civilized, and that they would be better off as Christians are nowhere interrogated or challenged by the exhibition. This is all the more troubling because such stereotypes carried well into the twentieth century through representation of Native Americans in popular culture. While discourse on Native Americans has become more varied since the cultural changes of the 1960s and 1970s, stereotypes are still prevalent today.27 Particularly questionable is the exhibition’s attempt to tackle the stereotype of Native Americans as “uncivilized.” In a panel called “A Civilized People,” a problematic text implies that the Cherokee were civilized because they assimilated to white culture and economy: “In the early nineteenth century, the Cherokee people adapted traditions of their white neighbors. Many white people believed that Indians were incapable of cultural change. The Cherokee proved them wrong. Their leaders saw value in the technology and culture of their white neighbors and successfully adopted their methods of farming.” The text continues to explain that through this assimilation the Cherokee gained the respect of many Americans. The exhibition does not question the use of the term “civilization” in this context by, for example, pointing out that Native American nations boast complex civilizations thousands of years prior to contact. The processes of colonization, which used the pretext of bringing civilization to the uncivilized as a justification of the expansion of power and subjugation of other peoples, remain unchallenged.28 In contrast to Jackson’s quotation, Tecumseh’s statement, visually placed on the wall as if to respond to Jackson, sounds aggressive and rather unenlightened as he lays claim to divine prerogative: “Will we let

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ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, give up our homes, our country bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear and sacred to us? I know you will cry with me ‘Never! Never!’” The visual arrangement suggests that Tecumseh responds to Jackson’s seemingly rational suggestion with a cry to arms based on religious beliefs. It almost appears as if he is the aggressor and not the United States, when the roles were exactly reversed. The United States encroached on territory of other nations, occupied and annexed it, and often used military force to do so. There is little dispute that overall the United States was the aggressor in the conflicts with Native Americans, who acted in most cases defensively.29 In this context, The Price of Freedom briefly returns to the War of 1812 to explain the “Indian Removal” policy. A text panel claims that Native Americans did not pose a military threat after the War of 1812 and describes conflicts between Native Americans and white settlers. It concludes: “President Jackson decided that the best solution to the issue was moving the Indians to new lands in the West.” Again, Jackson’s decision, which led to some of the most painful chapters of US history, is presented as simply the “best solution.” Unless the visitor already brings a critical perspective on the policy of removal to the museum, there is little in the exhibition that would foster a considered reflection on this dark chapter of history. The suffering of Native American victims of forced removal is not voiced, let alone given adequate space. The human dimension of how such collective violence affected individuals remains largely invisible.30 The first conflict between the United States and Native Americans portrayed in The Price of Freedom is the Creek Indian War. The section introduces Andrew Jackson’s attitude toward Native Americans. Again, this choice and the wording of the text are questionable because the segment functions like a justification for Jackson’s policies toward Native Americans. The panel begins by explaining the Red Sticks Confederacy as a group of Creek who sided with the British to fight the United States, and then it continues: “On August 30, 1813, the Red Sticks attacked Fort Mims in the Mississippi Territory, where they killed between 300 and 400 people in a bloody massacre, including militiamen, women, and children. Andrew Jackson would soon avenge the loss in the battle of Horseshoe Bend.”

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Without providing further historical context on the civil war within the Creek nation and the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, the Creek appear as aggressors who committed a massacre, whereas Jackson is presented as a hero who “avenged” innocent women and children. In this light, his further policy of removing Native Americans from their homeland to prevent further contact with white settlers appears justified. However, the brief label on the Creek Indian War simplifies the conflict, and the selective presentation is manipulative. Consider how historian Roland Takaki described the same event: “When Jackson had learned that hostile Creeks had killed more than 200 whites at Fort Mims, he vowed revenge. . . . At the Battle of Horse Shoe Bend, Jackson and his troops surrounded eight hundred Creeks and killed almost all of them, including the women and children. Afterward, his soldiers made bridle reins from strips of skin taken from the corpses; they also cut off the tips of each nose for body count.”31 My point here is not to pit one massacre against another. This is also not the space to reevaluate Andrew Jackson’s legacy, as there is little debate about the significant suffering and pain caused by his policies. My concern is simply to show that the exhibition is one-sided and follows a consistent logic of implicitly justifying the policy of removing Native American populations and downplaying the horrors of forced removal. In contrast to the NMAAHC’s similarly uncritical treatment of George Washington, the NMAI decisively departs in its depiction of Andrew Jackson in a striking example of how perspective determines memory of the painful past.32 The NMAI frames the legacy of Jackson in an almost contrasting fashion compared with the NMAH. Let’s consider how The Price of Freedom represents one of the best-known agonizing chapters in Native American history, the Cherokee Trail of Tears. The entire event is described on one panel in a single paragraph. Since it is short and instructive, I will quote it in full: Before the federal government began Indian removal, some Cherokee had gone west, but most had remained. Their forced removal, known ever since as the Trail of Tears, is among the most tragic episodes in American history. Men, women, and children were taken from their homes, herded into makeshift shelters, and forced to march or travel

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by boat over a thousand miles during the bitter winter. About 4,000 Cherokee died during the journey. They were one of five major tribes forced to move west. Once again, a visitor might easily mistake one of the “most tragic episodes in American history” as a relatively minor tragedy. It appears insignificant in the larger scheme of military history because of the little narrative space the exhibition devotes to the event. The display uses Robert Lindneux’s painting Trail of Tears (1942) to illustrate the event. The painting features two Cherokee on horseback who are well clothed and armed. While some figures are shown walking, most are portrayed riding on wagons. No actual images of the forced removal survive, but Lindneux’s imagination of the event appears like any other twentieth-century visualization of treks heading west and does not show any obvious suffering. Again, the details and the human dimension of sorrow that would make this atrocity palpable are omitted. Who executed the policy, and how precisely? Why and how did the four thousand Cherokee die? Was there no resistance? And, finally and most importantly, what percentage of Cherokee died due to forced removal? While four thousand is a horrible number of civilian victims, it is a relatively small number in relation to contemporary demographics today. However, the pain for the Cherokee community was extreme since about one-quarter of the entire Cherokee population died.33 The third and final conflict presented is the war between the United States and the Great Sioux Nation from the Battle of the Little Bighorn to the Wounded Knee Massacre. This is by far the most complex presentation of a war between the United States and Native Americans in the museum. While this section adopts a more critical perspective toward the United States than the two previously analyzed examples, it remains problematic in several ways. For one, it is still very brief given the overall size of The Price of Freedom. The wars with Native Americans are central to the nation’s history since its expansion and development depended on land taken from Native Americans, often by force. It is hardly possible to do justice to one of the major instances of these conflicts in a few short paragraphs and some historic photos and objects. Second, the phrasing of the panel texts is problematic. To begin with, the visual presentation centers

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on George Armstrong Custer, who is shown in a photograph surrounded by Native American scouts (see figure 1.5). Few historic figures are more reviled among Native Americans than Custer, and presenting him in the center of the display, appearing to be a friend of Native Americans, is tactless.34 Next to the photograph is a painting called Custer’s Last Stand, and in front of it are two period guns and Custer’s buckskin jacket. Given the pervasive mythology around Custer’s Last Stand in US popular culture, the mise-en-scène of Custer’s image and his relics appears almost like a shrine to his legacy. Nowhere does the exhibition offer a critical discussion of Custer. The description of the Battle of the Little Bighorn includes little context for the reasons of the confrontation. It simply states that Custer took on a much larger force of Native Americans and was defeated: “The Indians greatly outnumbered Custer, and defeated each group in turn, killing Custer and more than 200 others. The loss so outraged the government that it mounted a new offensive that finally crushed armed Lakota resistance.” Thus, in the end, Custer retains his martyr status because he bravely faced the enemy despite being vastly outnumbered and because his sacrifice led to the eventual defeat of the Lakota and victory for the United States to end the American Indian Wars. A panel on Wounded Knee that fails to call it a massacre is particularly troubling. It mentions that a group of Lakota had left the reservation agitated by the Ghost Dance movement and then describes the bloodbath as follows: “As they returned to surrender, a scuffle broke out. Hearing a shot, soldiers fired, killing more than 200 men, women, and children— the last to die in the Indian Wars.” This laconic summary of the event appears cynical as it is displayed just below a historic photo of the mass grave full of bodies. While the term “bloody massacre” is used earlier when describing the murder of civilians at Fort Mims by the Creek, here it sounds like an unfortunate tragedy in response to a scuffle and a gunshot. Historians largely agree that a massacre took place at Wounded Knee. The US soldiers had Hotchkiss machine guns and had surrounded the camp, and there was no military justification for shooting indiscriminately into a group that consisted mostly of civilians.35 Following the publication of Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee in 1970 and the occupation of Wounded Knee by the American Indian Movement in 1974, the

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Figure 1.5. Detail of the display on the American Indian Wars in The Price of Freedom featuring a photograph of George Armstrong Custer and his buckskin jacket.

Wounded Knee Massacre has become a symbol of the pain endured by Native Americans. It would be an ideal opportunity for including a Native American perspective in The Price of Freedom. Finally, the exhibition’s representation of US policies regarding reservations is also problematic. Under the keyword “assimilation,” a text explains: “The U.S. government wanted Indians to learn skills and attitudes needed for successful American citizenship. Indian children, seen as the key to assimilation, were forcibly taken from their homes and sent to schools.” This phrasing suggests the government simply forced Native Americans to take advantage of opportunities afforded them by the new nation. Further, little is said on how those children were treated in the boarding schools. A second panel on the topic goes into some detail: “There they were to learn fundamental skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and also new social attitudes that would make them successful ‘Americans.’” Again, this would be benevolent; who could possibly object to spreading literacy, teaching math skills, and preparing children for success? While these may have been the good intentions of some, the reality of

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the practice looked different ranging from the trauma of being forcibly removed from the family to mistreatment at boarding schools. Many Native Americans suffered psychological trauma from the forced removal and abuse that affected them negatively long after the experience.36 Forced removal of children from their homes constitutes a violation of basic human rights of self-determination, a grave injustice committed by many governments of settler colonialism. Most concerned nations, such as Canada and Australia, have admitted as much and apologized.37 For example, the Canadian government apologized in 2008 and agreed to pay $1.9 billion CAD to survivors and to establish a truth and reconciliation commission.38 After six years of research and over six thousand interviews, that commission admitted to cultural genocide: “The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to aboriginal people and gain control over their lands and resources.”39 While the crime of cultural genocide is admitted at the highest level of government in Canada, the term is not even discussed at the NMAH and is also virtually absent at the NMAI.40 Unless the enforcement of such policies across the border in the United States was of a completely different nature, the exhibition creates a false impression of this inhumane policy, hiding the significant pain it caused. While Barack Obama signed the Native American Apology Resolution in 2009, it does not mention specific atrocities or incidents of maltreatment. However, Sen. Sam Brownback’s original resolution draft had a detailed preamble that mentioned among other atrocities the “removal of Indian children to boarding schools.”41 The historical assessment of this past is not controversial. Although governments are notoriously slow to admit to wrongdoings of the past, several governments that removed children have done so. Yet there is no serious criticism of such policy in the exhibition. In summary, The Price of Freedom does not devote much of its space to wars between the United States and Native Americans. More importantly, the museum does not live up to its promise to communicate how wars have affected communities in the case of Native Americans. Given that these wars lasted throughout much of the nation’s first century of existence and included dozens of different wars, this is a serious omission.42

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There are no estimates given on the total number of casualties of soldiers or civilians on either side and no discussion of the impact of those wars on the Native American population as a whole. While some of the wars are discussed at the NMAI in the context of the Nation to Nation exhibition, they are also not explored in great detail as that exhibition focuses on treaties, that is, the aftermath or seeming resolution of conflict. Another section of the exhibition “Wars of Expansion” serves as a bridge to the Civil War. Called “Bleeding Kansas,” it introduces the violent conflict over the dispute whether the Kansas Territory would allow or prohibit slavery. The brief section consists of two captions with short introductory paragraphs and two images showing Sen. Stephen Douglas, who argued for a state’s right to slavery, and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher. Two guns of abolitionists are displayed in a one-sided perspective on this conflict that omits violence in support of slavery. Important factions such as the Border Ruffians terrorized abolitionists. One of the prominent intellectual leaders of the pro-slavery camp was U.S. senator David Rice Atchison of Missouri, who advocated violence against abolitionists.43 As Alice Elizabeth Malavasic has argued, southern senators in the antebellum Congress were able to rewrite the Kansas-Nebraska Act in support of slavery.44 Instead of remembering this chapter of US congressional history, the exhibition chooses a moderate quotation by Senator Douglas in favor of self-determination of the people of Kansas. African American voices are completely absent even though they played an important role in the conflict.45 We also do not learn of the US government and military’s reactions to these outbreaks of violence. Once more, this limited presentation of a conflict downplays a dark aspect of U.S. history, when proponents of slavery and members of Congress used or supported violence in order to expand slavery to a new state. The Civil War exacted the largest number of US casualties and was the only major war to be fought in the United States. Naturally, it receives extensive attention in the exhibition. While most of this section explores questions of military strategy and leadership, a significant part is dedicated to the issue of slavery, which is central to the problem of remembering painful past in the United States. Overall, the Civil War exhibition

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emphasizes the abolitionist arguments over the pro-slavery position, further adds to the mythology of Abraham Lincoln, and by and large ignores the story of African Americans as agents in the conflict. The section begins with a large visual display to introduce the main stakeholders, which is arranged around Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis (see figure 1.6). Several large panels introduce the following groups and individuals in this order: abolitionists, free laborers, industrialists, planters, farmers, slaves, Abraham Lincoln, and Jefferson Davis. Each of the two leaders receives equal emphasis in the visual composition. The text panels present the pro and contra sides of the argument without much evaluation. This introduction devotes surprisingly little space to slavery given that the war was essentially fought over this institution. The first panel presents the abolitionist cause as that of a “vocal minority” that condemned the “moral evil” of slavery in “the world’s largest slaveholding nation.” The next panel on industrialists emphasizes the split between North and South. The next section on planters explains the importance of cotton as the nation’s most important export good and claims that planters “depended on slave labor to maintain their profit margins.” Strangely, the claim of planter James Hammond that slaves in the South were better off than the working class in the North remains unchallenged. The exhibition then remembers the horrors of slavery in two sentences: “Their owners provided them with minimal housing, rations, and clothing. They lived without freedom or power and were subject to physical violence and psychological intimidation.” This is the entire textual information provided on the suffering by the victims of chattel slavery in the abovementioned display.46 It is hardly possible to appreciate the motivations of those who were willing to fight a major war to end slavery, or of those who were willing to leave the Union in order to preserve the institution without significantly more information on slavery itself. In addition, it would be a welcome perspective on the Civil War to also consider the agency of enslaved people. While the panel on enslaved people alludes to this, again, no details, examples, or stories are provided that would humanize the painful experience of victims in this chapter of US history. The NMAAHC provides many examples of how exhibitions can affectively engage visitors through stories of individual victims. Given the significance

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Figure 1.6. Display at the Civil War section of The Price of Freedom.

of the Civil War in US military history and the fact that slavery was at the heart of that conflict, it is puzzling that The Price of Freedom does not effectively communicate the inhumanity caused by slavery. Any understanding of the Civil War is doomed to remain rudimentary without appreciating the cruelty of chattel slavery. Before turning to military history of the battles, the exhibition briefly revisits the story of abolitionist John Brown’s capture and execution by the US Army under the command of Robert E. Lee during the raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where Brown had hoped to instigate a slave rebellion. The display does not mention that some of the best-known authors of the time, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Victor Hugo, spoke out in support of Brown. There is also no discussion of the political nature of the trial, or of the fact that some fifteen hundred troops were present at the execution, including John Wilkes Booth, who would assassinate Abraham Lincoln in 1865.47 The exhibition rhetoric implicitly assumes that the crime of treason supersedes the fact that Brown was fighting for the just cause of abolition.

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One panel with a short paragraph is dedicated to the participation of African Americans in the war. The text claims that African Americans desired to fight on the side of the Union only to be refused at first. It proceeds to explain that this changed later as more troops were needed and that 180,000 free Blacks served and received three-quarters of the pay of their white counterparts: “Many distinguished themselves in battle, but others had to shovel horse manure or dig entrenchments.” The paragraph limits appreciation of the African American contribution to this one sentence that provides no details. Also, no casualty estimates are provided, and not one specific African American participation during battle is described in detail, although dozens of panels are dedicated to battles and military history of the Civil War. Over 38,000 Black soldiers died with a mortality rate 40 percent higher than among white soldiers. The exhibition also does not discuss the attempt to enlist Blacks to the Confederate army in exchange for freedom toward the end of the war.48 The number of Black soldiers fighting on the Confederate side was much smaller than on the Union side, but a few thousand African Americans fought as Confederate soldiers and many more were forced to support the Confederate war effort.49 Again, this presentation is in stark contrast to that of the NMAAHC. While a different emphasis in each museum certainly should be expected, minimizing African American aspects impedes the understanding of the Civil War. As the NMAAHC states in its exhibition about the Civil War, it “cannot be fully understood without the African American experience. Each pivotal moment occurred in large part because of African American actions. . . . African Americans changed the outcome of the war.” The Civil War exhibition ends with a tribute celebrating Abraham Lincoln. A large visual display shows two identical larger-than-life closeups of Lincoln’s face, one as a regular positive print and the other as a negative print suggesting his transformation into a mythical status after the assassination. A long quotation from Lincoln’s second inaugural address and a text panel emphasize his reconciliatory approach during Reconstruction. Next to the negative print a number of quotations illustrate the impact of the assassination and Lincoln’s outsized legacy, most prominently quoting Edwin M. Stanton: “Now he belongs to the angels.” Although a small-print footnote explains the dispute over whether Stanton

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said “angels” or “ages,” the exhibition chooses to display the quotation that suggests Lincoln’s assassination as a transcendent moment in US history. Here too, the exhibition reduces complexity instead of exploring it and replicates the veneration of Lincoln as a national hero found throughout the Mall. A more nuanced understanding of Lincoln and the Union would include a discussion of how he shared the era’s common racist worldview, as did most white northerners.50 The final display briefly introduces the war’s aftermath and the period of Reconstruction (see figure 1.7). It celebrates the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution following the Civil War, the promise of freedom and equal rights to African Americans, but it also explains that this promise was not kept and thus marked the beginning of the struggle for civil rights. Three panels juxtapose the promise and reality of each amendment: Amendment XIII . . . The promise: Slavery would end. The reality: To survive, most former slaves had to take low-paying jobs or work as tenant farmers (sharecroppers), delaying hopes of economic advancement. Amendment XIV . . . The promise: Laws would be equally applied. The reality: African Americans in the South were not granted equal protection or due process, and often were subjected to vigilante justice. Amendment XV . . . The promise: All citizens could vote equally. The reality: Intimidation, poll taxes, literacy testes, and other restrictions were put in place to restrict voting by African Americans. While this display, of course, cannot begin to represent the hardships faced by African Americans during Reconstruction and the subsequent era of segregation, the exhibition deserves credit for remembering that emancipation after the Civil War did not result in racial equality. At the same time, the exhibition avoids assigning blame. Widespread racism in both the South and the North is not mentioned, and Lincoln’s status as national

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Figure 1.7. Display about the constitutional amendments following the Civil War.

hero and martyr remains intact, although his reconciliatory approach toward Reconstruction could have been mentioned as one factor to bring about its failure to produce a path toward racial equality. Instead, Lincoln receives the stamp of apparent African American approval through a quotation from Frederick Douglass: “Under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood.” Ultimately, the display blames the failure of Reconstruction on Lincoln’s assassination and the “ineffectual leadership of his successor, Andrew Johnson.” The remainder of The Price of Freedom is dedicated to the major wars of the twentieth century and largely celebrates the United States as a benevolent force for good around the globe. The question of US imperial ambitions, which is widely discussed in the literature, is nowhere mentioned. American empire is evident, for example, in the many military bases, the unrivaled fleet of aircraft carriers, and continuous US military interventions around the world.51 Instead, the exhibition features extensive sections on World Wars I and II, followed by a shorter exhibition on Vietnam, and concludes with the wars following September 11, 2001.

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The exhibition on World War I does not mention any participation of African American troops or other minorities, although some four hundred thousand African Americans served in the military during the war and about two hundred thousand were sent to Europe as part of the American Expeditionary Forces. As Adrienne Danette Lentz-Smith has shown, World War I was instrumental in changing African Americans’ consciousness and approaches in the struggle for civil rights. On return to the United States, they saw their sacrifice for the nation ignored, especially by the racist regime of the Jim Crow South. The hope that equal rights and full citizenship could be earned through service and sacrifice gave way to the conviction that it had to be demanded. Just as they fought in Wilson’s “great war for democracy,” they had to fight for their own civil rights at home.52 The exhibition briefly addresses ill-treatment of Black soldiers returning from the war by displaying a newspaper report of lynching of a “race soldier” in Pickens, Missouri. A single sentence comments on the war’s aftermath: “African Americans wanted to keep opportunities gained during the war, but they had little success.” However, no further details are given, for example, about how widespread lynching was and how many Black veterans fell victim to the atrocity at home after risking their lives for the nation abroad. The exhibition also does not provide any information about the scope and nature of African American contribution to the war effort, about segregation of the military, or especially about how white southerners sought to maintain Jim Crow within the US military.53 There is also no mention that the military draft discriminated against African Americans, who were drafted at a 5 percent higher rate than whites.54 During World War II, about one million African Americans and four to five hundred thousand Hispanic Americans served in the military alongside smaller groups of several other minorities. Of those, the exhibition only mentions the experience of Black soldiers in one sentence: “One million African Americans trained and served in segregated units, building strong bonds with their fellow soldiers but few across racial lines.” In addition, one panel is included quoting a Black soldier, who praises segregation: “I was proud of the fact that I had trained with an all-black unit.” Except for a brief acknowledgment of the Navajo Code Talkers, there is

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no further mention of the treatment of minorities during or after the war. Just as after World War I, Black veterans returned to Jim Crow segregation and widespread racial discrimination. Again, agency and sacrifice experienced during military service planted the seed for more aggressive pursuit of civil rights at home, which eventually developed into the civil rights movement during the 1950s.55 This crucial connection is not pointed out in the exhibition. The section on World War II dedicates one display to the Japanese internment camps. The display derives its critical potential primarily from the visual composition as the background uses a large format photograph of an internment camp that recalls visuals of Nazi concentration camps (see figure 1.8). An explanatory text calls the camps “desolate” and states that racial prejudice played a role in the government’s decision to ignore the constitutional rights of US citizens. The accompanying text is also misleading as it explains the camps as a policy to counter perceived threats to homeland security without critically assessing the merit of this argument. Further, the display obfuscates the racial aspect of the practice, claiming that “U.S. citizens of ‘enemy’ ancestry were removed from their homes and held in detention camps.” This statement suggests that this practice was equally applied when in fact it was reserved for Japanese and Japanese Americans, whereas such camps did not exist for Americans who immigrated or descended from European enemy nations. Hence Japanese internment camps are better explained as another incarnation of racist policies toward Asian immigrants and Asian Americans such as the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882–1943) had been before. In summary, The Price of Freedom is central for understanding the framing of the US military on the National Mall as it presents by far the most extensive exhibition on the subject. Opened in 2004, one year into the controversial Iraq War, the exhibition was designed to attract visitors in wartime looking for patriotic affirmation of US military endeavors. As then curator James B. Gardner conceded, “The Smithsonian joined the post–September 11 patriotic bandwagon.”56 As is the case with the many military memorials on the Mall, The Price of Freedom minimized and omitted painful chapters in US military history. While the USHMM and the NMAAHC present different emphases according to their respective mis-

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Figure 1.8. Display on Japanese internment camps.

sions, they repeat two key features of The Price of Freedom. First, memory of painful past is not allowed to interfere with the overall presentation of US wars as benevolent. Second, honoring US military veterans is a primary goal of the exhibitions. Memory of difficult history that could undermine this aim is excluded or minimized. The NMAI also adheres to the maxim of honoring US veterans, as is evident from the new National Native American Veterans Memorial. While the NMAI certainly deviates from the presentation of the US military as universally benevolent in light of the American Indian Wars, its criticism is also limited to avoid damaging the image of the US military as a whole. National Ideologies beyond War In June 2017 the NMAH opened a new exhibition called The Nation We Build Together that indicates a change of direction for the museum to add critical perspectives on core national ideologies. The title already indicates the theme of inclusion. Completed during the early months of the

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Trump presidency, the exhibition seems in many ways a direct response to his anti-immigrant rhetoric and recalls Hillary Clinton’s main campaign slogan: “Together we are stronger.” The exhibition weaves a diversity of perspectives throughout most of its exhibits, presenting minority experiences alongside dominant white US history. In addition, the exhibition interrogates US ideals such as freedom, liberty, and equality like very few other exhibitions or memorials in the capital city. Still, the exhibition also deserves some criticism concerning the memory of painful pasts, beginning with the opening section. The entrance of the exhibition is dominated by a large sculpture of George Washington by Horatio Greenough from 1840 that had been located on the grounds of the Capitol before it was transferred to the Smithsonian in 1908 (see figure 1.9). The statue, imitating classical Greek sculpture, includes a relief of Apollo and Hercules to symbolize American enlightenment and courage, as well as figures of a Native American and of Christopher Columbus. The main sculpture in the center shows Washington offering to put down the sword with one hand and pointing to heaven with the other. Thus the sculpture celebrates Washington’s relinquishment of his military command after the Revolutionary War. An introductory panel on Washington admits that contemporary historiography no longer idealizes the man: “Modern scholarship focuses on the fallible man rather than the marble hero, [but] his image is still used for inspiration, patriotism, and commercial gain. Now joined by modern heroic figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington continues to hold a place for many as a symbolic ‘father’ of the country.” Despite this acknowledgment, the exhibition does not participate in damaging the myth of George Washington. It is a strange omission to compare his iconicity to Martin Luther King Jr. and at the same time not to discuss anywhere that he enslaved a large number of people. While the contradiction of liberty and slavery within the founding of the nation is discussed in the exhibition, Washington remains sacrosanct. This beginning becomes even more troublesome considering that the statue of Washington replaced the Greensborough Woolworth’s counter, which had stood at that position previously. The counter is now moved to the back of the exhibition space and in contrast to before is somewhat hidden from view.

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Figure 1.9. Horatio Greenough’s 1840 sculpture of George Washington at the entrance of The Nation We Build Together.

Behind Washington, two small sculptures of Columbus and a Native American man are placed to frame the main sculpture. The text explains the intention as follows: “Christopher Columbus and a Native American represent the meeting of the old and the new worlds.” This description leaves Greenough’s romantic imagination of Columbus and the American Indian as noble savage intact. Columbus is presented as a heroic explorer, holding a sphere in his hand, reflecting his successful proof that the Earth is not flat. The encounter between the two figures appears innocent, and the devastating impact that subsequent colonialism and the founding and expansion of the United States (exemplified by Washington) had on the Native population is nowhere to be seen. Of course, such a perspective reflects the dominant view of US history contemporaneous with the mid-nineteenth century. However, if such a powerful visual piece as this monument is displayed in such a central location without providing critical interpretation, it amounts to a validation of its perspective on history. The Nation We Build Together consists of two major exhibitions, “American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith” and “Many Voices, One Nation”; two

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smaller exhibitions, “Religion in Early America” and “Within These Walls,” an interactive section called “American Experiments” featuring the Greensborough lunch counter, and a nine-foot-tall LEGO® Statue of Liberty. Especially the two main exhibitions also remember painful aspects in US history. “American Democracy” presents a chronology of the development of the US political system from the American Revolution until today. After setting up the colonial world and describing the feudal system of government in the British monarchy, the exhibition styles the attempt to invest the power of the government with the people as “The Great Leap” of early US history manifest in the Declaration of Independence: “In 1776 many colonists made a great leap of faith: they united around ideals that ‘all men are created equal’ and entitled to the ‘unalienable rights’ of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’” However, the text does not stop there but acknowledges that this occurred in an “unequal world.” After presenting a rough outline of the American Revolution and displaying relics such as Thomas Jefferson’s writing desk and George Washington’s document box, the exhibition turns to a section called “Great Debates,” which include, among others, the questions of slavery, free African Americans, slave rebellions, relations with Native Americans, the free press, and the role of women in the new political system. Unlike the exhibition The Price of Freedom, the text on Native Americans clearly places the new nation alongside the European empires, admits its dependence on Native land for economic development, and points out that, like other empires, the United States “presumed the right to displace Native peoples when possible.” While this is a brief discussion, it is refreshingly clear in its evaluation of the United States’ relationship with Native Americans that is unusual in the national remembrance discourse in Washington, DC. For example, not even the NMAI’s exhibition Nation to Nation presents such an unambiguous evaluation of the nation’s early history. The exhibition also mentions the denial of political rights to Native Americans, who lived within the territory of the new nation. Moving on to African Americans, the exhibition emphasizes contradictions in the United States’ reaction toward revolutions elsewhere, such as the Haitian Revolution, which began as a slave revolt and “terrified U.S.

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slaveholders and other whites.” Further, African Americans’ participation in war or slave rebellions is noted as a challenge to the notion that “enslavement was natural or acceptable to them,” and free African Americans “demonstrated their capacities as citizens.” Finally, the exhibition briefly discusses the exclusion of people from the political process on the basis of race and gender. A large-screen animation summarizes the key points: the exclusion of women, almost all men of color, and most white men without property. The animation also introduces the Three-Fifths Compromise, which was used to determine the number of representatives for each state. In summary, the flaws of early democracy after the American Revolution are clearly remembered. On the other hand, the exhibition fails to flesh out the reality of early US democracy by providing some statistics. It would be insightful, for example, to know the percentage of the population that was included in the declaration that “all men are created equal.” For example, during the first presidential election, less than 1.8 percent of the population cast ballots.57 Conclusion The NMAH presents a variety of approaches to remembering painful past ranging from some of the most patriotic exhibitions anywhere on the Mall with The Star-Spangled Banner to more critical reflections on the national imagination in The Nation We Build Together. The main exhibitions on US military history are in line with the larger memory discourse on the National Mall. As Erika Doss argues, the central axis of the National Mall from the Grant Memorial to the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial was transformed by the addition of the “National World War II Memorial’s overtures to an imperial America.”58 The central axis of the Mall is now clearly dedicated to America’s major wars from the Revolutionary War, to the Civil War, to World War II. On the National Mall as in the NMAH, celebration of America’s military heroes marginalizes memory of those wars’ victims at home or abroad. While the NMAI, the NMAAHC, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial were added to the National Mall, there is no central memorial to the African American or Native American victims in US history on or near the Mall. Moreover, no nonnarrative memorial

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space is dedicated to victims of either group at the NMAH, the NMAAHC, or the NMAI, which would be unthinkable, for example, at a museum about Jewish history such as the USHMM. Certainly, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial allude to painful past. However, ultimately they fit within the larger narrative of sacrifice for the nation and the advancement or defense of liberty. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial reduces the achievement of a movement to the heroism of one man. As it faces the Jefferson Memorial, the monument suggests that Dr. King finally realized the ideals already inherent in the founding of the nation. It is not a memorial to the millions victimized by slavery or segregation but a celebration of liberation. It also does not remind visitors of the continuing racism that endures today despite the successes of the civil rights movement. Likewise, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial remembers and honors the US soldiers who died in the war without any memory dedicated to the much more numerous foreign victims of US military engagement in Southeast Asia.59 While the extensive exhibitions of the NMAH certainly present more nuance, they primarily provide narrative support to the patriotism and celebration of the US military that dominates the nation’s monumental core. This rhetoric of celebrating the US military while minimizing its painful past will be encountered again in the next two chapters, where the focus is on its contribution to liberation (USHMM) and to racial equality (NMAAHC). Ultimately, the NMAH inadvertently shows that building the nation, rather than fighting for it, is far more effective and beneficial when it comes to realizing a “more perfect union” as imagined by the US Constitution. Especially the more recent exhibitions like The Nation We Build Together represent and, in part, celebrate the nation’s ethnic and cultural diversity, which inevitably includes memory of painful past such as racial oppression and discrimination. The Nation We Build Together also deviates from the epistemological approaches of presenting an objective, linear, and unified national story in line with conventional approaches to historiography that dominate the museum’s exhibitions on US wars. The Nation We Build Together acknowledges the importance of identity, demonstrating that the meaning of historical events such as the founding of the United States depend on one’s perspective. It uses parallel narrative structures as one

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way to refute the notion of a simple truth when presenting stories of the past. Yet linear narratives in historical exhibitions remain dominant at the NMAH and on the Mall, as we shall see in the following discussion of the USHMM and the NMAAHC. Overall, those museums present unified narratives of liberation. The kind of epistemological contradictions evident in the contrasting approaches to exhibition rhetoric of the NMAH will resurface in our discussion of the NMAI’s attempts to overcome conventional exhibition narratives.

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american liberation, part i the united states holocaust memorial museum

2 Since the museum is to be a national institution, it should deal with the American role during World War II. This includes American accomplishments . . . but it must also confront our nation’s failures. Elie Wiesel, President’s Commission on the Holocaust

The seeds for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC, were planted when Jimmy Carter established the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and tasked it to prepare a report “containing its recommendation with respect to the establishment and maintenance of an appropriate memorial to those who perished in the Holocaust.”1 While it is to be expected that memory places on the National Mall largely subscribe to the dominant patriotic discourse of this space, the USHMM could be an exception. Such a museum might well caution against the kind of nationalism and celebration of militarism found at the National Museum of American History (NMAH). After all, the Holocaust was perpetrated by Nazi Germany, which combined extreme nationalism and militarism. The USHMM could conceivably aim to counterbalance the abundance of US nationalist rhetoric on the National Mall as one lesson from the history it remembers. This possibility was already contained in the museum’s origin as the President’s Commission demanded that the museum should reflect the United States’ failures in acknowledging and intervening with the Holocaust earlier despite intelligence that told of the event.

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Focusing on the narrative and visual rhetoric of its main permanent exhibition, I argue that the USHMM implicitly affirms American nationalism and patriotism, despite the role that nationalism played in making the Holocaust possible, and despite the commission’s original demand for a critical perspective on the United States. Thus, the USHMM is broadly compatible in this regard with the NMAH’s military exhibitions. The museum foregrounds the US military as liberators of death camps. Since the museum’s narrative strategies and spatial configurations are designed to offer identification with Holocaust victims, US soldiers appear as heroic saviors. As such, the museum integrates well with the dominant rhetoric of the National Mall and with the NMAH’s celebration of US military history. Like the NMAH, the USHMM also presents a linear, cause-andeffect narrative with a teleologic trajectory toward liberation. Whereas the NMAH remembers US military history as the establishment and defense of liberty and freedom in North America, the USHMM emphasizes liberation of concentration camps by the US military in its narrative of the Holocaust. Scholars of memorial museums have discussed Holocaust memory in general and the USHMM in particular as a template for memory of painful pasts in museums, the subject of this book.2 As such, the USHMM presents a natural point of comparison with the memory of collective violence and inhumanity at the NMAAHC and the NMAI. As the largest and most visited Holocaust museum in the world, the USHMM influences related museums to position themselves vis-à-vis its rhetorical approaches, especially if they share the same immediate context on the National Mall. For understanding the memory of painful past in the NMAAHC and the NMAI, it will then be useful to identify and describe main strategies of the Holocaust Museum first to see if the other museums replicate or resist its narrative and visual rhetoric. After entering the USHMM, visitors reach the Hall of Witness, the museum’s main, three-story gathering place, which evokes the enclosed space of a concentration camp yard. There, visitors obtain timed tickets for entering the elevator, which brings them to the museum’s top floor where the exhibition begins. The museum’s main feature is the permanent exhibition on the history of the Holocaust, which is presented in three main segments: the prehistory of the Holocaust (fourth floor), the Holocaust

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(third floor), and liberation and aftermath of the Holocaust (second floor). My discussion will focus on this main exhibition and explore how its narrative is framed, how the identification of the visitor is directed, and how it presents traumatic collective violence through narrative and visual design. I will then consider how the museum contributes to the US national imagination in the context of the National Mall. The Politics of Holocaust Memory in the United States Peter Novick has argued that the Holocaust became central to American collective identity toward the end of the twentieth century. He argued that the Holocaust and the Nazi system served as the ultimate Other to the American national imagination. In addition to the “evasion of moral and historical responsibility,” Holocaust memory offered an opportunity to rejuvenate national pride by remembering the role that the United States played in defeating Nazism.3 The USHMM’s main exhibition is framed with memories of liberation. As visitors ascend the elevator to the beginning of the exhibition, footage from the liberation of concentration camps by US soldiers is shown, which is reinforced by the first display. Finally, at the exhibition exit, liberation of concentration camps by the US military is remembered again.4 In her global study Exhibiting Atrocities on memorial museums, Amy Sodaro concludes that such museums fulfill a “deeply political role in the societies that have born them.”5 Obviously, a nationalist narrative framing of Holocaust memory fits well into the rhetoric of populist nationalism during the Trump era. It is less apparent how the museum and its celebration of American heroism originated in the late 1970s with President Jimmy Carter. Already Edward T. Linenthal suggested in his history of the USHMM that the Carter administration was politically motivated when it called for a Holocaust memorial: “Carter would use the power of government to do something many would perceive as ‘good’ and, at the same time, reach out to an increasingly alienated ethnic constituency.”6 Linenthal elaborated on the latter, noting that Carter had alienated the Jewish American community when he recognized the Palestinian right to a homeland. However, Carter had carried the Jewish vote comfortably with 71 percent during the

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presidential election in 1976. By May 1978, when he announced the formation of the commission on the Holocaust in the White House Rose Garden, he had more pressing political concerns as his overall approval rating had dropped precipitously from over 70 percent early in his presidency to the low 40 percent range and was about to drop below his disapproval rating. This finally happened in April 1979, and Carter’s disapproval rating reached nearly 60 percent by July 1979. At this low point, Carter gave the infamous, nationally televised “malaise speech” and spoke of the “crisis of the American spirit.”7 Francesco Duina argues that winning is an American obsession as Americans embrace competition and desire to come out on top.8 The ultimate national competition, of course, is that between nations, and the most extreme form of that is war. In his presidential campaign, Donald Trump, like Carter, also spoke of an American crisis and frequently complained that “the United States is not winning anymore.” After he became commander in chief he proclaimed: “When I was young, in high school and in college, everybody used to say we never lost a war. America never lost. Now, we never win a war.”9 A return to the 1950s, when the previous war was World War II and the Greatest Generation had just defeated Nazism, is obviously suited for supporting populist nationalism. Surprisingly, President Carter sounded quite similar by 1979, and he might have looked back to World War II with similar motivations. He spoke of a “crisis in confidence,” which he connected directly to the defeat of the Vietnam War. “We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just,” he said, “only to suffer the agony of Vietnam.”10 The Presidential Commission on the Holocaust submitted its report just over two months after Carter’s malaise speech. As he was struggling to recover national self-confidence, remembering the United States’ role in defeating Nazism and liberating concentration camps promised one avenue of doing so. The report mentioned several reasons why the Holocaust should be remembered in the United States, including the fact that US soldiers liberated camps. However, in the same paragraph, the report also reminded explicitly of the United States’ failure to disrupt the Holocaust much earlier, despite intelligence describing the ongoing genocide. The commission also demanded that it should be re-

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membered that the United States’ refusal “to provide adequate refuge or rescue until 1944 proved disastrous to millions of Jews.”11 Despite all universalist proclamations and appeals to common human dignity, the USHMM contributes to American nationalism by foregrounding the role of the US Army in the liberation of concentration camps. If there ever has been a case for a military intervention, the Holocaust would be it. This is not my concern here. Instead, what is at stake is the use of the Holocaust and the extremely painful and traumatic past that was perpetrated “over there” for reframing the American military past in a positive light in the present. As Sodaro emphasized, “as containers for education and memory about past violence and genocide—some of the most politically sensitive moments of any history—[ memorial museums] are thus deeply political institutions and must be read and understood as such.”12 While this insight applies especially to the USHMM, it is also relevant for the other museums discussed in this book. Since the USHMM remembers a painful past perpetrated by another nation outside of the United States, it provides a productive point of comparison with the remembrance of painful past that occurred “here.” As noted, Holocaust memory and the USHMM have become paradigmatic for the memory of extreme collective violence. What are the political implications for how the NMAAHC and the NMAI follow, modify, or reject this template? Framing Holocaust Memory: Liberation The experience of the museum is framed by its context on the National Mall. Approaching the museum, one encounters wide-open streets with relatively low buildings and open skies. Many visitors are likely to arrive through the green spaces of the National Mall, in which case one would have experienced an even more generously open urban space, including the vast lawns and water elements that stretch for 1.9 nearly uninterrupted miles between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial. In addition, many visitors will have at least seen if not visited some of the most iconic national monuments and buildings nearby, such as the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, or the White House. In other words, the museum’s context offers literal freedom (freedom of movement, open views, fresh

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air, enjoyment of green spaces) and an abundance of iconic symbols of American nationalism and patriotism. As Jay Winter has described the USHMM’s context, “The redemptive elements in the story surround it on the Mall. They tell us of the wider struggle for tolerance, for freedom of religion, for freedom from persecution; they locate the Holocaust within the American narrative, itself configured as a universal.”13 The Mall’s configuration of the American national story as a struggle for the individual human right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” naturally impacts a visitor’s reception of the museum. The experience of the museum as imbedded within a discourse of US national pride is further amplified by architectural elements. First, two flagpoles stand next to each entrance of the museum, flying large national flags (see figure 2.1). Second, quotations from three US presidents (Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush) are engraved on the museum’s outer walls. A fourth quotation, from President Bill Clinton, is featured on the interior wall just past the museum’s main entrance. All four statements offer very strong endorsements of the USHMM and thus provide legitimacy from the highest representative of the state. Interestingly, all three presidents’ quotations on the exterior use the pronoun “we” and thus reference the imagined national community. All three also at least imply the responsibility of the nation: “each of us bears responsibility” (Bush), “never again will the world stand silent” (Carter), “we must make sure from now until the end of days all humankind stares this evil in the face” (Reagan).14 At the same time, all three quotations also could be interpreted as containing an implicit appeal to the United States to prevent genocide in the future. Another quote engraved into the outer wall of the museum is by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, in which he commented on the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Further honoring the general, the plaza in front of the museum is named after him and displays the following dedication: Dedicated in Gratitude to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, General Dwight David Eisenhower, and the valiant soldiers of all allied armies that he led into battle. Victorious in battle, they brought the Third Reich to an end, en-

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countered its concentration camps, liberated the survivors and bore witness to the Holocaust. Hence, the attention is shifted from a discourse of abstract US nationalism of the Mall to one of specific national heroism, namely, that of the liberation of the concentration camps brought about by the leadership of the Supreme Allied Commander and later thirty-fourth president of the United States, Eisenhower. Thus, the liberation of the camps under American command is already emphasized in the USHMM’s memory space outside of the building. As I will argue below, emphasis on the liberation of the camps continues through narrative framing inside. The USHMM’s architect, James Ingo Freed, studied the history of the Holocaust and visited many related sites in Europe, including concentration and death camps, in preparation for his work on the museum. The materials and architecture of the camps became the most important influence for the design of the building. He was not interested in copying specific camp architecture but wanted to elicit an emotional response by alluding to materials and forms of the concentration camps. His main purpose was to simulate the experience of camp inmates. To achieve this goal, he first needed to isolate the visitor from the immediate environment of Washington, DC: “When you walked out of Washington, I wanted to separate you from the city formally and spatially.” Freed explains that he could not have built a modern building since the city’s Fine Arts Commission would not have approved it. Hence, he decided to use a screen, which would act as a deceptive façade and thereby imitate another architectural element of the camps: “The screen is there as a façade like all the government buildings, but at the same time it’s a lie. You pass through the limestone screen to enter a concrete world. We disorient you, shifting and recentering you three times, to separate you emotionally as well as visually from Washington.” Freed implicitly compared this façade to the iconic image of Auschwitz-Birkenau: “The concentration camps all had gates, layers of lies, lies such as ‘Arbeit macht frei’ (work makes free). The gate as lie, screen.”15 The comparison between the Holocaust victim and the visitor is implicit in this association. In the logic of this comparison, the visitor is de-

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Figure 2.1. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s main entrance with national flag.

ceived by the limestone façade, which conceals a concentration camp–like space, just as the Holocaust victims were deceived about the true nature of the historic camps by their façades and gates. Freed further adds to this comparison when he talks about the interior design: “From the third floor you come down another way, under a slot of light. This is the ‘death march,’ where the experience becomes more brutal; the stairs are steel, the slot is very narrow, movement is very constricted.”16 We could take this analogy further by comparing leaving the museum with the liberation of the camps, as visitors exit the claustrophobic and enclosed space of the museum and return to the free and open space of the National Mall. Obviously, such a comparison between Holocaust victims and museum visitors is obscene since the experience of a visitor is not even remotely like the existential experience of Holocaust victims. Yet, as I will elaborate below, the museum’s strategy of identification with victims is not only implicit in the architecture but also lies at the core of the main exhibition narrative. As we will see in the subsequent chapters, different strategies of narrative identification are key distinguishing factors between the NMAAHC’s and the NMAI’s approaches to memory of the painful past.

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As visitors enter the USHMM through its main entrance, they are greeted by the quotation from President Clinton, taken from a speech given at the dedication of the museum. It concludes: “If this museum can mobilize morality, then those who have perished will thereby gain a measure of immortality.”17 The quote continues the theme of presidential endorsement and also emphasizes the role of the museum as an agent for social justice in the present. Entering from the opposite side closer to the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial, visitors encounter quotes from those two Founding Fathers: Jefferson’s from the Declaration of Independence and Washington’s reassurance of the Hebrew congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, that the US government would not engage in bigotry or persecution. As Tim Cole has aptly observed, the museum’s narrative presents “nothing less than the very antithesis of the values enshrined in these documents penned by the founding fathers celebrated a short walk away.”18 The Holocaust’s ultimate negation of liberty and life illustrates the value of the national story of freedom and individual human rights as it is celebrated on the Mall. To claim freedom as central to the US national story, it must be protected from painful memories such as Native American persecution or slavery. Following these celebrations of America’s presidents and national ideologies, extensive security checks remind visitors of the contemporary terrorist threat to not only Jewish institutions but also the nation and its ideals. The first room of the museum following its main entrance, then, presents the military force that protects the American nation and its values. In a semicircular arrangement, twenty large flags are displayed that reach from floor to ceiling (see figure 2.2). No historical information is given except for a small panel in the center of the flag display that states: “Flags of Twenty United States Army Divisions Active in Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps. Please do not touch” (emphasis added). Again, the central theme is repeated as visitors enter the building: liberation of the camps by the US military. This opening is significant since these flags are chosen from a vast collection of more than eighteen thousand objects, including extremely powerful artifacts such as many personal possessions of victims who perished in the Holocaust. The beginning of any narrative is of importance, be it the first sentence

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Figure 2.2. Flags of US military units that participated in the liberation of concentration camps.

of a novel or the first shot of a feature film. In the same way, the first artifacts a visitor encounters at a museum entrance exert a special impact, and it is a consequential curatorial choice to honor the liberators instead of the victims with a display of military flags at the outset—flags that are further hallowed by the request not to touch them. This strategic curatorial choice is ironic considering that the President’s Commission’s report presented a very different emphasis in its rationale for the museum. While it acknowledged the United States’ role in defeating Nazi Germany and in liberating camps, it also underscored the failure of the US government to do more earlier. In the same paragraph in which the report applauded the sacrifice of the United States in their war against Nazi Germany, it presented a scathing indictment of America during World War II, as is apparent from Elie Wiesel’s cover letter to President Carter: The valiant American nation fought Hitler and Fascism and paid for its bravery and idealism with the lives of hundreds and thousands of its sons; their sacrifices shall not be forgotten. And yet, and yet, away

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from the battlefield, the judgment of history will be harsh. Sadly but realistically, our great government was not without blemish. One cannot but wonder what might have happened had the then American President and his advisors demonstrated concern and compassion by appointing in 1942 or 1943 a President’s Commission to prevent the Holocaust. How many victims, Jews and non-Jews, could have been saved had we changed our immigration laws, opened our gates more widely, protested more forcefully. We did not. Why not? This aspect of the Event must and will be explored thoroughly and honestly within the framework of the Commission’s work. The decision to face the issue constitutes an act of moral courage worthy of our nation.19 The President’s Commission report goes into further detail on the failure of the United States in preventing the Holocaust as it quotes from a 1944 memo to the president from the Department of the Treasury: (State Department officials) have not only failed to use the Government machinery at their disposal to rescue Jews from Hitler, but have gone even so far as to use this Governmental machinery to prevent the rescue of these Jews. They have not only failed to cooperate with private organizations in the efforts of these organizations to work out individual programs of their own, but have taken steps designed to prevent these programs from being put into effect. They not only have failed to facilitate the obtaining of information concerning Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe but in their official capacity have gone so far as to surreptitiously attempt to stop the obtaining of information concerning the murder of the Jewish population of Europe. They have tried to cover up their guilt by: (a) concealment and misrepresentation; (b) the giving of false and misleading explanations for their failures to act and their attempts to prevent action; and (c) the issuance of false and misleading statements concerning the “action” which they have taken to date.20

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The report then expands on several criticisms of US policy before the issuance of this memo, focusing particularly on efforts to prevent Jewish refugees from immigrating to the United States. Although it was quoted at length in the commission’s report, a copy of this crucial memo is not included in the exhibition of the Holocaust Museum. Granted, both the failure to intervene earlier and more forcefully with the killing machine and the refugee question are not excluded from the exhibition entirely. As Linenthal discusses, the museum includes two exhibits, one of the SS St. Louis, which carried Jewish refugees and was turned away from US soil, and another of a US intelligence photograph of Auschwitz-Birkenau, including an indictment of American inaction. Linenthal even considers that the United States’ complicity as bystanders in the face of the Holocaust might be “the most important lesson to learn, so that coming generations would not again be willing to stand by in the face of overwhelming evil.”21 However, Linenthal ignores that both of those exhibitions are easily overlooked as they are small and presented in between the overwhelming exhibits on the death camps and the devastating display of victims’ shoes and hair. In contrast to the recommendation of the commission’s report, the main exhibition downplays America’s failure to accept Jewish refugees and to attempt to stop the Holocaust, as we shall see in the following section. The Main Exhibition: The Horror of the Holocaust After the display of the army flags at the entrance, visitors enter the Hall of Witness, the large skylighted atrium enclosed by red brick walls on two sides and a view of the sky overhead (see figure 2.3). Jennifer HansenGlucklich has theorized Freed’s approach as an architecture of experience that “enables visitors to overcome geographic and temporal distance and to experience new levels of identification with the victims.”22 In the Hall of Witness visitors pass through a large gate in the brick wall to reach the elevators that transport them to the fourth floor, where the main exhibition begins. However, before the visitors enter the elevator, the narrative of the main exhibition begins in a very personalized and much discussed manner. A museum attendant welcomes the visitors and asks them to

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choose one facsimile of a historic-looking identity card complete with image and biographical data. There is a wide selection of different cards, including persons of varying age groups and both genders. Each ID card begins with a brief biographical sketch and then contains three or more entries corresponding to the various time frames covered in the exhibition. Through this ID card the museum exhibition encourages the visitor to identify with a concrete victim of the Holocaust. Instead of identification with an abstract victim, the visitor now experiences the museum’s narrative of the Holocaust while carrying the ID card of a concrete, historic person who lived through the events that the visitor will now encounter. James Young was an early critic of this process of identification and wrote already before the exhibition opened that the “experiential mode” of the exhibit “encourages a certain critical blindness on the part of visitors. Imagining oneself as a past victim is not the same as imagining oneself— or another person—as a potential victim, the kind of leap necessary to prevent other ‘holocausts.’ All of which obscures the contemporary reality of the Holocaust, which is not the event itself, but memory of the event, the great distance between then and now.”23 By obscuring the nature of memory, the experiential mode reduces critical distance from the exhibition and masks the narrative construction. This diminishment of critical perspective facilitates the reception of the implicit narrative of US patriotism. For Elie Wiesel, who famously attacked the TV series Shoah for “trivializing the Holocaust,” a Disneyfication of the Holocaust at the USHMM would constitute an unforgiveable sin.24 Freed referred to the same issue in describing his early struggles to find an architectural language: “The solution could not be scenographic, not a theme park or a Disney production.”25 Yet some critics have alleged just that in referring to the Holocaust victim ID card or the train car discussed below.26 The invitation to identify with a victim of the Holocaust resembles a key principle of the Hollywood mode of storytelling, which often hinges on the identification of the viewer with protagonists. Hollywood, not unlike the exhibition, is not interested in enabling a viewer’s critical reflection on the narrative. Instead, Hollywood depends on viewers’ willingness to suspend their disbelief about the fictionality of the representation. Likewise, the USHMM wants the visitor to get lost in the experience of the narrative

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Figure 2.3. The Hall of Witness. Photo credit: US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

and not reflect on the exhibition’s narrative rhetoric. Similar to Hollywood film, the museum’s narrative strategy thus targets a recipient’s affective response in a public space. Erika Doss has demonstrated the deliberate use of affect in recent public memory discourse in the United States, where she finds a “cultural shift toward public feeling as a source of knowledge.”27 The USHMM reflects this trend and employs emotional responses as part of its strategy to transmit knowledge about the Holocaust. After having received the ID cards, visitors are asked to enter the elevators in groups. When the elevator door closes and the box travels to the fourth floor, the process of removal from the city’s and the National Mall’s spatial discourse is completed. First, any sense of open space and freedom of movement is denied as the elevator is crammed, which induces a sense of claustrophobia. The elevator cage has barren metal walls, and the museum attendant closes the door from the outside, seemingly locking the visitors in a cell as they are about to be transported to a different universe. As we will see in the following chapters, a visit to the NMAAHC and the NMAI also begin with elevator rides, albeit with significant rhetorical differences in the way the rides are designed. The NMAAHC clearly borrows from the USHMM, whereas the NMAI departs from its approach.

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While the elevator rises, an overhead monitor shows archival footage of US soldiers encountering concentration camps during liberation. Several voices of unidentified soldiers are heard as they recollect the horrors of their experiences as liberators of the camps. At the destination, the elevator doors open to reveal an almost life-size photograph covering the entire wall opposite the elevator. It shows a group of US soldiers looking on a large pile of charred bodies. The caption of the photo reads: “Americans encounter the camps. American troops discovered the charred remains of prisoners when they liberated the Ohrdruf concentration camp in central Germany. April 1945.” As Cole states correctly, the elevator and the initial image present the Holocaust “in terms of an American history of liberation and the most un-American of crimes.”28 Cole presents one plausible interpretation of the exhibition’s beginning as he argues that visitors join the liberators to complete a circle around the corpses, and thus they identify with the liberators. In my view, the perspective is that of a camp survivor because the visitor has just gone through the unusual experience of having chosen a Jewish identity card. Moreover, the arrangement of images does not construct a point-of-view shot sequence, which would support Cole’s interpretation. This would require a close-up of a liberating soldier’s face looking, followed by a long shot of the scene that is being viewed. Instead, we only see a long shot of soldiers looking in horror at the pile of bodies; hence the perspective of the visitor is that of a camp survivor who observes his or her liberators. To the right of the photo, the words “The Holocaust” are displayed on a dark wall, another allusion to film convention in its resemblance to a film title. To the left of the photo, a quotation from Dwight D. Eisenhower is displayed, which repeats the quotation that is also engraved onto the outer wall of the Hall of Remembrance:29 The things I saw beggar description. . . . The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were . . . overpowering. . . . I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.” General Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 15, 1945

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The words “first-hand” are underlined in this reproduction of the quote, which underscores the claim to authenticity of what is presented. Together with the emphasis on testimony, the claim to unmediated evidence strengthens the mode of realism, which underpins the storytelling of the entire exhibition and deflects attention from the narrative construction that is presented to the visitor. Gary Weissman has described the call for “witnessing” the Holocaust after World War II as a fantasy and criticized the USHMM specifically for “personalizing” the horror of the Holocaust, which “so often serves to curtail rather than encourage critical thinking about our present-day relationship to the Holocaust.”30 The museum’s narrative perspective, already prefigured in the Hall of Witness, is that of an eyewitness to the Holocaust. The mise-en-scène of images in the exhibition’s opening further adds to the visitor’s illusion of witnessing the horror of the death camps. Again, this narrative strategy is adopted in parts of the NMAAHC’s historical exhibition, for example, in the Emmett Till exhibit, while the NMAI consistently avoids such experiential modes in its main exhibitions.31 The exhibition The Holocaust thus begins with the equivalent of a flashforward. The plot of the narrative begins with the ending of the story, which is the liberation of a concentration camp. In Hollywood this narrative structure is not very common, but it is not unknown. A prominent example is Citizen Kane, which opens with the death of the protagonist. This technique primarily appears in films with historical topics, where the outcome is known and suspense over the ending of the story is therefore not in play.32 Such a beginning directs the viewer’s attention to the question of how a certain historical event comes about. Since the narrative begins with the liberation, it is the historical event that is foregrounded, not the Holocaust per se, which culminates in the mass murder in death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. At the beginning of the exhibition, the museum has already presented the third strong reminder of the liberation of camps by US Army soldiers, including the Eisenhower quotation outside and the flags of liberating US military units at the entrance. After the opening flash-forward, the exhibition moves back in time to 1933 and presents in a conventional fashion the chronology of the main events from Hitler’s rise to power until the invasion of Poland, us-

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ing mainly photography and text with some sound recordings and archival film footage. To stay within filmic analogies, the exhibition takes on the mode of conventional documentary film with voice-over narration. Holding onto their chosen ID cards, visitors are encouraged to imagine how these historical developments would affect the persona with whom they are encouraged to identify. These developments include the ascension of Nazism, the increasing discrimination against Jews, the lead-up to and outbreak of World War II, and the beginning of deportations. Doss explains the desire of the public “to ‘live’ the history of Jewish persecution and genocide” in the USHMM with “affectively enlarged dimensions of contemporary American culture.”33 Dominant narrative media such as film and television as well as social media increasingly appeal to emotions and thus habituate us to affective experiences rather than intellectual encounters with the past. The exhibition amplifies the experiential mode of storytelling using large-scale “real” objects as the visitors approach the centerpiece of the exhibition. A simulated experience of the arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau follows after the documentary-style narrative of the historic time line.34 The path of the visitors leads through a railcar of the type that was used during the deportation of Jews. The label on the railcar reads: Railcar Most deported Jews endured a torturous train journey to death camps in bare freight cars, under conditions of hunger and thirst, extreme overcrowding, and horrible sanitation. . . . This walkway passes through a “Karlsruhe” freight car, one of several types that were used to deport Jews. As many as 100 victims were packed into a single car. . . . The German freight car is standing on tracks that led to the Treblinka station. Although it is not stated explicitly, the railcar creates the impression that Holocaust victims were deported in it.35 This impression of an “authentic” deportation car is further enhanced by the fact that it is standing on actual, historic rail tracks, over which victims were in fact transported. The sensory shock of entering the railcar is intense as it is dark and the smell of old, damp wood is strong, further compounding the imagined authenticity of the experience. The affective impact of entering an actual

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instrument used during the execution of the Holocaust with the experience of darkness and the strong musty smell of the car creates a nauseating effect that is difficult to bear. Although the USHMM has argued against Holocaust simulation elsewhere,36 in the case of the railcar exhibit the museum acknowledges its own simulation and warns teachers about “the dangers of simulating (based on a set of physical dimensions) the experience of deportation during the Holocaust.”37 Like at the beginning of the exhibition, the visitor sees an almost lifesize archival photograph on the wall after leaving the railcar (see figure 2.4). This time, the photo depicts the ramp at a death camp during the socalled process of Selektion. The visitor assumes the perspective of a victim arriving at Auschwitz. After the bodily experience of the railcar awaits the narrative of the horrible fate awaiting the new arrivals: “At the six camps where Jews were exterminated, the SS, in a procedure called the Selektion, condemned arriving prisoners to one of two fates: immediate death, or extermination through work.” On the one hand, texts such as this disrupt the process of identification with the victims as the suspense of disbelief is interrupted by the “voice-over” explanations of the exhibition. At the same time the explanation of what the Selektion was reinforces a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness that a visitor who identifies with the ID card victim experiences at this point in the exhibition, particularly if he or she did not know about Selektion beforehand. After the imitation of the ramp experience, visitors proceed to walk past a replica of the infamous “Arbeit macht frei” gate from Auschwitz before reaching the replica of a barrack from Auschwitz-Birkenau, complete with bunk beds. As with the railcar before, the visitor is suddenly immersed in a simulation of Holocaust infrastructure with an uncanny resemblance to a film set, as Sodaro explains: “Scripted and designed, it is as if one has walked onto a Hollywood set and been thrown into the role of victim.”38 The sequencing of exhibits from train to ramp through the gate to arrive at the camp barracks further reinforces the identification with the victim’s arrival at the death camp. At this point, the exhibition turns to the most traumatic and painful memory of the Holocaust as it shows in excruciatingly graphic detail the horror and mass murder that took place. For example, videos with images of gruesome medical experiments are shown on monitors hidden behind

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Figure 2.4. After visitors walk through the railcar (left), they encounter a large-scale photo of the Selektion on the ramp at Auschwitz (right). Photo credit: US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

walls so that they cannot be seen by children. These images include, for example, a skull with an exposed brain, severed body parts, and living victims displaying severe injuries. Another shocking display is a very large and detailed scale model of the Crematorium II at Auschwitz. The model shows countless victims at the moment of death in the gas chambers. Text panels describe the medical experiments and the process of mass murder in gas chambers in the death camps of Bełz˙ec, Sobibór, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. This section on the death camp is followed by a hallway featuring several disturbing displays of objects. One is an exhibit of a large pile of shoes from prisoners at the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp (see figure 2.5). Another is a large-scale photograph of heaps and bags of human hair, which was sold to companies for producing everyday goods such as slippers or mattresses. The amount and extent of visual and narrative depictions of horrific violence in this section is far greater than at any other museum on the National Mall or anywhere else in the country.39 As survivors have of-

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Figure 2.5. Shoes confiscated from prisoners at the Majdanek death camp. Photo credit: US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

ten reminded us, no one who did not live through the experience of the Holocaust and the death camps can ever know what it was like. Elie Wiesel famously remarked: “One can never know yet one must try.”40 In my view, visual or textual displays of graphic depictions of violence, such as the ones described above, must be part of that effort. The US government and military understood the necessity and the power of such images when they produced photography and film of atrocities to be shown in the United States and in Germany after the war.41 Later filmmakers included such footage in their documentary films, as did, for example, Alain Renais in Nuit et brouillard (1956). Claude Lanzman refused to include archival images of any sort in his monumental Shoah (1985), but he showed hours of eyewitness testimony detailing the most horrifying crimes against humanity. As these examples and the USHMM demonstrate, “one must try” to communicate the unspeakable horror as much as it is humanly possible. To understand memory of painful past on the National Mall, we have to keep this in mind for the subsequent chapters and evaluate how the NMAAHC and the NMAI treat the most painful and traumatic memories of collective violence in the United States. Kirk Savage reminds us that the encounter of a historical trauma can

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cause a secondary trauma. He asks the crucial question in relation to the USHMM: “What do we do with the emotional suffering that the museum visit generates?”42 From the gloomy experiences of the train car and the Auschwitz-Birkenau barracks to the intense odor of the victims’ halfdecayed shoes to the overwhelming visual detail of murder, the exhibition presents an all-out assault on the senses and on the psyche of the visitor. Given the identification with the victim fostered by the narrative and the affective anguish, critical self-reflection becomes unlikely. However, the narrative does not end with horror. While a visitor’s assigned person of identification may or may not survive the Holocaust, the visitors proceed to the next and final chapter of the exhibition on the second floor. As Linenthal discussed, the issue of an appropriate conclusion to the exhibition was highly contested. Some were calling for a “happy ending” in which “the Holocaust could be ‘resolved’ as a horrible prelude to its redemption through the birth of Israel.” Others, including Martin Smith, warned against providing closure as it would be “dangerously close to a falsehood.”43 Smith argued for ending with an experimental sound installation playing random voice recordings of survivors. This approach was not implemented. Instead, the exhibition concludes with hopeful sections on Jewish resistance and on those who saved Jews, including a wall modeled after Yad Vashem’s The Righteous among the Nations, which honors by name individuals who rescued Jews. Another exhibition is dedicated to liberation of camps and includes selections from archival footage on one monitor for each of the liberating armies: US Army: Dachau, Nordhausen, Mauthausen, Ohrdruf, Buchenwald Soviet Army: Majdanek and Auschwitz British Army: Bergen-Belsen These lists are incomplete, and the major difference between the concentration camps and extermination camps (liberated by the Soviet Union) is not made apparent. Again, this presentation implies that the US Army contributed most to liberation. Additional sections include a display about immigration of survivors to the United States. Another exhibition details the exodus of Jewish survivors to Palestine and the establishment of Israel. The main exhibition seems to end with a film in which survivors reflect

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on the issues of resistance and rescue. Linenthal sees the film as lacking “language of triumph” and as an “expression of unresolved closure.”44 While I agree with this interpretation of the interviews, I don’t see the film as the ending to the exhibition but rather the second floor as a whole. Here, the visitors learn primarily about liberation and the Allied victory. Israel and the United States are portrayed as havens for Holocaust survivors. In this sense, the exhibition does end with a series of hopeful stories. Directly after leaving the permanent exhibition, the theme of liberating the concentration and death camps is put forth one more time. Another display of flags includes all national flags from countries that fought Nazi Germany and played a role in liberating at least one camp and thus contributed to ending the horror of the Holocaust (see figure 2.6). In addition, Jewish partisan groups who resisted the Holocaust are also honored. In this display, the United States receives privileged treatment twice. The US national flag is the first one to be encountered after the exhibition. Thus the US national symbol is the first visual reference point to greet the visitor after leaving the harrowing experience of the Holocaust exhibition: a questionable choice since the Soviet Army liberated the first camp with Majdanek on July 22, 1944. Second, on an adjacent label with the title “National Flags of the Liberators,” the United States is featured at the top with seven liberated camps (see figure 2.7), implying again that the United States contributed most to liberation. By contrast, the Soviet Union is listed next to last with only five camps liberated. This choice is particularly misleading since even the military of Great Britain liberated more prisoners than the United States. In addition, only the Soviet Union liberated extermination camps with Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek. Extermination camps were instrumental to the execution of the Holocaust and form the core of the museum’s exhibition itself.45 The USHMM is both a reflection of US collective memory at a certain historic moment and an ongoing contribution to the development of collective memory in the present. As discussed in the introduction, collective memory is as much concerned with the present as it is with the past. As Maurice Halbwachs was keenly aware, collective memories have little to do with a truthful or accurate remembrance of the past and are often imbued with “a prestige that reality did not possess.”46 Thus, collective

Figure 2.6. Visitors encounter the US flag first after leaving the main exhibition. The flag display honors all nations that liberated concentration or death camps as well as Jewish resistance groups and individual resistance fighters. Figure 2.7. List of liberator nations concludes the main exhibition.

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memory is not about preserving an authentic version of the past. Instead, societies refashion the past in service of present ideological requirements, and the USHMM is no exception. Certainly, the US military liberated several concentration camps, and its crucial contribution in defeating Nazi Germany should be remembered and honored. However, the framing of the main exhibition at the USHMM creates the impression that the United States was the main liberator, not the Soviet Union as could be argued. The United States did not liberate a single extermination camp, all of which were located in eastern Europe.47 When considering the national imagination, forgetting deserves as much attention as remembering. In his seminal lecture “What is a Nation?” Ernest Renan pointed out already in 1882: “Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for (the principle of ) nationality.”48 More recently, Benedict Anderson, who identified the museum as one key institution in which national identities are forged, pointed out a selective memory of violent deaths in support of nationalism: “The nation’s biography snatches . . . exemplary suicides, poignant martyrdoms, assassinations, executions, wars, and holocausts. But, to serve the narrative purpose, these violent deaths must be remembered/forgotten as ‘our own.’”49 Finally, Paul Ricoeur cautioned against “official history”: “The resource of narrative then becomes the trap, when higher powers take over this emplotment and impose a canonical narrative by means of intimidation or seduction, fear or flattery.”50 The USHMM could be associated with such “official history” for US society as is evidenced by its establishment following Jimmy Carter’s presidential commission on the Holocaust, its location adjacent to the National Mall, and its presidential endorsements. Further, careful narrative and visual rhetoric, seduction, and flattery of US visitors are key elements of the USHMM. The museum reframes the past in light of the present regarding the role of the United States in World War II and the liberation of death camps. It exemplifies Ricoeur’s theory of forgetting regarding the United States’ failure to disrupt the death camp infrastructure despite unambiguous intelligence about the ongoing genocide. The exhibition structures the narrative in a way that seduces visitors through identification and

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flatters the United States by presenting the US military as leading the liberation of concentration camps. This narrative rhetoric is linked to the nation through the extensive use of US military and national symbols and thus instills national pride and contributes to a unified view of the nation and the role it played to end the Holocaust. In this regard, the USHMM is consistent with the NMAH’s narrative about the US military. Both employ memory of US wars to foster patriotism, although in both cases troubling chapters of this past must be marginalized if they undermine a patriotic interpretation of the past. In the case of the NMAH, these are memories of collective violence in the United States, whereas at the USHMM, they concern the failure to disrupt the Holocaust earlier and to save more Jewish refugees. Channeling Anguish and Anger: Social Justice, Remembrance, and Patriotism The potential of the main exhibition to emotionally challenge visitors is considerable. Before looking at the main avenues that the museum offers to process affect after the exhibition, I would like to evaluate the exhibition in light of the specific recommendations of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s report included several concrete charges to the government regarding Holocaust memory: The museum would present the Holocaust through pictorial accounts, films, and other visual exhibits within a framework that is not merely reportorial but analytic, encouraging reflection and questioning . . . Museum exhibits would focus on the six million Jews exterminated in the Holocaust and millions of other victims . . . Special emphasis would also be placed on the American aspect of the Holocaust—the absence of American response (exclusion of refugees, denials of the Holocaust, etc.), the American liberation of the camps . . . 51 This recommendation has only in part been realized by the permanent exhibition of the USHMM. Its narrative rhetoric discourages analytic “reflection and questioning,” which would require critical distance. Instead,

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the exhibition encourages identification with victims and presents overwhelming sensory and affective experiences. While the centerpiece of the exhibition does focus on the mass murder of Jews, as was recommended, the experiential narrative strategy hinders critical reflection by creating a secondary trauma for the visitor. While special emphasis is certainly given to the contribution of the United States in liberating the camps, “the absence of American response” to the Holocaust, in particular with regard to military disruption of the death machine, is not emphasized. In other words, the exhibition of the Holocaust Museum operates on principles of Hollywood storytelling, or, more precisely, on the extension of the Hollywood mode of entertainment, the movie studio theme park. Here, the visitor takes the place of film characters, moves through the film settings, and experiences a visceral affective onslaught through material representation of the narrative’s diegetic world. Likewise, the USHMM’s main exhibition risks creating the illusion of having been there, that “one knows,” to use Wiesel’s phrase. Let me return to Kirk Savage’s question: “What do we do with all this emotional suffering?” I would suggest that the museum makes three offers to channel this energy. One is the exhibition on contemporary or possible future genocides with the title “From Memory to Action: Meeting the Challenge of Genocide.” At its opening in 2009, the exhibition engaged with three recent cases of genocide: Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Darfur. Since 2017, the exhibition “Syria: Please Don’t Forget Us” has been shown. Visitors to the exhibition are asked to make a pledge in writing what they will do to combat genocide. Here, the museum tries to live up to a key aspect of its mission statement, namely, its commitment to social justice. The museum aspires to encourage visitors to reflect on their “responsibilities as citizens of a democracy” and on issues related to the Holocaust, “including those of contemporary significance.” In the mission statement, this aspect appears more like an afterthought subordinate to the primary mission to “advance and disseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy.”52 The marginal interest in connections to the present is also reflected in the allocation of space to this issue and the location of the exhibition within the museum. My own anecdotal evidence from several visits suggests that most visitors do not take advantage of this

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opportunity. In a usually very busy museum, in my experience only a small percentage of visitors spend time in this section after seeing the main exhibition. This impression is corroborated by the fact that only 240,000 people have made the pledge while the museum has been visited by over 40 million visitors.53 The museum’s main exhibition is both physically and emotionally demanding due to the length of the exhibition as well as its traumatic content. It is thus not surprising that many are not willing to add another difficult and challenging exhibition after completing the Holocaust exhibition. The USHMM’s second offer for working through the affective experience of the main exhibition is the Hall of Remembrance. This is the museum’s nonnarrative, quasi-sacred memorial space located at the end of the main exhibition (see figure 2.8). A memorial space acknowledges the existence of the victims and implies that they deserve to be remembered in a respectful way. A sign placed in the middle of the entrance announces the purpose of this space: “This hall is a place for reflection, contemplation and remembrance. Please respect the privacy and quiet of those who came here to remember.” This request already designates the Hall of Remembrance as a transcendental space separate from the rest of the museum. Several features in the room further add to its quasisacred atmosphere, including an eternal flame, several burning candles, and quotes from the Torah. An inscription below the flame reads: “Here lies earth gathered from death camps, concentration camps, sites of mass execution, and ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, and from cemeteries of American Soldiers who fought and died to defeat Nazi Germany.” The sites of the Holocaust and the last resting place of liberators are thereby designated hallowed ground. This choice reflects the museum’s emphasis on the horror of the Holocaust and the American liberators. As argued in the introduction, I consider such nonnarrative memorial spaces as crucial for understanding museums with a significant stake in painful pasts. Such a space could be mistaken for a minor component of a museum, since these spaces cover only a very small part of the total area. However, that space is of highly symbolic importance. First, it represents crucial recognition for survivors or for descendants of victims. Second, the memorial space, or its absence, presents an indication for a museum’s

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Figure 2.8. The Hall of Remembrance.

priorities beyond official proclamations in the mission statement and public relations discourse. They communicate who or what is deserving of being honored with a dedicated memorial space. Third, in contrast to the sprawling and complex historical narratives, such a place is deceptively simple as there is little to no information. There is no linear narrative and no “voice-over” to guide thought. The opposite is true, which can make such a space the most challenging part of a museum. It is unstructured and free-associative. Its meaning is personal to each visitor and requires active participation. Again, in my personal experience, not many visitors spend much time there. In a museum that is usually crowded, this space is often deserted. Online comments about the museum confirm this impression as only about a hundred reviews out of 23,000 mentioned the Hall of Remembrance.54 At the same time, online comments about the space were overwhelmingly positive, praising the solemn atmosphere and the welcome opportunity to reflect on the preceding exhibition. Crucially, neither the NMAAHC nor the NMAI provide a nonnarrative memorial space dedicated to victims of

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their respective painful pasts. The NMAAHC presents the Contemplative Court dedicated to heroes of African American thought and liberation. The NMAH’s sacred, nonnarrative space honors the Star-Spangled Banner and hence is dedicated to patriotism and the imagined national community of the United States. Comparing the specifics or the absences of such nonnarrative spaces in the conclusion will yield important insights into key differences among the museums regarding the memory of national pain. Finally, the museum offers a third option for channeling the emotional response in reaction to the main exhibition. As I have argued throughout this chapter, this option has been well set up from approaching the museum, to entering the building, and throughout the museum experience. As the visitors leave the museum, most will pass again the display of the twenty flags from liberating US Army units. Stepping out of the confining space of the museum, the visitors are greeted by the US national flag against the open sky. As they further walk into the open spaces of the National Mall saturated with patriotic symbols and slowly emerge from the affective space of the Holocaust exhibition, leaving the museum becomes a simulation of liberation. Thus, the museum in the end offers to transform the affects of anguish and anger into gratitude for the liberators and ultimately national pride and patriotism. The historical fact that the liberation came too late for most victims and that it was delayed for tactical, political, and, in part, anti-Semitic reasons is diminished and relegated to an easily overlooked footnote at the end of floor 3. Conclusion As others have argued before, the USHMM must be seen in the context of the National Mall.55 Pierre Nora defined the lieu de mémoire or memory space as “crucial centers of national memory,” which have a material dimension but also reveal “latent or hidden aspects of national memory.”56 The National Mall contains the highest concentration of such highly symbolic national memory sites in the United States. As Cole has argued, the USHMM “sits almost intentionally uncomfortably within this symbolic space. . . . It also tells the most un-American story imaginable.”57 The museum thus acts like an inverse, negative space to further amplify na-

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tional monuments dedicated to the Enlightenment ideals of the founding era, which was obvious to museum architect James Ingo Freed from the outset: “The Lincoln and Jefferson memorials speak of freedom nearby. Our memorial is distinct from these heroic monuments, but joins with them as one of the figurative agents through which a society reaffirms its values.”58 As I have argued in this chapter, the USHMM not only confirms US national ideology of freedom but also reaffirms US military heroism celebrated throughout the Mall. To further understand the USHMM’s relation to the national imagination in the context of the National Mall, consideration of historical events in the United States involving large numbers of victims is necessary. Like Susan Sontag or Walter Benn Michaels, Peter Novick feared that turning toward Holocaust memory could result in the abandonment of uniquely American responsibilities: “And whereas a serious and sustained encounter with the history of hundreds of years of enslavement and oppression of blacks might imply costly demands on Americans to redress the wrongs of the past, contemplating the Holocaust is virtually cost-free: a few cheap tears.”59 In the following chapters, we will reconsider the USHMM’s memory of painful past with remembrance of victims of collective violence in the United States at the NMAI, the NMAAHC, and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. To facilitate this comparison, we need to keep two significant differences in mind between the USHMM and the other museums. First, the USHMM is dedicated to a single event, and its focus is on a single exhibition that tells the history of the Holocaust featuring many gruesome experiential exhibits.60 This contrasts starkly with the NMAH with its broad variety of exhibitions, where visitors are drawn to hallmark exhibitions such as The Star-Spangled Banner, but the USHMM also must necessarily be selective. It does not offer visitors a choice of exhibitions. Visitors come to experience the Holocaust exhibition. After obtaining a free ticket at the counter, they are instructed to proceed to the elevators for access to the main exhibition. The NMAAHC is most comparable in its allocation of space. It also features a dominant exhibition, the historical galleries below ground. These galleries likewise give much attention to painful past, including the histories of slavery and segregation. While

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visitors may choose to move upstairs to the cultural or community galleries, most venture below ground first to see the museum’s most famous exhibition on slavery. Here too, the experience starts with an elevator ride, which transports visitors to a different time and space. The NMAI by contrast presents several main exhibitions that are roughly equal in size and importance. The museum recommends beginning with the multimedia show on the top floor, which is followed by the exhibition Our Universes about different worldviews and spiritual traditions. This structural difference already indicates a significant departure of the NMAI regarding its emphasis on painful past compared with the USHMM and the NMAAHC. Second, the USHMM differs in its extensive and extreme graphic visual and narrative descriptions of horrific violence, which produce an emotionally exhausting visitor experience. This is in stark contrast to the NMAH’s Price of Freedom, which contains no similar depictions of violence despite the fact that it covers some of history’s most horrific chapters such as the trench warfare of World War I or the bombing of Hiroshima. Graphic depictions of violence comparable to those shown in the USHMM would not be conducive to that exhibition’s goal of celebrating the US military. Again, the NMAAHC exhibits some continuity with the USHMM, for example, in graphic depictions of violence during slavery or in the Emmett Till exhibit. Yet at the NMAAHC, painful past occupies a much smaller part of the overall exhibition space, and it is balanced by the many positive and uplifting exhibitions about African American culture and society above ground. As we will see in chapter 4, the NMAI dedicates virtually no space to comparable depictions of extreme violence, despite the fact that Native Americans were subject to systematic collective violence over centuries.

three three american liberation, part ii the national museum of african american history and culture

3 The story that is told during Black History Month is one of triumph; the system of racial caste is officially dead and buried. Suggestions to the contrary are frequently met with shocked disbelief. The standard reply is: “How can you say that a racial caste system exists today? Just look at Barack Obama! Just look at Oprah Winfrey!” Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow

Not many chapters in American history demand rethinking and remembrance of painful US past like African American history. No institution in US history negates more forcefully the American ideals of freedom and liberty than slavery. After the Civil War and emancipation, another regime of injustice took hold across the South. Jim Crow ensured that inequalities resulting from centuries of slavery remained, while elsewhere racism hindered the advancement of African Americans. When the 1964 Civil Rights Act finally ended legal segregation, racism and structural discrimination continued to block the way for many African Americans and made a mockery of the national dream of equal opportunity. Remembering the American past is inseparable from remembering the African American past. As historians such as John Hope Franklin, David Brion Davis, Eric Foner, and many others have shown, US and Black history are inextricably intertwined from the nation’s inception. The tragedy of slavery on the North American mainland preceded the founding of the United States by 157 years.1 The economy of the new na-

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tion benefited significantly from slave labor.2 The slave trade itself was highly profitable, and the major commercial crops of cotton, tobacco, and rice largely depended on the exploitation of slave labor. Collectively they constituted the economic backbone of the South and significantly contributed to the national economy.3 In short, the young republic and American capitalism itself were built to a large extent on a crime against humanity, and the resulting pain endured well beyond emancipation until the present moment.4 Yet, until recently, memory of painful African American history was conspicuously absent from the nation’s memorial core on the National Mall, hidden away in a few rooms of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH). This was a severe omission as scholarship had long established the importance of African American history to the nation. In 2002 the nearly century-long struggle to correct this absence passed a major milestone when Congress passed the National Museum of African American History and Culture Act.5 In 2005 African American historian Lonnie Bunch was named founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), and John Hope Franklin became the founding chairman of its Scholarly Advisory Committee.6 Following in the wake of the pioneering historians mentioned above, Bunch declared: “This is America’s Story and this museum is for all Americans.”7 How could the story of slavery possibly be told on the National Mall? Bunch faced the daunting task of telling one of the most painful chapters in the nation’s most patriotic space, dedicated to the celebration of the nation and its ideals of liberty and freedom. This chapter evaluates how the NMAAHC employs narrative and visual rhetoric to solve this conundrum. Although the NMAAHC opened after the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), I am discussing the NMAAHC in the context of the previous chapter on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) because it adapts key strategies from that museum in its exhibitions about collective violence. It also employs some narrative approaches seen in the NMAH. In some sense, the NMAAHC approaches its challenge by fusing visual and narrative rhetoric from the USHMM with that of the NMAH. The NMAI, on the other hand, as we will see in the next chapter, departs in important ways from the rhetoric of all the museums discussed in the first three chapters.

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The NMAAHC’s mission statement already provides an indication of how it managed to integrate its story without undermining the Mall’s dominant patriotic discourse. The museum emphasizes four aspects, which are worth quoting in full: There are four pillars upon which the NMAAHC stands: 1. It provides an opportunity for those who are interested in African American culture to explore and revel in this history through interactive exhibitions 2. It helps all Americans see how their stories, their histories, and their cultures are shaped and informed by global influences 3. It explores what it means to be an American and share how American values like resiliency, optimism, and spirituality are reflected in African American history and culture 4. It serves as a place of collaboration that reaches beyond Washington, D.C. to engage new audiences and to work with the myriad of museums and educational institutions that have explored and preserved this important history well before this museum was created.8 The mission statement does not include memory of painful pasts; it does not mention remembering slavery or Jim Crow, and it offers no resolution of honoring the victims of that past. Equally surprising, there is no reference to injustice of the present or any commitment to social justice. This is a puzzling strategic orientation given the structural racism that affects the African American community, which is rooted in the past that the mission statement promises to explore. Instead, all four goals of the museum are positive and avoid mention of conflict: “revel in history,” learn about “global influences,” explore “American values like resiliency, optimism, and spirituality,” and collaborate with other museums. Following this statement, the museum could literally exclude all memory of slavery and Jim Crow and still fulfill its mission. This, of course, is not the case. However, a crucial characteristic of the museum’s historical exhibition is already seeded in its mission statement, namely, to frame memory of painful and traumatic past in a way that offers an uplifting resolution. As I will argue in this chapter, the NMAAHC seeks to achieve this goal through narrative structure and rhetoric. The African American past is told as a story of liberation, in which the founding of the nation set in motion a dif-

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ficult and often painful but steady progress toward freedom and success. As the USHMM shows how the United States liberated the world outside its borders, the NMAAHC is about liberation within. After its opening, the museum was greeted with much enthusiasm. The general public could only enter the museum with timed tickets that had to be reserved online several months in advance.9 More than 250,000 visitors attended during the first months after the museum opened, and it attracted more than 2.4 million visitors during its first full year of operation in 2017. Annual visitor numbers decreased to circa 2 million during 2018 and 2019, making it the fourth most popular museum of the Smithsonian.10 Likewise, the museum was celebrated by the media, receiving overwhelmingly positive reviews.11 This early reception reveals the pent-up demand for a national museum dedicated to the African American past. The museum remains popular, although attendance decreased significantly in 2019 compared to its first year of operation. The museum’s first impression is determined by its striking architecture designed by David Adjaye (see figure 3.1), which was inspired by the corona of a caryatid of Yoruban origin. The NMAAHC’s appearance breaks with the architectural conventions of the National Mall in at least two significant ways. First, its modern design contrasts with the various revival styles on the Mall mimicking architectures of the past. Second, its brown color and use of ornamental bronze cladding differs from the predominant use of white marble and lighter shades of stone façades on and around the Mall. Thus the museum’s visual appearance sets it apart from its context and promises a different experience. As visitors enter the museum, they encounter a large lobby space called Heritage Hall featuring several contemporary artworks in addition to a pavilion with small rotating exhibitions and the museum’s gift shop. Visitors then face the choice to either ascend to visit the Culture and Community galleries aboveground or to descend belowground to access the History galleries. The ground level divides the museum into two halves offering contrasting experiences. Whereas galleries on the upper levels mostly celebrate African American heritage and achievements, the levels belowground explore painful African American history, exposing some of the darkest chapters in US history. The museum’s two halves are also evident in contrasting ex-

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Figure 3.1. National Museum of African American History and Culture in front of the Washington Monument at night.

hibition styles. The belowground exhibitions are more text heavy, presenting a linear narrative along the historical time line similar to exhibitions at the NMAH and the USHMM. The main historical exhibition The Journey Toward Freedom covers three floors and starts on the museum’s lowest level. It is subdivided into three major sections, covering one floor each: Slavery and Freedom 1400–1877; Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom: The Era of Segregation 1876–1968; and A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond. Many disturbing objects evidencing traumatic past are displayed, such as fragments from a slave ship, a slave cabin, a segregated railcar, and Emmett Till’s coffin. Aboveground, visual displays, objects, and interactive multimedia dominate with a more thematic arrangement, reminiscent of the narrative structure found at the NMAI. The second floor is dedicated to interactive research, classrooms, a library, and a family history center. The exhibitions continue on the third floor with the Community Galleries, with four major exhibitions on sports, places, social and economic progress, and the military. Finally, the fourth floor features the Culture Galleries with exhibitions on visual art, film and theater, music, and everyday culture.

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Painful and traumatic past and present is mostly absent in those exhibitions, which instead celebrate stories of African American successes and accomplishments. Highlights include, for example, memorabilia from iconic figures of American popular culture such as Michael Jordan’s 1996 final jersey, Michael Jackson’s Victory Tour costume, and Chuck Berry’s Cadillac. The museum’s two-part structure above- and belowground is a unique feature of the NMAAHC that is reflected in contrasting architectural spaces, emphasis in content, and narrative structure. Belowground, the exhibition follows the time line from enslavement in Africa to the inauguration of President Obama. The floors above feature a multitude of mostly positive stories about African American advancement. Thus the museum structure reflects its alignment with US national ideology of liberation and progress, which I will explore in more detail in the following. Rising Up: The Meaning of a Museum Structure The basic vertical structure of museum floors and galleries epitomizes the museum’s overarching theme of “rising up.”12 Painful past is mostly explored in the History galleries belowground, whereas aboveground African American achievements are celebrated in the Culture and Community galleries of the top two floors (see figure 3.2). The History galleries tell a detailed, chronological story ranging from Africa and the Middle Passage to slavery, Jim Crow, and the civil rights struggle to the election of President Barack Obama. The decision to locate much of the gallery space belowground was primarily due to its sensitive location on the National Mall next to the Washington Monument Park. In addition to the numerous federal and local building laws, the design had to be “in keeping with the ‘Olmstedian’ character of the Washington Monument park.”13 The final design required approval of the National Capital Planning Commission, the Commission on the Fine Arts, and the State Historic Preservation Office.14 One concern was how the new building would affect sight lines across the National Mall and, in particular, how it would affect the view of the adjacent Washington Monument. The building’s design lead, David Adjaye, explained the challenge he faced: “It’s not good practice to put

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Figure 3.2. Cross-section map of the NMAAHC.

museums underground [but] when you have such a sensitive, charged site, there’s no choice.”15 The museum’s deferential relationship to the nation’s founding president, which is already apparent in the design phase, is also reflected in its memory of George Washington in the context of slavery, as we will see below. Regardless of the reasons for burying a significant part of the museum, the decision to place the history galleries belowground invites two complementary interpretations. The history of slavery itself is restricted to the lowest of the eight floors in the complex. A first reading of placing African American history at the base of the building could be that it serves as a metaphorical foundation for the nation. Following this metaphor, the remembrance of slavery in the United States requires an act of excavation in order to reveal America’s true basis. The history of slavery becomes fundamental in a literal sense, a history that was hidden belowground and is now laid bare for everyone to see. A second interpretation posits that the museum structure, paradoxically, echoes the nation’s memory of the African American past that it seeks to undo. If visitors enter the building like any other museum on the Mall, or most any building anywhere else for that matter, they are likely to orient themselves upward. One architectural critic called this one of the museum’s major design problems: “It isn’t immediately clear that viewers ought to take one of two elevators down to the lowest concourse to

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begin.”16 Why would a visitor not want to stay aboveground and enjoy the large open spaces, the glass windows stretching the entire height of the building from the escalator lobby on the ground floor all the way up to the building’s ceiling? Why would a visitor not choose to take in the exceptional views of the National Mall, foremost of the iconic Washington Monument, which can be enjoyed aboveground, and finally, why would one not prefer to explore Adjaye’s extraordinary architecture of the new building that one was marveling at from the outside? If a visitor were to choose the upward path, the stories of African American contribution and extraordinary achievement take precedence over the depiction of historical injustice, trauma, and crimes against humanity. The sheer amount of fantastic achievements in the realm of show business, music, and sports is overwhelming. From Michael Jackson to Michael Jordan, African American success stories dominate the galleries aboveground. Quantitatively and qualitatively, the continued tragedy of racial inequality in the United States remains largely hidden, for example, in a small booth on the American prison industrial complex on the second floor. Aboveground, relatively little space is dedicated to the racism that has plagued American society from the beginning and that is enduring in the present. The movement of the visitor through the galleries upward maps a trajectory of racial uplift onto African American history. Belowground, the visitor moves up from the depravity of slavery to Emancipation to the civil rights movement and to the pinnacles of success at the examples of Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey. Aboveground the emphasis on Black achievements on every level continues and ranges from the local to the national. It includes, for example, economic and scientific success, heroic service in the armed forces, dominance in many professional sports, and the cultural achievements in music and visual arts on the museum’s top floor. Thus the structure of the museum itself obscures the effect of painful history on the present. It largely relegates the pain to the past, belowground. Descent into Darkness: The Horror of Slavery The historical exhibitions on the lower floors are prefaced by a descent. After experiencing the open and airy space of the lobby, visitors may take

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the escalator to one level belowground, where they reach the entrance to a smaller elevator lobby. At the entrance of this lobby, they are greeted by a large sign announcing the David M. Rubenstein History Galleries.17 In a dimly lit space the sign displays in brightly backlit letters the name of the historical exhibition: “The Journey Toward Freedom. 15th–21st Centuries” (see figure 3.3). Below the title, an unlit text in small font reads: African Americans have had an uneven history in this country. They came initially as forced labor to support the nation’s economic development. But they brought with them a spirit that had a powerful impact. Their struggles for human rights forced the nation to rethink the meaning of freedom and equality. Both America and African Americans were profoundly shaped by this process. You are about to witness how these interactions unfolded over more than 400 years. The theme of freedom of the historical exhibition and the entire museum is visually emphasized by the large and bright title. The name The Journey Toward Freedom suggests an overarching interpretation of African American history as a teleologic progress toward freedom. It is made clear from the outset that the story to be told here will be an uplifting narrative of liberation. This “opening frame” shapes the perception of the ensuing narrative. The short introductory paragraph below the headline is more nuanced, admitting to “an uneven history” and “forced labor,” but it still places the struggle for human rights and freedom at the center. One early visitor and reviewer of the museum called the text an insult to the victims of chattel slavery.18 Indeed, “forced labor” does not capture the horror of the Middle Passage and slavery in North America, as the exhibition abundantly demonstrates. In summary, the panel introduces the visitor to a narrative of advancement that includes dark beginnings and struggles along the way but that lead to the promised land of freedom. After passing the sign, visitors wait for the elevator, which is surrounded by a portrait gallery of important figures from African American history. The gallery further adds to the theme of liberation and introduces the topic of African American achievement. While two images related to slavery are included, eighteen out of twenty images are associated with

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Figure 3.3. Title and introductory text to the David M. Rubenstein History Galleries.

emancipation, the fight for civil rights, or achievement in sports and culture. Several portraits stand out in the competition for attention. A medium close-up shot of Frederick Douglass appears to intensely fixate the observer.19 The other two portraits stand out because they are positioned at eye level and also seem to be staring the visitor straight in the eyes. One shows Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and the other shows the infamous booking photograph of Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat became one of the most celebrated actions of the civil rights movement. Hence, at the moments just before entering the exhibition, the visitor encounters the familiar faces of seminal agents for African American liberation. The ensuing elevator descent takes the form of traveling backward along the time line of liberation. Looking through a large window, the occupants see the black wall of the elevator shaft, on which the following years are displayed in large white numbers: 1968, 1954, 1948, 1865, 1863, 1808, 1776, 1565, and 1400. Again, most of the selected years are associated with liberating events in the course of African American his-

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tory, except for the ones preceding the founding of the nation. The passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also known as the Fair Housing Act, brought the civil rights movement to a successful conclusion. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled against “separate but equal” in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which was effectively the beginning of the end of de jure racial segregation in the United States and an important early victory of the civil rights movement. In 1948 Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which outlawed racial segregation in the armed forces. The Emancipation Proclamation occurred in 1863, and in 1865 Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution outlawing slavery throughout the nation. On January 1, 1808, the Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves of 1807 became US federal law. The famous date of July 4, 1776, of course, marks the founding of the United States when the thirteen American colonies separated from Great Britain by adopting the final text of the Declaration of Independence. In 1565 the Spanish conquistador Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded the first continuous European settlement in the area of today’s United States, which already contained enslaved Africans.20 The elevator stops at the year 1400 and deposits visitors on the eve of the arrival of Portuguese explorers in Africa and the beginning of colonialism. In effect, the suggested time travel rolls back African American liberation. In this time line the founding of the United States in 1776 is presented as a watershed moment. Before the Declaration of Independence the time line places the dark origins of slavery in Africa and in the colonies, but after 1776 begins a continuous progress upward and toward light and freedom. This sequence prefigures the narrative structure of the exhibition. Thus, the elevator transports the visitor to a place of darkness literally and figuratively for the beginning of the exhibition. Light is used metaphorically throughout the History galleries as visitors move up and toward liberation. Light is also used strategically to emotional effect throughout the presentation of the African American story. Mimicking the spatial and lighting strategies of the USHMM, spaces are claustrophobic and poorly lit after exiting the elevator.21 Under low ceilings, with no windows and devoid of open spaces, the galleries are designed to depress the mood during the first part of the exhibition Slavery and Freedom (see figure 3.4),

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Figure 3.4. Map of level C3 featuring the exhibition on slavery.

which is dedicated to the transatlantic slave trade, slavery in North America before and after the founding of the United States, the Civil War, and Emancipation. The museum’s only exhibition dedicated to slavery also manages to feature “freedom” in its title. The exhibition covers a time span of nearly five hundred years in well below 10 percent of the museum’s floor space. It includes the darkest period and 40 percent of US history. The exhibition begins with the short two-minute video For Africa to Me about precolonial Africa, presenting a montage of geographies, wealth, political power, culture, commerce, and civilization. Contemporary and historic quotations are used to illustrate those aspects. The connection to the contemporary context is provided by a Maya Angelou quotation that opens the film: “For Africa to me . . . is more than a glamorous fact, it is a historic truth.”22 In short, the video dispenses with the myth that European colonizers encountered “uncivilized” societies in Africa, which was used to justify both colonialism and slavery. Instead, following Angelou’s suggestion, the video adds precolonial roots to contemporary African American identity. It also offers a contrast to the crimes against humanity that are depicted in the subsequent galleries and hence highlights the savagery of European powers as they established the transatlantic slave trade in West Africa. The exhibition’s second main idea is the fundamental connection

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between the development of European modernity, national identities, colonialism, and slavery.23 This is relevant to my reading of the exhibition since this study is particularly interested in the relationship between memory of painful past and the US national imagination. At its inception, the exhibition offers a fundamental critique of the European nation-state in a wall text: Europe and an Emerging Global Economy Like Africa, western Europe was home to diverse people who lived in territories as small as a city-state and as large as a kingdom. As Europeans began to form nation-states, they sought to increase their influence around the world through trade, exploration, and colonization. They forged national identities in part through religion and casting out people whom they believed did not belong, such as non-Christians. New national identities also made it easier to justify enslaving people from Africa and the Americas. The World After 1400 • Slavery became based on perceptions of race. • Enslaved people were considered property and dehumanized. • Slavery was an inherited status and passed down through the generations. • Slavery was for life.24 Thus, the curators suggest a direct connection between the early formation of national identities in Europe and the exclusion of the racial Other, which in turn is described as fundamental to modern slavery based on “perceptions of race.” In other words, the European nation-state is presented as a precondition for the establishment of the transatlantic slave trade. At the same time, the text already hints at the economic significance of the slave trade for the rise of the European nation-state (“trade, exploration, colonization”). As we will see shortly, the exhibition sets up the European nation-state in contrast to the new, revolutionary nation of the United States. This juxtaposition in the narrative sequence implicitly suggests that the evil of slavery is rooted in colonizing Europe while abolition and liberation is associated with the United States in opposition

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to the British colonial center. Such a suggestion, however faint, would be misleading. The political thought of the founding era of the United States itself is firmly rooted in Europe. After the founding of the United States, the new nation fell quickly behind on the way to abolition, and “the British antislavery state was the most powerful adversary faced by the American slaveholding republic,” as Jeffery R. Kerr-Ritchie argues in his study on the maritime dimensions of the US slave trade.25 By the time of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, most European states had long abolished slavery.26 The remainder of the exhibition’s opening section leading up to the American Revolution is designed to communicate the horror of slavery.27 Many displays depict the inhumanity of slavery in the Americas and provide information and statistics on the slave trade in the British American colonies. The exhibition attempts to represent the enormity of the crime through a combination of showing individual cruelty and providing information on the scale of slavery as an institution. Extreme violence is primarily communicated through image and text, whereas the extent is primarily represented through numbers and the layout of text throughout the exhibition. The visual depiction relies primarily on historic illustrations and artifacts. For example, a near life-size historic print of a slave coffle is shown as a background to a display of iron ankle shackles and collars (see figure 3.5). On the glass of the display case, we read a quotation by the African abolitionist and formerly enslaved Ottobah Cugoano: “I was brought from a state of innocence and freedom, and in a barbarous and cruel manner conveyed to a state of horror and slavery.” A text panel explains the processes and cruel effects of enslavement. The Trauma of Transition The transition to slavery was traumatic. With each step of the process, captive Africans experienced immense physical and psychological strain. They were marched hundreds of miles from the interior and crammed into barracoons, or slave barracks, for an average of three months. They left their homelands and loved ones as they were boarded onto slave ships and forced across the Atlantic. Those who survived carried forward their cultures, faiths, and the value of freedom.

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Figure 3.5. Slave coffle, shackles, and collar in the exhibition Journey Toward Freedom.

Both of these statements, naming the trauma of capture and the Middle Passage, also refer to freedom, to the horror of losing it, and to the persistence of freedom as a precious value. The exhibition narrative allows for a sense of optimism even at a stage of the ordeal that must have seemed hopeless, during the marches to the coast and aboard the slave ships. It is not known precisely how many millions of Africans were captured, how many were forced onto the slave ships, and how many died during the ordeal. John Hope Franklin cites estimates ranging from 9.6 to 14.6 million enslaved Africans who arrived in the Americas.28 The exact mortality rate on the slave ships is also unknown but casualties must have numbered in the millions.29 Naming the trauma is important. However, merely calling the capture traumatic can barely provide a sense of the nature and gravity of the trauma. Other narrative means are required to communicate the horror of slavery. As we saw in the previous chapter, the USHMM provides numerous examples, ranging from the detailed model of a gas chamber and the Crematorium II at Auschwitz-Birkenau, to piles of shoes from victims, to

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photos and videos of bodies and survivors. Since the NMAAHC cannot exhibit large quantities of personal items from victims or photographic evidence, alternative modes of representation would be needed to capture the scope and terror of the Middle Passage. This could include graphic illustrations, readings from literature on the topic such as Zora Neal Hurston’s Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo,” or detailed models based on historic documents and plans. In its current exhibition, the NMAAHC presents the horror of the Middle Passage in a muted fashion in comparison with the depiction of graphic violence at the USHMM. One haunting illustration is called Flogging an Enslaved Woman in Suriname. It is a colored print showing a half-naked enslaved woman hanging from a tree with her entire body covered in bloody wounds and her loincloth hanging down in tatters. A wall text explains the context: “Violence: An Everyday Reality. In the fields of a sugar or rice plantation, the labor was harsh and dangerous. The violence of overseers was another threat to the lives of enslaved people. As one Jamaican slaveholder claimed in 1763, ‘A slave must move by the will of another, hence the necessity of terror to coerce his obedience.’” Again, the style and genre of the image caption modulates the pain depicted in the image. How can a terror such as this be “an everyday reality”? While such violence indeed occurred frequently, the choice of words and brevity of description seems incommensurate with the unspeakable horror contained in the illustration. Another approach to depicting violence is presented in a display that combines a cat-o’-nine-tails (whip) in combination with a delicate sculpture of a woman’s head, cast in the 1930s from a twelfth-century Yoruba sculpture. The whip is placed above the head, suspended in midair as if it was about to strike the woman. A hole in the sculpture suggests a severe injury that corporal punishment common during slavery might have inflicted on the victims. The display functions like a montage in film of seemingly unrelated images combining to create a third meaning. The striking beauty of the sculpture highlights the cultural sophistication of the Yoruba centuries before the first European slave traders reached the African shores. The refined work of art juxtaposed with the cruelty of the whip implicitly posits the barbarity of the European slave trade. A third example of the violation of the African body is presented though

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exhibitions about slave ships. As the founding director Lonnie Bunch said, “Perhaps the single greatest symbol of the trans-Atlantic slave trade is the ships that carried millions of captive Africans across the Atlantic never to return.”30 Few visuals of the slave trade are more ingrained in the public imagination than plans of slave ships loaded with “human cargo,” such as the plan of the slave ship Brookes that was produced by the British Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1788 and which is displayed in the exhibition.31 This section of the museum also contains one of the museum’s most anticipated exhibits: pieces of the slave ship São José, which received much media attention long before the museum opened.32 The exhibit consists of a piece of timber from the ship’s hull, several pieces of iron ballast “used to offset the lighter weight of the human cargo,” as the label describes it, and a ship pulley. The items are displayed in a smaller room that branches off from the main pathway of the galleries on the slave trade. The room seems even darker as the walls are covered with weathered black wood paneling to mimic the interior of a ship. Several eyewitness quotations are displayed on the walls and on panels to convey the coldness of those conducting the inhuman transactions and the horror of the victims, such as this one: “The loathsomeness of the stench and crying together, I became so sick and low . . . I now wished for the last friend, Death, to relieve me.”33 Despite all efforts, the fragmented displays do not convey a sense of the space and abhorrent conditions on a slave ship. The exhibit contrasts with the display of the full-size gunboat Philadelphia in the NMAH.34 The only three-dimensional depiction of a slave ship is a small, historic model showing the cargo room tightly packed with tiny figures. The only fact known about this model is that it was made in the twentieth century. Since the artist is unknown, it is unfortunately unclear who made it and for what purpose. The caption explains that the ship and the figures are not to scale and the arrangement of victims is not historically accurate. Yet it is the most impactful representation of a slave ship in the museum. Contrast this model with that of the Crematorium II at Auschwitz-Birkenau at the USHMM, which is much larger in size and was purposely built for the exhibition. It provides a much greater degree of realistic detail, including expressions of anguish in the victims’ faces.35

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An important task of the exhibition on the Middle Passage is to convey a sense of the extent of this horror. The scale of the crime is one of the reasons why Holocaust memory deserves and receives special attention worldwide, as is evident, for example, from several major museums and memorials dedicated to its memory. The number of six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust is widely known. Anyone visiting the USHMM will encounter this figure. Certainly, there are many other aspects of the Holocaust that add to its special status, for example, the geographic scale of the genocide, or the use of modern, factory-like extermination camps to enable an unimaginable scale of killing in such a short time. Yet again, the number of six million victims is important and sets the Holocaust apart from other modern genocides. The same is true for slavery. Steven Newsome, former director of the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum, has referred to the Holocaust and the USHMM specifically to demand equivalent memory of slavery, “particularly since the institution of slavery is central to the definition of the American character.”36 The extent of slavery, the number of victims of this crime against humanity, should be common knowledge, especially in nations that practiced and benefited from it. Yet I would argue that the NMAAHC communicates only a vague sense of the numbers involved. For example, there is no prominent presentation of the total estimate for people who died during the slave trade. This crucial information is largely hidden, for example, in the label of the slave ship model: “Scholars estimate that of every group of 100 people seized in Africa, only 64 would survive the march from the interior to the coast; only 57 would board ship; and just 48 would live to be placed in slavery in the Americas.” It is clear from such mortality rate estimates that many millions of people were killed during the slave trade, and millions more were killed or died prematurely due to slavery. However, such casualty numbers are not displayed prominently in the museum. One reason that the NMAAHC does not display the estimated total number of casualties might be that exact numbers are unknown. For example, John Hope Franklin also does not provide an estimate of casualties but concludes that “the aggregate number of victims approaches staggering proportions.”37 He presents the total number of people transported during the Atlantic slave trade as 12.5 million, citing an estimate by historian David Eltis. Even this aggregate

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number is not presented prominently at the NMAAHC (see below). In my view, this is a significant omission. Whatever the estimated range of casualties is among historians should be common knowledge and should certainly be clear to any visitor to the NMAAHC. The way data about the slave trade is visually presented is problematic for a second reason. The exhibition presents the number of people transported in the Atlantic slave trade and consists of two parts. The first provides data about European nation-states, while the second provides statistics about colonial North America. This juxtaposition leads to a striking contrast between the vast numbers reported for the European nations and the comparably smaller numbers of enslaved people that arrived in colonial North America. For example, the years and numbers reported for the three largest slave-trading European nations are Portugal (1441–1836, 5.8 million), Great Britain (1562–1807, 3.3 million), and France (1549– 1818, 1.4 million). By contrast, the exhibition displays prominently on the walls the following amount of enslaved people that were transported to colonial North America: Lowcountry (5,000 by 1725 and 117,500 by 1775), Louisiana (6,000 by 1731 and 21,700 by 1803), and North (4,100 by 1725 and 27,100 by 1775). While correct, the emphasized display of these numbers could easily lead to a misperception. Side by side, thousands of enslaved people arriving in North America seems like a relatively minor crime compared to the millions abducted and transported elsewhere to the Americas by European nations. These numbers do not provide a sense of the amount of enslaved people relative to the population size in colonial North America and are comparatively meaningless for assessing the extent and significance of slavery before and after 1776. Nowhere else in the museum are numbers and statistics presented as prominently that could correct this impression. Just a few statistical examples would provide an entirely different perspective on the significance of slavery to the societies that formed the United States. In 1750, over 20 percent of the population in the thirteen colonies was Black. However, the figure was as high as 44 percent in Virginia and 61 percent in South Carolina.38 After the American Revolution, the enslaved population exploded in the United States. More than half of the enslaved people that arrived on North American shores did so during the ninety years after 1776.39 The main factor, however, was

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the population growth among enslaved people. By 1790, the number of enslaved people in the South reached 654,121 or 34 percent of the population. In the entire United States, the enslaved population grew from about 236,000 in 1750 to over 680,000 by 1790, and to 1,777,515 or 12.6 percent of the total population by the 1860 census.40 Neither the number of 1.7 million at 1860 nor the aggregate number of all enslaved people from 1776 until 1860 is displayed prominently at the NMAAHC. However, such figures would be crucial for understanding the scale of slavery in the United States and the extent of pain that it caused. Ascending to the Mountaintop: From the American Revolution to Barack Obama After the horrors of slavery are presented in the claustrophobic first galleries of the exhibition, the visitor steps out into the open exhibition hall some 75 feet high. In a moment that literally feels liberating, one may look up to see selections from the Declaration of Independence displayed on the wall, beginning with one of the most famous lines in US history: “All men are created equal.” The quotation appears like the key for unlocking the prison of slavery. Immediately before this experience of “liberation,” the American Revolution is covered, which concludes the section on the slave trade. Thus, in the narrative sequencing and mise-en-scène of the exhibition, the Revolutionary War and the founding of the United States, signified by the line from the Declaration of Independence, seem to liberate the nation from the evil of slavery, just like the US military is presented as liberators of victims of the Holocaust at the USHMM. Overall, the American Revolution is depicted as aligned with the interests of the enslaved population. At the center of this section is a threeprojector slideshow with voice-overs called The Revolutionary War. The four-minute animated projection effectively intertwines African American history within the mythology of the American Revolution. It begins with a slide of Benjamin Franklin’s iconic cartoon “Join, or Die,” first published in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754. Next to the cartoon is a historic battle image featuring a Black soldier. The following text is superimposed over the image: “Tens of thousands of people of African Descent fought

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in the American Revolution, but their battle for freedom had begun long before the war.” Thus, the exhibition places the American Revolution in a tradition of previous slave rebellions. A voice-over elaborates: “From their earliest forced arrival in colonial North America, enslaved Africans had rebelled,” which is followed by a superimposition of several revolts ranging from the Gloucester County Revolt in 1663 to the New York Slave Insurrection of 1741. The voice-over continues to explain the importance of the Boston Massacre of 1770 to the American Revolution and the pivotal role that Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave, had played as the first casualty. It is then stated that both sides of the Revolutionary War competed in recruiting enslaved people by offering freedom. A quotation by the Black Patriot Boyrereau Brinch emphasizes that the American Revolution aligned with the cause of African Americans: “Thus was I, a slave for five years, fighting for liberty.” The multimedia projection does not refer to any of the Founding Fathers but instead quotes Abigail Adams: “It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me—fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.” Of course, the successful founding of the United States depended on the compromise between northern and southern states that would preserve slavery, which is not discussed in this section on the American Revolution.41 Further, the film does not emphasize two facts that are revealed in a much less prominent text panel nearby. First, nearly four times more African Americans fought on the side of the Loyalists (20,000) than on the side of the Patriots (5,000–6,000). Second, while the film mentions the number of enslaved people after the war (697,897), it does not explain that this number significantly increased during the war, from 459,822 in 1770. These statistics would contradict the preferred perspective that the American Revolution and founding of the United States furthered the interests of enslaved people. The remaining exhibition on the American Revolution reiterates that Africans fought on both sides and that “freedom by any means was the order of the day.” Yet, as in the multimedia projection, the exhibition emphasizes Blacks’ engagement on the side of the Patriots. For example, only one soldier is honored with a display: Prince Simbo, who served in the Seventh Regiment, Connecticut Line of the Continental Army. The focal

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point of the display is his powder horn, shown in front of a quotation by Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton: “All the negroes, men, women, and children . . . quitted the plantations and followed the army.” The brief description in the caption of Prince Simbo once again foregrounds the value of freedom and equates American with African American liberty: “Prince Simbo and other black men risked their lives for liberty in the broadest sense, for their country, themselves, and all African Americans.” Why the United States would become “their country” when it further enslaved African Americans is unclear, but it is obvious how an ideology of liberation is used to present African Americans as loyal to the United States from the earliest moment of the nation. In summary, the multimedia segment and other displays present the American Revolution as being in the interest of African Americans, which is at odds with the fact that more Africans fought on the side of Great Britain, that the number of enslaved people increased by almost 50 percent during the war, and that the population of enslaved people grew sharply after the founding of the United States. This one-sided presentation of the American Revolution supports the museum’s overall embrace of US national ideology throughout the country’s history. Immediately after the exhibition on the American Revolution follows the aforementioned impactful opening up of the architecture and exhibition space, providing a visceral experience of liberation. The extraordinary effect results from a combination of linear sequencing of the narrative and the strategic design of space. To understand the spatial effect, we need to briefly recall the architecture of the History galleries. At the moment in question, the visitor steps out from under the low ceilings of the first section, dedicated primarily to the Middle Passage and the slave trade, into an open space with seemingly no ceiling rising some four stories overhead, all the way to the street level. Indeed, stepping out into the hall after the previous emotionally exhausting galleries literally affects body and mind as it provides a sense of freedom. Many reviewers describe the moment of stepping into the open as one of the most impressive experiences of their entire museum visit. For example, Wesley Morris aptly describes the instant in the New York Times: “You exit that long, tight, airless gallery into a huge open space with virtually no ceiling, and you realize you weren’t

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breathing. And then you catch your breath only to look up and see, on a platform, a statue of Thomas Jefferson.”42 The complex Jefferson display is a key exhibit of the museum and crucial for my interpretation of the Journey Toward Freedom exhibition. The curation of the remaining part of the historical exhibition effectively takes advantage of the architecture by placing a display titled The Paradox of Liberty right at the spot where the visitors step into the open space. Three planes determine the visual experience. In the foreground we see a life-size statue of Jefferson; in the middle ground we see a brick wall; and in the background we see a quotation displayed on the wall in very large capitalized golden letters (see figure 3.6): all men are created equal . . . with certain unalienable rights . . . whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. declaration of independence, 177643 Underneath the quotation and in even larger letters, we read: “The Founding of America,” below which we see a text in smaller font that further celebrates freedom, connecting it again to the “political philosophies of enslaved men and women.” While this text is still legible from this vantage point, it is also in part covered by the display in the foreground and not at the center of attention.44 The quotation from the Declaration of Independence merits close attention because it will stay with the visitor for the remainder of the historical galleries in that it is prominently visible from all three floors of the galleries belowground. Visitors are able to see it repeatedly as they step toward the balustrades on levels C2 and C1. The highly selective quotation from the much longer preamble provides an interpretation of the document emphasizing equality, inherent human rights, and the right to change or abolish the government if it violates said rights. Through this selection, the exhibition puts the document in direct conversation with the most painful chapters of discrimination and collective violence in American history. The significance of The Paradox

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Figure 3.6. Underground hall of the historical galleries with Thomas Jefferson statue in the foreground.

of Liberty results from the sequencing of exhibitions. The visitor just spent significant time and energy learning about one of history’s most extreme examples of the deprivation of freedom based on racist classification of human beings. Now the gaze is directed upward to take in the sweeping space. Here is displayed the most famous articulation of the equality of

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men (“all men are created equal”), at least in the American imagination. As part of the well-known preamble of the Declaration of Independence, these sentences have become fundamental to the American national mythology. The soaring hall conjures a sacred space, not unlike a cathedral. As with the National Mall at large, the space becomes a realm of secular worship, and the sentences and the document from which they are taken become the object of reverence. The conclusion suggested by the montage of exhibitions seems obvious: the solution to African American enslavement originates with the founding of the American nation itself. In the museum’s narrative, the establishment of the United States brings about the proclamation of a key Enlightenment ideal quoted in oversized letters on the museum wall. This ideal of the equality of human beings directly contradicts the rationale for the horror of slavery, which was just detailed in the previous exhibition.45 The Paradox of Liberty thus embeds the value of equality that would ultimately lead to abolition at the origin of the nation. But if this ideal, indeed, was the cornerstone of early US national ideology, how could the nation preserve slavery? The exhibition’s explanation is presented in the aforementioned The Paradox of Liberty. The display features five life-size statues centered around the man who authored the above-quoted sentences, Thomas Jefferson (see figure 3.7). He is surrounded by Blacks from the Revolutionary era: Toussaint Louverture, Benjamin Banneker, Elizabeth Freeman, and Phillis Wheatley, each of which either fought slavery or contradicted through their achievement the assumption of racial inferiority implied in the institution.46 The key question, then, is how powerful is the articulation of the “paradox” mentioned in the title of the display? Does the paradox undermine the Declaration and thereby radically question the moral foundation of the nation’s origin? The title of the exhibition is misleading because liberty itself is not paradoxical. Liberty is liberty.47 What is paradoxical is the fact that the founders claimed for themselves an innate right to be free from unjust colonial rule but at the same time denied that same right to the enslaved population in the United States. This paradox is spelled out in an introductory text of the display: “The paradox of the American Revolution— the fight for liberty in an era of widespread slavery—is embedded in the

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Figure 3.7. Sculptural arrangement of the Thomas Jefferson exhibit.

foundations of the United States. The tension between slavery and freedom—who belongs and who is excluded—resonates through the nation’s history and spurs the American people to wrestle constantly with building ‘a more perfect Union.’ This paradox was embedded in national institutions that are still vital today.” The key to resolving the paradox in this quotation is another important component of American mythology, the struggle to create “a more perfect Union.” The severe contradiction in the founding of the nation is represented in the mise-en-scène through the brick wall. Only after closer inspection do names inscribed on every brick become apparent, which leads to the realization that those are the names of people enslaved by Jefferson. A text panel explains: Thomas Jefferson and the Limits of Freedom Thomas Jefferson helped to create a new nation based on individual freedom and self-government. Yet over the course of his life, Jefferson himself owned 609 slaves. Their labor and service provided him personal liberty and wealth. Like Jefferson, 12 of the first 18 American

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presidents owned slaves. The Declaration did not extend “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” to all Americans, undermining the ideal that “all men are created equal.” The label makes explicit that Jefferson enslaved a large number of people and that slavery undermined the ideal of equality itself. In addition, Jefferson is critiqued in three ways: first, through the visual arrangement of the display as he is surrounded by four significant African American contemporaries; second, by the symbolism of the aforementioned brick wall; and finally by providing details about slavery at his home, Monticello, in another text panel. Despite the criticism of Jefferson’s personal contradictions, the larger narrative of the History galleries does not fundamentally critique the Founding Fathers. First, Jefferson is implicitly presented as an exception among the Founders. Astonishingly, none of the other prominent Founders such as Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and especially George Washington, who all enslaved people, are discussed in any detail.48 It is crucial that slavery was not an unfortunate aberration of one person but the norm among the heroes of the American Revolution that are venerated throughout the National Mall. It is a perplexing omission that this fact about the Founding era is not thoroughly discussed in an extensive exhibition about slavery in US history in a museum on the National Mall. Second, the exhibition on Jefferson does not explore his racism. One could argue that it is implicit in the fact that he enslaved African Americans. However, some of his contemporaries had more enlightened views on race, such as, for example, Franklin and Washington. While Jefferson did express hope that his doubts about racial equality would be disproven, his publicly expressed belief about inferior Black intelligence in Notes on Virginia49 had a profound impact on the development of racial thought, as Paul Finkelman argued in Slavery and the Founders: “In sum, Jefferson’s views on race are embarrassing, not just by the standards of our age but of his own age. . . . [His] pseudoscientific proclamations fostered the subsequent development of proslavery science, which led to scientific racism. Jefferson helped invent racism as an intellectually credible viewpoint.”50

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Thus, while the Jefferson display singles him out as the symbol of the nation’s “founding paradox,” it does not discuss the nature nor the impact of his racist thought.51 Third and most importantly, the exhibition on the founding of the nation largely ignores the “father of the nation,” George Washington, who like Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people over the course of his life. He was also one of the wealthiest US presidents in history, and enslaved people contributed significantly (directly and indirectly) to his fortune.52 The primary role of Washington in the establishing of the United States and his extensive practice of slavery alone makes it hard to understand why he is not included prominently in the historical exhibition. It would also have been interesting to contrast Washington with Jefferson, since Washington did liberate enslaved people at least in his will.53 The puzzle of Washington’s absence in the museum is further exacerbated given the museum’s location on the National Mall right next to the Washington Monument. The museum often emphasizes this unique position in its publications and promotional materials.54 No other structure on the National Mall is located closer to the Washington Monument than the NMAAHC. Particularly the upper floors would afford some of the best views of the monument anywhere in the nation’s capital. Strangely, almost none of the exhibitions take advantage of this unique location. One of the few outlooks onto the monument from a gallery is on level L3 in the context of the exhibition Double Victory: The African American Military Experience. The window is purposely built to perfectly frame the Washington Monument. However, the text panel next to it does not even mention George Washington: “Arlington National Cemetery is visible through this window in the distance to the right of the Washington Monument. It is the final resting place of several African American Medal of Honor recipients.” This text is followed by the names of all Medal of Honor recipients and their grave locations at the cemetery. Thus, the museum takes advantage of the patriotic connotations of the Washington Monument to honor decorated African American US military veterans instead of opening up a more complex understanding of George Washington as a national hero who also enslaved a significant number of people. A discussion of George Washington’s legacy in relation to African American history and slavery

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would be most powerful precisely because of the unique symbolic significance that the first president holds in the American national imagination. One could not wish for a better opportunity to demonstrate the “paradox” in the nation’s founding era. Thus, the museum does not recalibrate the view of the National Mall and the Washington Monument. This is even more disappointing given that the museum does do so on its website. On a page dedicated to the Washington Monument, the museum declares: “The Monument represents a complex story of enslavement and freedom.”55 Indeed, this is a complex yet essential story for understanding the nation and, at the same time, the local place of the Mall. Currently, the history of Washington’s practice of slavery is not explored anywhere on the Mall. Certainly, the natural place to remember this part of Washington’s (and the nation’s) history would be at the Washington Monument itself. Since this is currently not the case, the NMAAHC should begin to tell this story given its proximity and its mission of presenting American history through an African American lens. One explanation that this is not yet the case could be the same as anywhere else on the Mall, including at the NMAH and the NMAI. Criticism of George Washington would constitute a sacrilege in the context of the secular religious space of the National Mall. For now, this story remains taboo, and Thomas Jefferson must suffice as a sacrifice. However, Jefferson also is not beyond redemption, as we will see in the following discussion. After the Jefferson exhibit, the historical galleries chart a continuous process of liberation beginning with the founding of the United States. From slavery on the museum’s lowest level (C3), to segregation on the floor above (C2), to the civil rights movement on the next floor up (C1), visitors finally walk toward a large-scale photographic mural of Obama’s inauguration, which completes the ascent to liberty at the end of the historical galleries. Showing an extreme long shot of the massive crowds on the National Mall, this iconic image concludes a continuous teleological march toward freedom, increasing social and economic participation, and ultimate success for African Americans in the form of the presidency of the United States. To be clear, the museum’s story of African American advancement is

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grueling, which is detailed in many exhibits on racist collective violence. Jim Crow segregation is remembered forcefully through some of the museum’s largest objects and displays, such as a segregated car of the Southern Railway Company or an interactive multimedia display in the form of a lunch counter that features key events from the fight against segregation. Racial terror of the KKK and the history of lynching are described repeatedly and in detail. A guard tower from the Louisiana State Penitentiary recalls the violence exacted on black inmates. Exhibits include traumatic examples of horrific violence such as the rape of Recy Taylor or extrajudicial killings (“lynchings”) during Jim Crow. Especially the Emmett Till exhibition on the brutal, racially motivated murder of a fourteen-year-old boy is emotionally devastating. The solemn display restages the public funeral and exhibits the open casket, in which Emmett Till’s body was shown to tens of thousands. The funeral and the photograph of Till’s mutilated face became a national media event that galvanized the civil rights movement. It is presented in a separate room, in which visitors are asked to be quiet and photography is forbidden. Security guards monitor the exhibit and ensure compliance. Thus, the room also becomes a sacred space of reflection and of honoring Till. Yet even this most cruel setback is presented as a stepping-stone toward progress because the exhibition makes the argument that the public funeral jump-started the struggle for civil rights. Thus, the linear historical narrative progresses to the next level of increasing freedom and expanding civil rights for African Americans even at the gloomiest moments. Throughout this rise from darkness, Thomas Jefferson’s “All men are created equal” remains with the visitor through the galleries’ spatial configuration. Levels C2 and C3 feature balconies that present vistas of the four-story main hall. Through this open architecture the quotation sporadically comes into full view on the back wall, and thus the founding myth of the nation becomes the leitmotif of the museum’s historical narrative. Of course, it is true that African American freedom and racial equality increased with milestones such as the Emancipation Declaration, the Thirteenth Amendment, or the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, the visual and narrative rhetoric of The Journey Toward Freedom obscures that the progress more often than not was won in opposition to and not because of

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the nation, its government, and its various state apparatuses of power and ideology. Concluding on Obama and Oprah, the historical galleries create the impression that the process of liberation is complete as the exhibition approaches the present. The decision to present largely a celebration of African American achievements aboveground further solidifies this sentiment. In the end, the museum leaves the visitor with a strong sense of racial uplift and little indication of enduring racial discrimination in the present. Thus the museum redeems Jefferson in its final narrative logic. As the visitor looks down over the balustrade from level C1 onto the figure in the center of the display on the lowest floor, Jefferson appears as a visionary. It should go without saying, but to make sure I am not misunderstood, that as a writer and thinker Jefferson was ahead of his time, even ahead of himself. Stating boldly the equality of men was a monumental achievement at the time and should be remembered and honored. My criticism concerns the museum’s overall narrative, which relegates the paradox of Jefferson’s life and of the nation to its founding moment. Thereby, the nation’s paradox of the past, which really is alive and well today, dissolves in the present. Having just experienced the evidence that African Americans literally can achieve anything in the United States, from immeasurable wealth and fame to the highest office in the land, Jefferson’s words appear like a prophecy that has come to pass. The History galleries conclude with a certainty that Jefferson’s ingenious proclamation has finally and fully been realized. In the larger spatial and visual context of the immense hall and the story of African American advancement, the brick wall behind Jefferson is small. Jefferson’s personal failure to live up to his own most fundamental norm becomes a distant memory. Likewise, that the nation still fails to live up to this ideal today is not given much space. In this sense, the story of America as told from an African American perspective at the NMAAHC resembles remarkably the narrative told at the NMAH. Blind Spots: Forgetting and the National Imagination Memory is selective, and any museum must choose. Narrative representation in exhibitions requires that the curator select from the entirety of

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experience and structure what was chosen in order to tell a story. This is the nature of narrative itself. However, the selection inherent to public history demands critical evaluation. The above-discussed absence of the first president at the NMAAHC is one example. Several more significant omissions facilitate the integration of African American past with dominant national ideologies. Forgetting is a necessary component of both individual and collective memory, but, as Paul Ricoeur has reminded us, forgetting can be dangerous when it is employed to suppress memories in order to strengthen a collective identity.56 One of the overarching motivations for this study is the absence of memorials to victims of the United States on the National Mall. Among the most obvious examples in the local context would be the lack of memorialization of enslaved people who constructed some of the iconic buildings on the Mall itself. The buildings and monuments, which were built with slave labor, would be obvious choices for remembering slavery. Some of the nation’s most prominent symbols are among them, including the White House and the Capitol Building. The history of those buildings’ construction should be impossible to miss for the tourists visiting these sites. This knowledge would inevitably recalibrate the symbolic meaning of those buildings and the National Mall, which would at the same time reconfigure the national mythology and enable a more complex appreciation of the painful past in America. Of course, this would require markers to be placed prominently so that they could not be overlooked. To date, no such marker exists anywhere outside on the National Mall.57 The first candidate would be one of the most iconic buildings in the United States: the White House, which was built using both free and enslaved African Americans.58 This simple fact, which is not debated among historians, was largely unknown to the general public until Michelle Obama said, “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves,” during her nationally televised speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.59 The debate over her statement in many conservative media outlets betrayed that this was not merely an unknown but to many an unwelcome historical fact.60 Of course, it should not be solely the NMAAHC’s burden to tell such stories. They are best remembered at the sites where they took place. Nevertheless, since this history is not given adequate

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space elsewhere in the capital, the museum should begin remembering the specific impact of slavery on the Mall. To be fair, the museum dedicates one image, a few bricks from the White House, one sandstone from the Capitol Building, and three explanatory sentences to this topic. However, this is a tiny display in the larger context of the exhibition, easily overlooked, and hardly adequate to the symbolic import of this space in the nation’s history. None of the details or the extent of enslaved labor employed during the building of the capital city are explored, despite the fact that this history has been widely discussed in the historical literature. Connected to the use of enslaved labor to erect iconic national buildings is the broader topic of the history of slavery in Washington, DC. Located between Maryland and Virginia, the nation’s capital was an active and profitable center of the slave trade. The seat of the new democratic government was located deep within slaveholding territory. As Chris Myers Asch and George Derek Musgrove explain in their history of race in Washington, DC, the capital was built not on top of an uninhabited swamp but on the fields of Notley Young’s slave plantation. The area was not a “tabula rasa” but a “fully functioning slave society,” and the “city that grew atop those fields incorporated slavery into every aspect of life.”61 Such a history would be disturbing anywhere, but it would be especially so in the space of the National Mall, where freedom and liberty are venerated as the ultimate ideals. Again, this is not a story that should be hidden away in any one museum. It is such an important part of local and national history that it should be made visible throughout the Mall at the various places, for example, where human beings were offered for sale. Once more, since this is not the case, the national museum on the African American past situated at the heart of the National Mall could paint a vivid picture of the everyday reality of a city “that was immersed in slavery and benefited immensely from it.”62 The museum keeps the treatment of the local history of slavery brief: “Americans witnessed the daily march of shackled slaves sold south in the capital city.” This sentence accompanies an image of a historic print showing a slave coffle in front of the Capitol Building, which indeed presents an unsettling image, but here too, the visitor is left to wonder about the details of governing and building the young republic in a context of

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slavery. To give just one example, all of the first twelve presidents with the exception of John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams enslaved people—seven of them while in office. Thus the White House was not just built by enslaved labor; seven US presidents regularly brought enslaved people to the executive mansion while in office, including George Washington in Philadelphia and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison at the White House.63 Perhaps the most important topic neglected in museum exhibitions on the National Mall is the implication of past pain for pain in the present. For example, the debate about reparations is directly related to the painful past of slavery and Jim Crow.64 While reparations are certainly controversial in the United States, it should be possible for the NMAAHC to tackle the subject considering that already John Locke had discussed compensation for violations of natural law. Thomas Jefferson himself brought up the topic regarding the United States and slavery.65 Moreover, it would not even be necessary to take sides on the controversy as African American leaders have stood on both sides of the issue. The topic has received much scholarly attention since the publication of Yale law professor Boris Bittker’s The Case for Reparations in 2003.66 Rep. John Conyers has introduced the Bill H.R. 40 “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act” to each session of Congress from 1989 to 2017.67 In 2014 Ta-Nehisi Coates’s essay in the Atlantic has brought the topic back into the national spotlight. Coates was even invited to the NMAAHC to discuss his book We Were Eight Years in Power, in which he reaffirmed his case for reparations.68 Recently, the issue of reparations has resurfaced in the media as several of the Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential election embraced some form of it, and even conservative commentator David Brooks published an essay in support of reparations in the New York Times.69 Finally, during the public debates following the killing of George Floyd, reparations were widely discussed once again. Museum director Lonnie Bunch responded with his own commentary to Coates on Smithsonian.com, in which he shifted the focus away from financial repayment to “emphasizing that the moral debt is more important.”70 Despite this recent academic and public attention to reparations, the NMAAHC does not explore this topic in its exhibitions or on its web-

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site, missing a unique opportunity to engage a large audience on a topic of historical and contemporary significance. The museum also neglects one of the largest social problems in the United States today that disproportionately affects African Americans. The size of the US prison population has reached extreme dimensions at well over 2 million inmates, which is the largest of any nation worldwide. The US per capita incarceration rate is also the highest in the world, leaving behind even the worst totalitarian regimes.71 In a groundbreaking study, Michelle Alexander argues that mass incarceration in the United States constitutes a new “political and social space not unlike Jim Crow.” As if Alexander was commenting on the NMAAHC’s failure to reckon with continuing racial inequality in the United States in the present, she sarcastically describes a common response to her claims: “How can you say that a racial caste system exists today? Just look at Barack Obama! Just look at Oprah Winfrey!”72 The museum does not completely ignore the issue, but it is relegated to a small exhibit in the Community galleries on the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Due to its small size, the booth is easily missed and hardly registers in the overall experience of the vast museum. The location in the section “Places” and the nature of the exhibition makes lopsided African American incarceration appear as a local problem rather than as the national issue that it is. For example, the exhibit does not display the imprisonment statistics that make the United States an outlier compared to virtually all other countries. Likewise, visitors do not learn about the extreme unequal racial treatment of nonviolent drug offenses by law enforcement in many states.73 In this case too, it appears that a dark legacy affecting African Americans disproportionately does not receive adequate attention. The list of the museum’s significant blind spots regarding continuing inequity in the present could be further expanded regarding the representation of current issues affecting the African American community that are deeply rooted in painful history. The perennial issue of police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement in response comes to mind first.74 Other important issues include the continuing crisis of inner-city homicide rates, structural discrimination in education, and racial disparities in wealth and income.75 All of these issues that receive little or no space

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in the museum are significant examples of how recent and distant painful past extends into the present, where they negatively affect the lives of millions. It certainly should not be the sole responsibility of the national museum dedicated to African American history to remember such painful histories. To the contrary, this needs to be included in the memory discourse on the National Mall broadly both in museums and monuments. Once again, for as long as these aspects of painful past and racial inequity in the present are virtually ignored elsewhere on the National Mall, the NMAAHC needs to take the lead. A Memorial to Freedom: The Contemplative Court As I am arguing throughout this book, nonnarrative memorial spaces are a crucial component to museums contending with memory of painful past.76 At the NMAAHC, the main nonnarrative place is called the Contemplative Court. It is a square room with a square pool in its center featuring four quotations on each wall. A circular waterfall gently drops into the pool along the round edges of a large oculus above. In contrast to the USHMM, visitor streams are not directed toward it. The nonnarrative space is physically separated by a wall and a hidden pathway. Unsurprisingly, many overlook the Contemplative Court.77 Instead, on leaving the exhibition, visitors are oriented toward the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Staircase, a spectacular free-floating spiral staircase leading back up to the ground level. The proposal to the visitor is clear: continue the journey upward, where African American success and achievements are further explored. At the same time, on exiting the History galleries, visitors are facing the Oprah Winfrey Theater, whose name is prominently announced in large capital letters. It further reinforces the conclusion of the historical exhibition: African Americans have arrived at the apex of the American dream. One of the wealthiest and most powerful women in the United States, who is placed in the sponsorship company of Bill Gates, is African American. Those who do find their way into the Contemplative Court will not encounter the word “memorial.” This is reflected in the space itself. There is no reference to victims, be it slavery, Jim Crow collective violence, or

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racism. What kind of contemplation, then, does the room encourage? One possible answer results from the preceding conclusion of the historical exhibition and the immediate context of the space: liberation and success. The quotations from some of the best-known African American activists (and one African) direct the focus toward overcoming adversity. The most prominent quotation, which inspired the room’s design, stems from Martin Luther King Jr.’s Montgomery Bus Boycott speech of 1955: “We are determined . . . to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”78 On entering the room, visitors face this sentence through the falling water. The mise-en-scène of the water installation suggests that Dr. King’s demand has been fulfilled: finally, justice is running down like water in a stream. A second quotation by the abolitionist Francis Harper explicitly refutes the necessity of a monument to the victims of slavery: “I ask no monument, proud and high to arrest the gaze of the passers-by, all that my yearning spirit craves, is bury me not in a land of slaves (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper 1858).” Again, the museum reminds visitors of the success of African American liberation. As the statement dates from before emancipation, it can be read that Harper’s demand too has been fulfilled, ignoring that discrimination followed in its wake that continues until today. A third quotation by Nelson Mandela celebrates one of the overarching themes of the museum: “I cherish my own freedom dearly but I care even more for your freedom (Nelson Mandela 1991).” Once more, the museum celebrates accomplished liberation since Mandela achieved his personal freedom and the end of apartheid in South Africa. Only one of the four quotations is seemingly oriented toward the future: “A change is gonna come (Sam Cooke 1964).” In the context of the other three quotations and of the museum’s celebration of the achievements of the civil rights movement, one might also understand Cooke’s song as a prophecy from the past (1964) that has come true through the cultural and legal changes of the 1960s. In summary, the crucial nonnarrative space does not remember victims of a painful past. In stark contrast to the USHMM, the quasi-sacred space in the NMAAHC provides a “life-affirming space for processing the tragedy and triumph of the African American experience,” as one reviewer formulated.79 Like the soaring hall of the History galler-

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ies, the Contemplative Court is also dedicated to the national mythology of liberation. In that sense, the space connects with the sacred space of the Star-Spangled Banner, which venerates the national flag as a symbol of liberation from the British colonizers. Conclusion In my reading of the museum, integrating African American pain with the patriotic discourse of the National Mall resulted in relegating that pain largely to the past. While past pain certainly is remembered, the national imagination remains unchallenged. The founding of the United States provided the ideological substance for overcoming African American pain in the historical logic of the NMAAHC. Following that logic, the continuation of national pain in the form of social and racial inequality and continuing systemic discrimination receives little space. From 2005 until his death in 2009, John Hope Franklin served as the founding chairman of the NMAAHC Scholarly Advisor Committee, which helped shape the intellectual agenda of the museum. He was one of the nation’s preeminent African American public intellectuals and a leading historian. The title of his classic study From Slavery to Freedom captures the museum’s narrative emphasis as discussed in this chapter. However, chronicling the progress of African Americans’ struggle for liberation is only one side of Franklin’s legacy. He was also a “scholar-activist.”80 In that capacity, Franklin was the chairman of another committee, one established by President Bill Clinton’s Initiative on Race in 1997. The final report of that commission presents a disturbing picture of racial inequity in the areas of education, employment, housing, and law enforcement, to name just a few. The report contained a number of specific recommendations in all of these areas for government policies to address racial disparities and injustice.81 Franklin was also vocal in calling for reparations to address the enduring legacies of that painful past: “People are running around apologizing for slavery. What about the awful period since slavery—Reconstruction, Jim Crow and all the rest? What about the enormous wealth that was built up by black labor?”82 The promise of the pursuit of happiness to the individual as it was pronounced in the Declaration

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of Independence has never been an equal opportunity for all. Nowhere should this be more clearly stated than in the national museum dedicated to the African American story. However, such an indictment of inequality in the United States is not (yet) possible on the National Mall because it would inevitably expose contradictions in the American national myth built on the imagined notions of individual freedom as foundational to the United States. Of course, much progress has been achieved over time, and that should surely be celebrated, but this celebration need not preclude a profound critique of national ideologies and a fuller discussion of continuing inequities. In summary, its “rising up” narrative enables the NMAAHC to borrow visual and narrative devices from the USHMM in its exhibitions on the painful past, while at the same time continuing the overall patriotic narrative of the NMAH. Like both of those museums, the NMAAHC also celebrates the US military by honoring African American veterans and by presenting the US military as a leader in racial integration. In its efforts to connect painful past to social justice initiatives of the present, the NMAAHC surprisingly falls short of those at the USHMM and the NMAH. This manifests in the failure to include social justice as a goal in its mission statement, which is reflected in the museum’s permanent exhibitions. In the next chapter, we will encounter a departure from the dominant narrative and visual rhetoric. Since many Native Americans also continue to suffer from severe structural inequality, it will be of interest to see whether the NMAI charts a different path regarding its commitment to social justice.

four

remembering and forgetting genocide the national museum of the american indian

4 The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) was established by an act of Congress in 1989. The act combined the Smithsonian’s collection of Native American artifacts with the largest collection of American Indian history and culture, which was amassed by industrialist George Gustav Heye beginning in the late nineteenth century.1 The act defined the NMAI as “a living memorial to Native Americans” and specified as its purpose to “give all Americans the opportunity to learn of the cultural legacy, historic grandeur, and contemporary culture of Native Americans.”2 In 2004 the NMAI opened in a 250,000 sq. ft. building, which is located prominently on the National Mall in close proximity to the US Capitol. Among the museums examined in this study, the NMAI attracts by far the fewest number of visitors at circa one million per year.3 The museum features five permanent exhibitions about American Indian history and culture as well as several smaller exhibitions, one of which is usually dedicated to a Native American artist. Throughout the museum spaces outside of the main exhibition galleries, artifacts from the NMAI’s vast collection are displayed in a fashion reminiscent of traditional ethnographic museums. As I will discuss in this chapter, it was among the museum’s main founding principles to undo indigenous objectification in exhibitions, which was common in Western museums, including the nearby National

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Museum of Natural History (NMNH). On the other hand, the museum has access to a collection of more than a million objects, including many highlights of Native American art and history, which audiences expect to see as they are conditioned by a long tradition of ethnographic displays. The NMAI also features the largest gift shop of the museums discussed in this study, which is popular with visitors and also satisfies the demand for seeing and purchasing traditional Native American arts and crafts. A large restaurant serves various Native American dishes, adding another layer to a consumer experience of indigenous culture and products. The vision and mission statements of the museum already indicate a radical departure from the three museums discussed in the previous chapters: Vision Equity and social justice for the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere through education, inspiration, and empowerment. Mission In partnership with Native peoples and their allies, the National Museum of the American Indian fosters a richer shared human experience through a more informed understanding of Native peoples.4 Entirely focused on the present, both statements avoid any mention of history or memory of painful past. Instead, the museum fully embraces social justice for Native Americans as the institution’s primary goal. This vision contrasts with the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), which omits social justice from its mission statement. While the NMAI’s mission statement is reflected in the narrative content priorities of the museum’s exhibitions, its commitment to social justice for Native Americans also demanded a radical departure from conventional museum rhetoric that the National Museum of American History (NMAH), the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), and the NMAAHC all follow. This included collaboration with nonprofessional community curators and a rejection of linear historical narratives with a teleological trajectory. This important strategic decision was grounded in the ill-treatment of indigenous peoples in museums. Anthropology mu-

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seums were informed by ethnography, which “provided the ‘scientific’ justification for much of the colonial project in the Americas.”5 As Amy Lonetree explains, anthropology museums tended to reinforce stereotypes of the past and the view of indigenous cultures as “frozen in a particular time period.”6 This practice has been epitomized, for example, in the dehumanizing dioramas showing Native Americans that are on display in many museums to this day, including at the NMNH on the National Mall.7 In addition, Native American human remains in anthropological collections, of which the Smithsonian still holds thousands today, “served to emphasize the notion of Indians as a vanishing race.”8 The act to establish the NMAI was in part motivated by controversy over such holdings and how they were acquired. The act stipulated that human remains and funerary objects should be returned to descendants or nations. Breaking with this tradition was a necessary first step for the museum on its road to justice for Native Americans. As part of its approach to accomplish this, the NMAI begins its museum experience in the present with a thirteen-minute multimedia presentation called Who We Are. This deviates from the openings of the main historical exhibitions at the USHMM and the NMAAHC, which both begin with imagined time-travel elevator rides to the past, to a historical juncture that marks the beginning of the painful past in each story, Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and the enslavement of people in Africa.9 By contrast, Who We Are introduces a selection of contemporary indigenous communities from the Americas, focusing on positive aspects of Native society, culture, and relationship to the natural environment. From the outset of its planning phase, the NMAI wanted to redefine what a national museum could and should be from a Native American perspective. This would require fundamental changes to conventional museum methodologies that would affect not only the content but all aspects of its exhibitions’ narrative and visual rhetoric. In hindsight, founding director Walter Richard West Jr. summarized his intentions as follows: I very much think that it reconfigures how museums look at or connect with Indian tribes . . . and the way we’ve configured scholarship and these kinds of relationships that we’ve established. One has to remember again that museums, as a concept, are utterly foreign to Native

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people. That’s not the way we do things. We have never in that way objectified our culture as a piece of anthropology or even as a piece of art, even though we have great respect for aesthetics.10 West gives voice here to the abovementioned troubled history of indigenous peoples’ relationship with natural history and ethnographic museums.11 Linda Tuhiwai Smith has demonstrated that Enlightenment ideals themselves were deeply implicated with European colonization of indigenous peoples.12 These ideals are ingrained in the history of the Smithsonian Institution and its vision “to increase and diffuse knowledge,” which suggests objective knowledge accumulation devoid of political interest. Yet Native American history reveals such politically disinterested science as an illusion that has underpinned the modern museum and the Smithsonian since its beginning.13 The painful experiences of Native Americans demand “decolonizing methodologies” of knowledge creation, to borrow Smith’s term. The NMAI set out to contribute to this revision and to reconfigure the museum from an indigenous perspective. Especially its inaugural exhibitions, presented to the public in 2004, employed an “Indigenous dialogical method . . . as part of a decolonizing approach to reappropriate and subvert traditional museum forms.”14 Those exhibitions included the aforementioned presentation Who We Are, as well as the three main inaugural exhibitions Our Universes (on Native American worldviews and philosophy), Our Peoples (on Native American histories), and Our Lives (on contemporary Native American life). All of those initial exhibitions exemplified core principles that the museum would pursue in contrast to conventional anthropological exhibitions. Those included a rejection of linear narratives in favor of circular and rhizomic narrative structures. They emphasized living communities and cultures of the present instead of the dead of history. They focused on survivance rather than on the painful past of genocidal oppression.15 And they were curated in part by Native American community members, who were assisted by museum professionals. All of these approaches contrast decisively with those at the NMAH, the USHMM, and the NMAAHC, which focus on the past almost exclusively, present mostly linear and teleologic historical narratives, and feature exhibitions designed by professional museum curators.

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The NMAI also contrasts with the three previously discussed museums in its representation of the United States. From the beginning, the museum was conceived of as an international museum spanning indigenous nations from all of the Americas to acknowledge that indigenous cultures precede and overlap with the national boundaries resulting from European colonization and decolonization.16 Although the museum would emphasize Native Americans located within the United States and indigenous relations with this nation (especially in the second iterations of permanent exhibitions), it has also included indigenous cultures and history from Canada, Latin America, and South America. As the NMAI chose at first to de-emphasize indigenous relations with nation-states, it also paid less attention to the painful and traumatic histories as modern nations often continued forced removal and genocidal policies of their colonial predecessors. In sum, museum leadership, especially when setting up the inaugural permanent exhibitions, had chosen to emphasize survivance rather than persecution, the present rather than the past. Following its opening, the museum was widely criticized.17 Critics and scholars faulted the museum for downplaying the adverse effects of colonization on the indigenous populations. Native American historian Jacki Thompson Rand, who was a staff member during the museum’s first five years from 1989 to 1994, summarized the attitude during this formative period with the phrase that there “will be no unhappy history here” and explained: “The museum early on made the decision that it would eschew the historical context from which modern Native America has sprung. This meant, astonishingly, no treatment of the history of genocide and colonialism, then and now, or even of the basis of tribal sovereignty.”18 According to critics, the museum had failed at least in its inaugural form to set up a historically and critically engaged museum mission of their own, one that did not erase the past but tried to reckon with its effects.19 Many reviewers and visitors found it difficult to engage with the museum’s approach to exhibition design and narrative, which some criticized as postmodern. They missed a clear narrative and curatorial direction that they were accustomed to from other museums.20 In response to such criticisms, the museum gradually shifted its approach and replaced the inaugural exhibitions Our Peoples and Our Lives with more conventional

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presentations. The most recent exhibition Americans (since 2018) displays and explores the use of Native American images in American culture. The other two replacements were the more conventional historical exhibitions The Great Inca Road: Engineering and Empire (2015–2020) and Nation to Nation: Treaties between the United States and American Indian Nations (since 2014). In this chapter, I will focus on the museum’s two main historical exhibitions that have been displayed so far, Our Peoples (2004–2015) and Nation to Nation. Memory of painful past has been largely limited to those two exhibitions. They have also included most of the discussion of the fraught relationship between Native Americans and the United States. Hence, those exhibitions will yield the most insight for comparing the NMAI’s memory of collective violence with that of the NMAAHC, the USHMM, and the NMAH. Likewise, they will help us understand how the NMAI departs from the dominant national imagination of the United States found in those three museums and elsewhere on the National Mall. Before analyzing Our Peoples in detail, I will first look at the museum in its inaugural configuration and the important multimedia presentation Who We Are, which is among the few main exhibits that has remained on display continuously since 2004. Parallel Narratives Outside the Nation: The Inaugural Exhibitions The introductory multimedia experience Who We Are and the three main inaugural permanent exhibitions of the NMAI, Our Universes, Our Peoples, and Our Lives, were designed to represent the diversity and variety of indigenous history and cultures. This goal to represent broadly and inclusively was virtually an insurmountable task given that there are 575 federally recognized tribes in the United States alone as of March 2020.21 To approach this challenge, the NMAI pursued a radically decentered narrative strategy, which was seen as one way to achieve the museum’s overall representational and methodological aims at the same time. The narrative strategy of those exhibitions and the opening multimedia presentation Who We Are was conceived in contrast to mainstream museum exhibition rhetoric, to which all other museums analyzed in this study adhere. The dominant narrative strategy in national museums follows the epistemology of Western

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historiography, which includes a self-effacing objective authorial voice, and a linear narrative with a cause-and-effect chain of events that propels history forward. Deeply embedded in this narrative rhetoric are ideologies of national progress and a general embrace of core American and Western ideals such as individual freedom and human rights. The contrast to such a discourse presented by the NMAI was striking as it replaced the unified, authoritative voice with a multitude of perspectives. Instead of the anonymous omniscient narrator or the academic expert historian, many community curators collaborated in creating the exhibitions. In lieu of a singular and unified “Native American History,” many stories from different nations were presented. Instead of one philosophy or creation story, several examples were and continue to be exhibited, standing in for hundreds more. Simply presenting multiple examples of worldviews on an equal footing implies the existence of more than one origin, one view of the universe, one value system, or one truth. The notion of privileging one epistemology over others, as has happened in Western thought since Enlightenment and through much of US history, was seen as incompatible with representing Native American history. Instead, the NMAI demonstrated that Native American history required many voices and a narrative structure presenting multiple threads at the same time, organized in a circular (Our Universes) or rhizomic fashion (Our Peoples and Our Lives). As a first step, I will briefly describe how a visit to the NMAI begins differently compared with the NMAAHC and the USHMM before analyzing Who We Are and Our Peoples. Next we will look at the museum’s strategic transformation toward a more US national focus. The changes implemented from the first to the second generation of exhibitions is instructive for understanding how the museum responded to criticism during the years after its opening. Ultimately, the evolution of the NMAI illustrates which historical perspectives and epistemologies are acceptable on the National Mall, and which are not. Orientation at the Sweat Lodge If one chooses to stop at the information desk, museum staff will recommend beginning the museum visit on the top floor with the presentation Who We Are. This already presents a first departure from the USHMM,

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where the elevator ride to the beginning of the main exhibition is without alternative, and with the NMAAHC, where a visit to the historical exhibition requires the same. Visitors to the NMAI have much more freedom in their path through the museum. At the USHMM, there is virtually no choice as there is only one entry and one exit to the main historical exhibition. The NMAAHC offers some choice as visitors may select to move upstairs and not see the historical exhibition. This will not apply to most since The Journey Toward Freedom is the museum’s highlight and best-known exhibition. Again, visitors who take the elevator to the beginning of the historical exhibition must follow a prescribed linear path along three floors of galleries similar to the USHMM. By contrast, a visit to the NMAI is much less structured since the four main permanent exhibitions are comparable in size and importance. It is conceivable that a visitor may skip the historical exhibitions altogether and spend much more time outside the main galleries, looking at the many exhibits in the hallways or browsing in the gift shop, which in occupying much of the museum’s second floor is much more prominent at the NMAI than in the other discussed museums. Those following the staff ’s recommendation likely have to wait for the beginning of Who We Are, which is screened about every twenty minutes. This time may be used to look at the sculpture Allies in War, Partners in Peace or indigenous artifacts displayed near the entrance of the Lelawi Theater. The introductory multiscreen short film Who We Are orients the visitors and prepares them for the main exhibitions. It encapsulates the museum’s overall approach, which is to foreground and celebrate the cultural and geographic diversity of contemporary lives and cultures of Native America.22 The multimedia experience also illustrates that this focus marginalizes painful memories of Native American history, as those are virtually absent from the presentation. The Lelawi Theater is purpose-built for this particular presentation (see figure 4.1). Its domed structure and seating arrangement around a rock-shaped screen on the floor recall the space of a sweat lodge. The main video sequences are projected on four tapestry screens that are arranged in a square above the imitation rock and onto the domed ceiling, hence the viewer sees in effect a three-screen projection: rock, tapestry, and dome. The title of the film, Who We Are, suggests a very ambitious goal, re-

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Figure 4.1. Three-screen structure of the multimedia presentation Who We Are in the Lelawi Theater from below: rock/fire pit, tapestry, and dome.

minding of the museum’s overall mission to represent Native American existence in the present. The museum’s own emphasis on the multiplicity, complexity, and diversity of Native American nations and cultures implies that a simple answer to the question “Who are we?” is not possible. The film’s associate producer, Beverly R. Singer, echoes the outsized ambition as she summarizes the intended effect of the film, which should induce a “feeling of hope and celebration that Indigenous America is not dead

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but very much alive in the land. Her people, in spite of all attempts to denude us of our ways of living, are fully sentient beings with a purpose to pass on the ways of our ancestors and live out our days protecting what remains of our older belief and knowledge systems.”23 The film is thus a first example of the museum’s emphasis on survivance. It tackles headon the invisibility of Native Americans throughout much of mainstream American culture by its implicit exclamation “We exist!” Thus, the presentation responds to ignorance about present-day Native American communities in the United States. While the film provides a glimpse of Native communities’ vibrancy from the Arctic to the Andes, it says nothing about the “attempts to denude us of our ways of living,” and certainly not about the long and complex painful histories indigenous communities have had to endure. Problematically, the film’s exclusive focus on survivance precludes any acknowledgment that not all indigenous communities in the Americas, including their languages and cultures, survived European colonization. The focus on the present is evident in the film’s narrative structure, which consists of six main sections: greeting; Native American relationships to places; beliefs and spirituality; traditional knowledge enabling subsistence living; Native nationhood and self-governing; and Native American achievements. The film first highlights the close connection between Native communities, nature, and “Mother Earth” in the present. Landscapes are projected to great visual effect on the small screens in front of the audience with coordinated images on the dome overhead to emulate a 360-degree immersive audiovisual experience. For example, we see mountain ranges of the Andes, canyons of the Southwest, or granite spires of the Black Hills, all places imbued with spiritual meaning for the local indigenous communities. The projection setup also is effective for the display of underwater footage of a whale that is shown during the introduction of the Inuit community of Barrow, Alaska, and their traditional practice of whale hunting. A second emphasis in Who We Are is on community and their continuing social, economic, and cultural practices. For example, we see a thriving marketplace in a picturesque Aymara village in Bolivia; the artisanal craft of making ceremonial pipes in Pipestone, Minnesota; or the sewing of

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sealskins by the Inuit in Barrow, Alaska. The film ends with a selection of flags from various Native American nations projected on the dome screen against a bright blue sky, returning to the overall positive message of diversity and proud tribal identities in Native America. Thus the museum’s crucial narrative opening concludes without mentioning any of the difficult and painful aspects of Native American history. Who We Are creates the impression that everything is well in indigenous communities: nature is healthy and beautiful, indigenous people have access to and control over their lands, Native traditions and cultures are maintained, and indigenous nations live in self-determination. We do not hear about genocides of the past and the ongoing struggle resulting from painful histories for many indigenous communities throughout the Americas. Likewise, the presentation does not mention any of the serious problems of the present such as environmental impact caused by pollution and climate change, conflicts over access to ancestral lands, or social and economic problems of Native communities.24 While the film remains silent regarding “attempts to deprive us of our ways of living,” it reflects how Singer remembers the NMAI’s instructions for the project: “In initial discussions, the NMAI was determined to avoid overly controversial or contested issues involving indigenous communities.”25 As in the opening film, the museum’s inclination to avoid conflict could be experienced throughout the museum’s inaugural exhibitions and still remains the prevailing approach today. In this regard, the museum echoes the NMAAHC’s tendency of marginalizing difficult topics of racism and social injustice in the present. However, the NMAI’s opening contrasts sharply with the NMAAHC narrative beginning as it also avoids the conflicts of the past, that is, the painful experiences of collective violence and displacement suffered by Native Americans. After viewing Who We Are, visitors leave the Lelawi Theater directly into the Our Universes exhibition. Inaugural Exhibitions: American Indians apart from the Nation The three main inaugural exhibitions introduced Native American religion and cosmology (Our Universes), history (Our Peoples), and contemporary

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communities (Our Lives). All three exhibitions exemplified the curatorial principle of multitude instead of a singular linear narrative. Each exhibition featured eight community-curated displays for which NMAI’s professional curators collaborated with community representatives to make “use of interdisciplinary and inventive methods of exhibition and organizational structures” and to “create exhibitions that demonstrated community specificity and community vitality.”26 In pursuing these goals, the inaugural exhibitions paid little attention to indigenous relations with the United States or other nation-states in the Americas. As I will elaborate below, most exhibits on painful past were presented in Our Peoples and referred largely to the period of colonization and conquest before the founding of the United States. This narrative sequencing resembles that of the NMAAHC, which presents the founding of the United States as a juncture in history that marks the beginning of African American liberation. Overall, the NMAI’s curatorial approach of collaborating with indigenous communities contributed to marginalizing the memory of painful past. NMAI curator Cynthia Chavez Lamar commented on the immense pressure felt by cocurators to represent their respective communities to the world and to themselves, “which is why some of the harsher truths of their communities’ existence did not make it into the final exhibition.” However, the relative lack of historical perspective is also due to one of the directives provided by the NMAI to the community cocurators, which asked them not to focus on their nation’s specific history.27 Since the focus of this study is memory of painful past, I will emphasize the NMAI’s permanent exhibitions on history: Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories, later replaced by Nation to Nation. However, I will first briefly review how the two other main inaugural exhibitions approached painful past. Our Universes: Traditional Knowledge Shapes Our World is the only one of the three main inaugural exhibitions that continues to be on display as of 2020. It presents the worldviews of eight indigenous cultures in addition to brief introductions to the Denver March Powwow, the North American Indigenous Games, and the Day of the Dead as examples of seasonal and cultural events that are celebrated by many indigenous nations.28 More

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than any other of the NMAI’s exhibitions, Our Universes exemplifies the museum’s rejection of a unified Western epistemology, as anthropologist Gwyneira Isaac formulated: “Clearly, Our Universes implies that there are not just different perspectives and voices, but that in fact there are a multitude of different knowledge systems.”29 Each community exhibit is displayed in one of the self-contained gallery spaces arranged alongside a circular hallway, along with Native American myths, which are presented in videos intended for young visitors. As the exhibition’s title implies, Our Universes emphasizes continuity of indigenous culture through the ages until today. Although the exhibition relates to the past, difficult or traumatic histories are entirely omitted by the focus on mythologies and cultural practices. Even the repression of indigenous spirituality in US history is not included, as Sonya Atalay has pointed out.30 In sum, Our Universes presents the visitor with an array of beliefs and values that are easy to digest during a time in which esoteric spirituality continues to be popular, including appropriation of Native American spirituality.31 The second main exhibition, Our Lives: Contemporary Life and Identities, included again eight indigenous communities from the United States and Canada in addition to a general section curated by guest curators Jolene Rickard and Gabrielle Tayac.32 A sign at the entrance clearly announced the focus on the present: “This exhibition is about who we are today.” In multimedia displays visitors learned about environmental, economic, social, and cultural issues that determined and affected the daily lives of the community members. This focus suggested the possibility of understanding present-day indigenous life without much consideration of the community’s specific historical path to the presence. In line with the museum’s overall strategy, the general curators highlighted the term “survivance.” Gerald Vizenor’s succinct definition of the term captures its attraction for the NMAI: “Native survivance is an active sense of presence over absence.”33 An introductory panel text elaborated on the museum’s understanding: “Survivance . . . is more than survival. Survivance means redefining ourselves. It means raising our social and political consciousness. It means holding on to ancient principles while eagerly embracing change. It means doing what is necessary to keep our cultures alive.” A second panel further expanded:

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Survivance is often about making choices. Over the past 500 years, Native Americans have been robbed of most of our land and inheritance. While the Americas include some of the wealthiest nations on earth, its indigenous peoples are among the poorest of the poor. Yet Native peoples are rich in culture and community. To remain connected to land, tradition, and each other, we must often make tough choices in the daily struggle with poverty. In some cases that can mean having to send our children into the mines. In other cases, it can mean bringing gaming into our community. But if we no longer live together as a people, we would lose what is truly valuable. This panel inadvertently exposed the paradox of the exhibition and the museum at large. It clearly named the connection between painful past and the troubled present, which was further emphasized by a second panel on poverty (see figure 4.2). The struggles of today can hardly be understood without full appreciation of the historical development that produced them both at the local level of individual indigenous nations and at the global level of colonization that affected virtually all indigenous communities in the Americas. The understandable desire to prioritize Native agency risked creating the impression that widespread poverty among indigenous communities resulted from a reluctance to make “tough choices” in contrast to presenting poverty as an outcome of centuries of systematic oppression and continuing structural inequity. Some of the community displays pointed out how painful memories of the past persist to create severe hardships in the present. For example, the Campo Band exhibition remembered how the establishment of national borders separated communities: “When California became a state in 1850, the border between Mexico and California split Kumeyaay families and bands. Since then, strict immigration laws and tall steel fences have continued to separate friends and relatives.” The panel then continued to describe efforts to reconnect the community across the borders. Regardless, Our Lives did not allocate much space overall to the memory of oppression and to how painful past continues to affect indigenous com-

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Figure 4.2. Wall text on poverty in Our Lives (2004).

munities in the present. Specifically, it did not expand much on how past instances of forced relocation or cultural genocide affected indigenous lives in the present. Pauline Wakeham criticizes this posture of reconciliation. She suggests that “the staging of reconciliation might jeopardize the vital project of remembering and continuing to recognize colonial violence as well as envisioning the future of social justice.”34 Given the NMAI’s emphasis on social justice in its vision statement, one would expect that colonization and oppression should then be central to the main inaugural historical exhibition, which will be examined next. Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories was the only exhibition on Native American history during the museum’s first decade of existence, after

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which it was replaced with Nation to Nation. As in the two exhibitions discussed above, indigenous curators presented eight community displays, which were complemented by a general section.35 Again, an introductory panel at the entrance set visitors’ expectations: “Here you will see history from a Native perspective. These are the events that are important to us, events that have shaped the present.” Once more, the introductory panel suggested an emphasis on the connection between the past and the present. While both general and community-curated exhibits presented memory of painful past, Our Peoples did not accentuate the link between painful indigenous history and indigenous lives today, mirroring the missing link between past and present in Our Lives. The community displays described some difficult episodes of tribal histories but emphasized overcoming and, once more, survivance of the tribal community. The general section organized the exhibition around four main themes: disease (contact and conquest), guns (role of firearms during conquest and resistance), Bibles (the history of Christianization in the Americas), and foreign governments (colonization). As an organizing narrative structure for the conceptual and visual arrangement of the stories, the curators used the metaphor of a storm (see figure 4.3), a problematic choice as it suggested that Native Americans experienced a calamity like a natural disaster beyond human agency instead of crimes against humanity committed by European colonizers. In the following discussion, I will focus on the narrative and visual rhetoric framing the most painful episodes before and after the founding of the United States. The display most clearly dedicated to the devastating impact of contact between European colonizers and indigenous peoples explored the spread of disease. It was presented on a large wall with the headline “Invasions.” The wall featured an introductory text panel written by NMAI curator Paul Chaat Smith and historical quotations from across the Americas as evidence of the devastation brought about by contagious diseases. The introduction titled “Infinite Thousands” summarized the extent and scope of death brought by Europeans: Contact withered the indigenous people of the Americas. With little immunity to European diseases, Native people fell victim to smallpox,

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Figure 4.3. Wall text from a display that presented “Storm” as a central metaphor for the colonization of the Americas in Our Peoples.

measles, influenza, mumps, and other diseases. From 1492 to 1650, contagions claimed as many as nine lives out of ten. . . . The epidemics raged for 150 years. The biological catastrophe was unprecedented in human history: an extinction event that spanned continents. Sorrow and heartbreak cloaked a shattered world that in 10,000 years had never faced such disaster. While the extent of death and pain behind these statistics is unimaginable, the exhibition did not illustrate this traumatic episode in Native American

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history. The visual emphasis of the panel (size and font) was equal to dozens of other panels in the exhibition. For example, another nearby paragraph by Smith on the engravings by Theodor de Bry was exactly equal in visual presentation (see figure 4.4). The exhibition returned to the devastation brought about by contagious diseases in two more panels. The first instance absolved Europeans in part of responsibility: “In 1500 no one knew about germs. If European farmers had landed in the Bahamas bearing nothing but good will, their diseases would have killed just the same. That initial explosion of death is one of the greatest tragedies in human history because it was unintended and unavoidable, and even inevitable.” While this speculation may be factually correct, it was misleading. In contrast to that speculation, colonizers largely were not benevolent, and most indigenous peoples were subjected to the rule of European emperors against their will. This was the actual political context, and disease was an accessory to the crime of large-scale plunder and murder, as the exhibition elsewhere proclaims in a text titled “Wealth. Power. Abundance”: “The first 150 years of Contact witnessed one of the greatest transfers of wealth in world history. . . . Riches from the Americas made Spain an international superpower. . . . Perhaps 20 million Indians died as a direct result of Contact. Tens of millions more perished from disease” (see figure 4.5). While the spread of disease among indigenous peoples may have been unintended, it facilitated the colonial conquest and material exploitation of the Americas. The way the exhibition approached the issue of genocide after contact is problematic for several reasons. First, the decision to avoid the term “genocide” itself is questionable, irrespective of whether one endorses the term or not. At least the debate over Native American genocide should be included in the NMAI, since many historians and Native Americans use the term “genocide” to describe what happened.36 Second, it was unnecessary to frame the vast majority of indigenous deaths as an “inevitable” force of nature and thereby releasing colonizers from moral responsibility, especially assuming, as is claimed in the introduction, that the exhibition presented history from a Native American perspective. Finally, the exhibition and the museum as a whole neglected to emphasize the scale and scope of death brought about by European colonization. The monstrous numbers

Figure 4.4. Two wall texts on the decimation of indigenous peoples through disease and a panel about the engraver Theodor de Bry receive equal emphasis.

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Figure 4.5. Wall text on wealth extraction and mass death of indigenous peoples caused by colonization.

of dead were buried like a trivial afterthought in the third paragraph of one text panel that was no different from hundreds of other text panels found throughout the museum: “Perhaps 20 million Indians died . . .” Even worse, the total body count was left completely vague: “Tens of millions more perished . . .” And yet worse, since Our Peoples was removed in 2014,

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the question of how many deaths were caused by European conquest and colonization is not explored in any detail anywhere in the museum today. The decimation of indigenous life after contact reached genocidal dimensions. The visual and narrative presentation of this catastrophic event sharply contrasts with the presentation of the scale of painful past at the USHMM and at the NMAAHC. For example, in one display the USHMM names and memorializes every Jewish community in Europe affected by the Holocaust. The display covers entire walls. Likewise, the walls in the galleries on the slave trade are covered with the names of over four hundred slave ships at the NMAAHC. Both of these installations communicate a sense of the scale of collective violence of the past. The NMAI does not include a comparable visualization. Indeed, Myla Vincenti Carpio pointed to the problem that “the museum never tells us exactly how many nations existed and still exist in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, which is especially important when trying to express how they are surviving and from what.”37 The exhibition did include a wall projection of many names of indigenous nations around the title “We Are the Evidence.” It was not clear what the names were evidence of. The exhibition’s content suggested Native existence and survivance as opposed to the memory of painful past and the memorialization of victims. James Lujan has summarized the effect of the museum’s failure to include memory of painful past: “By taking away a lot of the pain and suffering of the Indian experience, they’ve taken away the drama and, as such, stripped it of its historical context.”38 Granted, we will never have an exact number of indigenous deaths caused by contact and subsequent colonization of the Americas. However, estimates by historians certainly exist, and it would be easy to agree on a minimum number of deaths caused and clearly communicate it.39 Today, the NMAI does not convey a firm sense of the scale and scope of devastation during colonization and after the founding of the United States. In this regard, the NMAI’s treatment of painful past is quite similar to the NMAAHC. As discussed in the previous chapter, consider the Holocaust and the number of six million Jewish victims that is deeply ingrained in our consciousness. This is not a trivial matter. A concrete number is important because it establishes the unfathomable scale of the mass murder that can be communicated effectively and remembered easily. Such

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a number would also locate the Native American genocide in the public consciousness among the worst cases of collective violence committed in history. However, Our Peoples and the NMAI did not emphasize an estimated number of Native American victims of European colonization and US conquest. While this crucial issue was presented inadequately then, it is worse at present since the topic of indigenous mass death after contact is not explored in detail since the removal of Our Peoples. Instead, visitors learn about the legal disputes between indigenous nations and the United States in the exhibition Nation to Nation, which will be discussed next. In the Context of the Nation The second iteration of permanent exhibitions toned down the original methodological ambition and returned to a more conventional exhibition design. This new direction no longer allowed for community cocurated exhibits. Another major change was to focus more on the relation between the indigenous communities and the nation-state, specifically between Native Americans and the United States. This strategic shift was also connected to a change in the museum’s leadership in 2007, when Kevin Gover became its director. In a recent interview, Gover remembered the museum’s development at the beginning of his tenure: “We basically had 24 tribes represented. And each got to create their own little exhibit. One of the things that occurred to us was that we’re a national museum and so we really should try to tell national stories instead of smaller stories.”40 While the museum was not remade entirely following visual and narrative rhetoric such as the one found at the USHMM or the NMAAHC, the second generation of permanent exhibitions represented a juncture that would start to move the museum in this direction. This new path is most clearly represented in an exhibition on treaties. The exhibition Nation to Nation opened on September 21, 2014, and is currently scheduled to close in 2021.41 After an introduction, the exhibition is presented in four chronologically arranged sections called “Serious Diplomacy,” centered around George Washington; “Bad Acts, Bad Paper,” organized around Andrew Jackson; “Great Nations Keep Their Word,” focused on past Native American activism based on treaties; and “The

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Future of Treaties,” which presents potential significance of treaties moving forward. A selection of nine treaties are presented ranging from the Lenape Treaty of 1682 as the only example from the colonial period to the Navajo Treaty of 1868.42 Nation to Nation directly results from the NMAI’s paradigm shift toward presenting indigenous past with a more US national focus. The exhibition’s title already highlights the new emphasis, which replaces the previously used term “tribe” with “nation” and foregrounds bilateral and equal relations between indigenous nations and the United States. Right after the opening, Carpio criticized the museum’s use of the term “tribe” rather than “nation,” which was already being adopted among many Native Americans at the time “in order to emphasize their sovereignty.”43 Some ten years later, the change in terminology and the exhibition marked an important shift in the museum’s trajectory, giving greater emphasis to injustices committed by the US government. Yet despite this development the Nation to Nation exhibition does not provide an introduction to painful Native American history that is in any way comparable with the memory of slavery at the NMAAHC or the Holocaust at the USHMM, or even to its predecessor exhibition Our Peoples. Whereas the exhibition introduces traumas such as unequal treaties, the legacy of Andrew Jackson, forced removal, or forced reeducation, it does not provide an account of the depth and extent of painful events suffered by Native Americans as a direct consequence of their relations with the United States. While this exhibition introduces the word “genocide” to the audience, the term is virtually hidden and not discussed in any detail. More importantly, the exhibition does not communicate adequately the inequity of the relationship and the collective violence suffered by Native Americans at the hand of the United States. Instead, Nation to Nation suggests that throughout history two equally valid perspectives existed, one reflecting the US government (or colonial government) and the other indigenous. The impression is created that much of the conflict between the two parties can be blamed on two contrasting conceptions of law, which are merely expressions of two incompatible worldviews. Furthermore, the exhibition romanticizes early Native American understanding of bilateral relations with colonial-era settlers, which were based on the two-row wampum belt, a traditional Native

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American form of contract between two nations. The exhibition even suggests that a return to this kind of bilateral relationship would be possible without first accounting for five hundred years of atrocities and oppression that occurred since the first colonial conquerors reached the Americas. In the following discussion, I will focus on the exhibition’s emphasis on the two-row wampum belt, the two contrasting perspectives “United States vs. indigenous,” and the narrative structure of the exhibition. A key element of the exhibition is the two-row wampum belt, called the Guswenta. The belt is referred to throughout the exhibition and also opens and closes the presentation, where it is featured prominently in two documentary short films. Moreover, the Guswenta is a major design element for the exhibition as the first three sections are presented in a circular arrangement under a giant two-row wampum belt. The visitor to the exhibition first encounters a replica of the Guswenta, which marked the Tawagonshi Agreement of 1613 between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch (see figure 4.6). The exhibition translates the meaning of the Guswenta in an introduction as follows: “We are travelling on the river of life together, side by side. One side isn’t going to get ahead of the other; people in the ship aren’t going to try to steer the canoe; people in the canoe aren’t going to try to steer the ship.” Next, a four-minute documentary further explains the exhibition’s perspective on the Guswenta, which I shall consider now in some detail as it sets the tone for the entire exhibition. The film opens with two related claims that are as apt as they are surprising given the museum as a whole. A voice-over, narrated by Robert Redford, explains: “Nearly four hundred treaties between the US and American Indian Nations. They are the pages of an extraordinary story . . . the rise of a new great nation at the sacrifice of hundreds of others.” Shortly thereafter, Kevin Gover is shown to present the following statement: “In order to understand fully the American experience, you have to understand the relationship between the United States and the Indian Nations, how that relationship evolved right up to what it is today.” Taken together, the meaning of both statements is clear; a full understanding of US history, one that is complete and truthful, is only possible if one accepts that the rise of the United States is owed to “the sacrifice of hundreds” of other nations.

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Figure 4.6. Guswenta, the two-row wampum belt replica (2014).

This opening is noteworthy because the nature of this enormous sacrifice is never fully explored, neither in Nation to Nation, nor elsewhere in the museum. A few isolated examples are presented, but the extent of the sacrifice and the systematic structure of persecution is not explored in detail. Moreover, the victims of that sacrifice are not honored by a memorial space. However, already the word choice mitigates the explosive nature of the film’s opening statement. The voice-over promises an “extraordinary story” and speaks of a “great nation.” The adjective “extraordinary” is hardly appropriate for describing one of the most painful tragedies in human history, and it is questionable to call the United States “great” in a context referring to genocide. A nation that rises at the cost of hundreds of others might be powerful and mighty, but also ruthless, violent, and inhumane. The film further presents a naive, almost childlike understanding of relations between the United States and indigenous nations. It uses an animation to visualize the meaning of the Guswenta. The wampum belt transforms into two parallel waterways, one that carries a large ship and

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the other carrying a canoe. The voice-over repeats the explanation of the principle of mutual respect and noninterference, while the video depicts the failure of this principle by showing how the shadow of the much larger sailing ship is cast over the canoe. This is a euphemistic metaphor at best. To stay within the animation’s visual allegory, it would have been a more accurate depiction if the Western ship veered off its straight path and obliterated the canoe, killing at least some of its occupants. The video presents a depiction of beliefs about friendly mutual coexistence held by Native Americans at first, but the film does not show that such beliefs did not last long in most cases, given how it quickly became obvious that the new arrivals from Europe were not interested in noninterference.44 The exhibition returns repeatedly to the idea of the two-row metaphor of the wampum belt to describe episodes when the principle was violated. The exhibition concludes with the implicit suggestion that after hundreds of years of brutal oppression, often extreme, it could be possible to return to this state of original innocence and mutual respect without accounting for the pain of the past first. This is an unrealistic assumption given centuries of continuous violations of trust by the US government. Rebuilding trust between indigenous nations and the United States would take very long and could only begin after a successful process of reconciliation and restoration of justice. Another crucial narrative structural feature of the exhibition is the presentation of two viewpoints throughout, which represent the perspectives of the two parties who negotiated the treaties. This principle is introduced after the video through four panels on landownership, political leadership, language, and diplomatic traditions. In his exhibition review, Mark Weiner singles them out for praise to exemplify the exhibition’s “literary efficiency” and concludes: “European and native positions about each subject are given full and fair treatment in separate ‘Viewpoint’ columns.”45 Here, it is important to consider the context of the introductory video. The panels are presented just after the film, which imagined early encounters in a romantic light. As Susan Shown Harjo, guest curator of the exhibition, formulates it in the film, “These treaties really were made by people who wished each other well and who depended on each other. They didn’t want to see each other harmed.” Thus the Native and Western

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viewpoints that are presented for each case study are introduced as essentially of equal moral standing, which implicitly suggests that conflicts may have been simply a matter of incompatible legal viewpoints rather than treacherous conduct of one party. Such a perspective disregards the processes undergirding imperialism and colonization, which are based on an unequal balance of power and the subjugation of the colonized for economic gain and expansion of imperial power.46 The exhibition itself provides ample evidence for the inequality of the two opposing sides in moral terms, particularly in the section “Bad Acts, Bad Paper” on the removal period. Therefore, the exhibition’s narrative decision to present two equal viewpoints is all the more perplexing. While I appreciate the attempts at nuanced consideration of the negotiation around treaties, I question whether positing an original moment of reciprocal innocence is helpful when the encounter between Europeans and Native Americans was determined by colonization from the outset. The danger of this approach lies in the suggestion that the injustices of the past can be reduced to conflicting (but equal) epistemologies and incompatible communication. Furthermore, if it hadn’t been for some “bad acts” by untruthful actors, a peaceful coexistence would have been possible. This is misleading because the betrayal, exploitation, and forced removal that was visited on Native Americans cannot be divorced from the context of colonization, which is predicated on imbalance of power and, overall, cares little about viewpoints and worldviews of the subjugated. Another important aspect of the exhibition’s narrative sequencing is the juxtaposition of George Washington with Andrew Jackson. The titles of the two sections already prefigure the exhibition’s interpretation of each president’s effect on US–Native American relations: “Serious Diplomacy” and “Bad Acts, Bad Paper.” The negative perspective on Jackson is hardly surprising given his policy of “Indian Removal.” However, the appreciation of Washington raises some questions as it needs to be seen in the context of the National Mall and its symbolic connotation with regard to the exhibition’s representation of the first president and symbol of the nation’s origin. First, we need to consider how the exhibition presents Washington in the context of treaties. The introductory panel states that “the three trea-

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Figure 4.7. Presentation of George Washington in Nation to Nation.

ties in this section reflect good-faith bargaining and serious nation-tonation diplomacy.” The visual representation of Washington is significant. A large display shows John Trumbull’s painting of him from 1790, the year of the Muscogee Treaty (see figure 4.7). It shows Washington leaning casually on the saddle of a horse with his right arm. The painting is predominantly white due to his uniform and the white horse. In addition, a bright light illuminates his forehead. Washington is shown in an upright yet relaxed posture, his gaze fixed on the horizon, and his enormous height is emphasized relative to the horse. In short, the painting imagines Washington as a forthright, larger-thanlife leader with a strong vision guided by enlightened thought. This highly symbolic meaning is further underscored by the accompanying text next to it: “George Washington knew the cost of war and wanted to avoid it with diplomacy. International politics were on his mind.” The text concludes that the United States were keen on having the Haudenosaunee as

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friends. Thus, Washington is depicted as not just trustworthy but also as a peace-loving and diplomatic-minded friend of Native Americans. In front of the image, visitors encounter a display of ceremonial gifts including a George Washington peace medal from 1795. A panel explains: “George Washington started the practice of giving Indian leaders a medal bearing his image to represent his role as head of state in international relations.” The objects provide material evidence of Washington’s diplomatic skill and peaceful intentions, especially when contrasted with the objects displayed next to Jackson, a personal gun and a rifle, which were used to enforce the removal of the Potawatomi during the 1830s. The representation of Washington is completed by two related quotations that are displayed prominently. The first reads as follows: Here then is the security of the remainder of your lands. No State nor person can purchase your lands, unless at some public treaty held under the authority of the United States. The general government will never consent to your being defrauded. But it will protect you in all your just rights. George Washington to the Seneca Nation, 1790 Washington is presented through this quotation as the guarantor of the key demand of Native Americans’ entitlement to the continued use and occupation of their lands. Second, he offers an indefinite promise to protect all Native American rights. The second quotation confirms Washington’s own words through one of his Native American treaty partners, the Seneca diplomat and war chief John Abeel III, known as Cornplanter: When you gave us peace, we called you Father, because you promised to secure us in the possession of our lands. Do this, and, so long as the lands shall remain, that beloved name will live in the heart of every Seneca. Cornplanter to George Washington, 1790 It does not take long for the exhibition to admit that those promises were not kept. However, the section’s visual arrangement and narrative emphasis undermine this admission. The panels titled “Aftermath” are a very small component of the section and do not mention Washington

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at all. Two treaties are discussed that fall into Washington’s presidency, the Muscogee Treaty of 1790 and the Treaty of Canandaigua of 1794. The Muscogee Treaty is described as follows: “Both the Muscogee and the U.S. government achieved their objectives in the treaty that was negotiated,” and the Canandaigua Treaty is summarized: “Both the Haudenosaunee and the United States ceded land, and both gained important benefits in the 1794 treaty.” The descriptions of both treaties sound like perfect examples of win-win transactions. However, the afterlife of the treaties looks very different, as the exhibition details: “Within two years the Georgians and Muscogee were at war again. Within forty years the Muscogee had lost all their land in Georgia and Alabama.”47 The other treaty did not fare any better: “The United States and New York both ate away at the land the Treaty of Canandaigua had guaranteed the Haudenosaunee forever. Even the site of Cornplanter’s grave was flooded when the Army Corps of Engineers built the Kinuza Dam in the 1960s.” Thus the end result for both treaties was devastating for the Native Americans involved. Any benefits that they had derived from them were short-lived, and the promises were either wholly or mostly betrayed. The Muscogee were completely removed from their traditional homeland, and the Haudenosaunee lost the vast majority of their homeland except for small reservations representing a mere fraction of the area guaranteed in the 1794 treaty. Yet Washington’s positive depiction as an honest broker dominates this section. The depiction of George Washington in the exhibition and the museum at large is selective in yet another fashion. As Vincenti Carpio points out discussing the statue Allies in War, Partners in Peace (Edward Hlavka, 2004), which mirrors the depiction of the first president in Nation to Nation, the museum fails to point out that the United States went on to treat “these ‘allies’ as ‘conquered peoples,’ stealing their lands.”48 Even if the presentation of Washington’s role in the two treaties discussed is represented fairly, the overall effect of his impact as the central figure in the founding of the United States on Native Americans is not fully reflected here or elsewhere in the museum. For example, during the Revolutionary War, Washington ordered terror against the Haudenosaunee, “to lay waste all the settlements around. . . . Our future security will be in their inability to injure us . . . and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement

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they receive will inspire them.”49 Dunbar-Ortiz concludes that, quite in contrast to the exhibition’s section “Serious Diplomacy,” “Washington’s administration determined that only war, not diplomacy, would break up the Indigenous alliances.” Washington even resorted to terrorism to clear land “that could be sold to settlers,” providing “the primary revenue source for the new government.”50 This violent component of Washington’s policy is completely absent at the museum. One reason for the positive portrayal of George Washington is to present his section as a counterweight to the exhibition’s negative presentation of Andrew Jackson and the overall unfavorable representation of the US government in that section. Washington provides enough of a moral foundation to salvage a positive origin myth of the nation and its founding ideology. After all, the origin is important and the beginning was “good.” Moreover, the nation’s most prominent representative, the father of the nation and the most important national figure memorialized on the National Mall, is presented as faultless in his policy toward Native Americans. Thus, the exhibition integrates well with the national memory discourse of its context. It enables its coexistence within the discourse of the National Mall as it refrains from delivering a fatal blow to the national founding myth and the associated ideologies of liberation, freedom, and human rights. The NMAI echoes in this regard the memory of George Washington at the NMAAHC, where the first president’s practice of slavery is not explored. At the NMAI too, explicit criticism of George Washington remains taboo. The exhibition and the museum comes closest to a fundamental critique of US actions toward Native Americans in the section “Bad Acts, Bad Paper,” yet it stops short of calling them genocide or providing a more detailed account of the indigenous population decline following Jackson’s policies. While a graph is presented that charts the continuous decrease of the Native American population from over five million around 1492 to less than half a million around 1900, a detailed and comprehensive explanation of what these numbers meant for indigenous nations concerned is lacking. Moreover, the exhibition does not include an emotionally moving display that would present the horror experienced by individuals, a common exhibit in museums remembering similarly traumatic instances

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of collective violence. Before considering two such examples from the USHMM and the NMAAHC, I will first explore how the exhibition presents some of the most painful experiences in the history of US–Native American relations. The exhibition design of “Bad Acts, Bad Paper” contrasts with “Serious Diplomacy.” The visual focal point is a bust portrait of Andrew Jackson, below which his policy of removal is explained: “President Andrew Jackson advocated deporting all Indians east of the Mississippi to the West. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 made this drastic plan law. To implement it, the government used treaties.” The panel continues to explain that the government would attempt to make removal appear voluntary through treaties but would not shy away from using military force if necessary. In front of the panel is a display of Andrew Jackson’s personal pistol from 1840, which alludes to the use of force to implement removal and contrasts with the display of Washington’s peace medal in the preceding section. Above this visual arrangement, a quotation by Andrew Jackson is displayed in a large font: “What good man would prefer a country covered with forest and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms?” The quotation presents beliefs in white supremacy and the superiority of Western culture that were dominant at the time in driving removal policy.51 Yet here is a first example where the exhibition avoids an explicit approach to speak about genocide. Consider, for example, this quotation from Jackson’s Fifth Annual Message to Congress: “They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement, which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”52 While the “disappearance” here refers to voluntary or forced removal and not to genocide, ethnic cleansing and genocide are often related as the first usually precedes the latter and the forceful implementation of removal often causes a large number of deaths among victims. The exhibition includes the connection between forced relocation and collective violence through mise-en-scène, in contrast to the previous section.

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While opposite of Washington’s image is a display showing a selection of peace pipes, opposite of the Jackson portrait is a large text panel displaying excerpts from the journal of Jesse C. Douglass, an enrolling agent of the United States during the forced removal of the Potawatomi. A total of thirty-nine diary entries are displayed, covering the Trail of Death from September 4 to November 6, 1838. All deaths are highlighted through bold font. With the exception of five entries, all of them report at least one death, the vast majority of which are children. Behind the panel a gun is displayed with the explanation: “The militia units that enforced the removal of the Potawatomi in the 1830s used the Model 1816 musket.” This is the most impactful presentation of the suffering of Native Americans at the hand of the US government in the entire museum. It communicates clearly that death was a constant companion during the process of forced removal and that the most vulnerable members were the first victims, and it renders any pretense of Native American consent to removal absurd. The exhibition uses the Potawatomi Trail of Death as one of three case studies for the section on removal policy. The presentation admits that the treaties were no longer “dignified ceremonies” but instead “ruthless grabs for land and money.” Examples of businessmen who profited off the Potawatomi’s misfortune illustrate the profit motive behind the policies of Andrew Jackson. Two objects offer more detail about the pain caused by forced removal. A Potawatomi bag from 1830 displays spiritual beings, and the caption explains that the Potawatomi’s cosmology is tied to a sacred landscape. Second, a prescription stick from 1890 is adorned with schematic drawings of plants, and the associated text explains that the Potawatomi “lost knowledge of medicinal plants because so few grew on the Eastern plains.” Such detail is crucial for establishing the devastating consequences of forced removal. However, the exhibition on the Potawatomi is no more elaborate than any of the other treaties discussed in the exhibition, and thereby the crime of forced removal and cultural genocide is relativized. As is the case for all of the eight treaties, four text panels are presented, one each for land, negotiators, treaties, and aftermath, as well as two maps and two objects. This is hardly sufficient to present an effective narrative for communicating the tragic fate of the Potawatomi. Most importantly, the individuals mentioned are not

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introduced in any detail to allow empathy with victims, which limits the display’s affective impact. Moreover, the section does not include stories that would allow the visitor to understand the suffering of the individual through such a traumatic experience. The second example is a group of eighteen treaties with a large number of unidentified native villages in California. This section contains the most explicit quotations suggesting the notion of genocide in the exhibition without ever using the term in the interpretation. The first governor of California, Peter Hardeman Burnett, is quoted to have said that his government is ready to “make war upon the [Indians] which must of necessity be one of extermination.” Further, the Chico Courant newspaper is quoted as follows: “It is a mercy to the red devils to exterminate them, and a saving of many white lives. Treaties are played out—there is one kind of treaty that is effective—cold lead.” It is essential, in my view, to remember that calls for genocide existed at the time and were even widespread. It would also be important to at least attempt to provide some information on how common such calls for collective violence were. This would facilitate acceptance of collective responsibility for atrocities committed against Native Americans. If the blame is attributed to only a few “bad actors,” ideally limited to one immoral mastermind such as Andrew Jackson, acceptance of responsibility for crimes of the past becomes less likely. Ironically, the section on the California treaties does not present detailed information on what the adverse effects of the government’s policy were on the population. While it is stated that they lost most of their land, the “Aftermath” panel describes a victory for the indigenous communities as they sued for compensation after the treaties became public and won over $5 million in 1944. Furthermore, it is reported that Mission Indians won the right to operate casinos on a reservation that had been established in 1876 through a Supreme Court decision, which was also the landmark case that gave Native Americans the same right across the United States. The text concludes, “In this way, they struck gold, too.” This is followed by a graph that shows California’s Native population shrink from over 300,000 at 1770 to a low point of 15,377 in 1900, only to rise again to more than 350,000 in 2010. In the end, this section, which makes the most explicit references to genocide, does not offer any discussion of the term at

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all. The shocking decline in the population by almost 95 percent remains unexplored. If the Californian government and private actors caused this population decline, as the exhibition implies, it is puzzling that the term “genocide” is not considered. In 2017 Benjamin Madley dedicated a monograph to the Native American tragedy in California, aptly titled An American Genocide, exploring in great detail how “mass death in forced confinement on reservations, homicides, battles, and massacres also took thousands of lives and hindered reproduction.”53 In contrast to Madley’s view of the past, Nation to Nation leaves the visitor with an upbeat conclusion presenting successful court cases and an indigenous population rebound to the levels of 1770. That the population of the United States grew during the same time from just above two million to over 300 million is overlooked. Finally, the third case study in the “Bad Acts, Bad Papers” section presents an example of a Native American nation that used a treaty to negotiate successfully the right to return to their ancestral homeland after removal. This is the story of the Navajo, who were forced on the so-called Long Walk from their original homeland in Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado to the Bosque Redondo Reservation in New Mexico. The exhibition claims that Navajo chief Barboncito softened the heart of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who negotiated for the US government. While Sherman was determined to remove the Navajo and kill all who resisted at first, he ultimately was moved by the emotional plea of the Navajo after they had already been removed, as a text panel recounts: “The longing of Navajo people for their country was too strong for Sherman. ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘All people love the country where they were born and raised.’ He agreed to let the Diné return to a portion of their homeland.” Again, use of the Navajo is a puzzling choice for an exemplary case study as their ability to return is hardly representative of Native American nations subjected to forced removal. Given the three examples detailed above, the exhibition’s ultimate impression of the removal period imparted by the “Bad Acts, Bad Papers” section is on balance not as devastating as one might expect. There is one clear example of genocidal policy with the Trail of Death of the Potawatomi, but the narrative presentation is not compelling and the concept of genocide is not explored. The other two examples are framed with at least partially

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positive conclusions with the native population rebounding in California and the Navajo’s return to their homeland. This is hardly a representative cross-section of Native American history during the nineteenth century. For the vast majority of Native American nations the period of forced removal had no positive outcome at all, and for many it entailed a relentless tragedy causing lasting pain far beyond the event itself. To conclude this section, we shall briefly revisit in comparison two different examples from the previous chapters of remembering collective violence that entails a significant number of deaths due to oppression of one group by another. Both the USHMM and the NMAAHC use the following similar visual strategies as one way to remember the extent of the Holocaust and the Middle Passage, respectively. The Holocaust Museum etched the names of over five thousand Jewish communities that were destroyed by the Nazis into two glass walls of two hallways. Visitors of the main exhibition must traverse the entire length twice. The NMAAHC displayed the names of over four hundred slave ships onto the metal-clad walls of the exhibition on the Middle Passage. Again, anyone visiting the exhibition cannot but walk past those names. In both cases, the main feature of the visual design employs scale as an attempt to communicate the incomprehensible extent of the painful memory. In effect, the traumatic events and the associated pain are so large that the only way to accommodate them indoors is to literally cover the walls of buildings. Both visual installations become memorials to individual victim communities and speak at the same time about the scale of the suffering of the entire ethnic group. Both museums also dedicate a large-scale installation to one specific community of victims. The USHMM presents a three-story tower of photographs from one shtetl, Eishyshok. The NMAAHC dedicates an entire gallery to an exhibition of one slave ship, the São José, which includes several large artifacts salvaged from the wreckage as well as detailed documentation.54 The overall effect results from the combination of both, the intensive presentation of one victim community and the extensive visualization of all victim communities. Both cases are attempts to combine narrative and visual for communicating incomprehensible amounts of pain and suffering. The annihilation of the Native American population in the area of the United States from the moment of contact until the early

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twentieth century by over 95 percent should be represented with equally devastating effect. The exhibition on forced removal of Native Americans in the NMAI does not include a visualization comparable to those found at the USHMM or the NMAAHC, nor is it attempted anywhere else in the museum. I imagine a powerful visualization of all known indigenous nations’ names that lost homelands or suffered significant loss of life due to US policy, which would remember victims and could communicate the scale of pain at the same time. The section on the removal period concludes with a twelve-minute documentary film, “The ‘Indian Problem,’” which summarizes much of the information presented in the exhibition, adding some animation in the style of the opening film. Following the information-dense exhibition Nation to Nation, the film presents a welcome opportunity to sit down. Among the new elements introduced is a brief section on the Cherokee Trail of Tears. Combining voice-over with a survivor’s testimony, the section is effectively illustrated by animation of a family in a cold, snowy landscape and a trek of people. Particularly, the testimony by a woman who was eight years old at the time is powerful. She remembers that she carried her four-year-old brother out of fear that he would be killed if he could not continue to walk, as she had seen soldiers kill babies who were unable to walk on their own. A voice-over begins the section: “The most famous of these incidents was the Cherokee Nation’s Trail of Tears, but there were numerous other trails just as violent and just as crushing.” This statement begs the question why those other trails are not named in the film, the exhibition, or anywhere else in the museum. Only the example of the Potawatomi is presented. Despite emphasizing that there were other “trails,” the NMAI privileges the Cherokee Trail of Tears, which is the best-known example. The opportunity to introduce the other forced marches to the public and correct the false idea that the Trail of Tears was a singular event is missed. Including all known examples of forced removal is also imperative because all victims of such large-scale atrocities deserve to be remembered. After this section, toward the end of the film, the issue of genocide is finally raised. This is the only instant in the exhibition Nation to Nation

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and the only time in the entire museum that I noticed.55 First, Robert Redford’s voice-over declares: “Of the millions of Indian people that lived before the first colonists arrived, by the end of the nineteenth century only 250,000 remained.” This is exactly the kind of information that I am arguing should be unmissable to any visitor of the NMAI, or to the National Mall, not hidden in one sentence in a documentary. This sobering statement is followed by the NMAI director, Kevin Gover, who points to the devastating effects of removal on the affected societies: “The removal of a tribe was certain to destroy all of the things they knew about taking care of themselves, all of their medicines, all of their foods, everything about them had to change in order to survive. It can only be understood as an act of destruction.” The two previous statements in combination leave only one conclusion. In the following statement the term “genocide” finally appears. However, Susan Shown Harjo, the exhibition’s curator herself, introduces the term in a surprising manner: “When you move a people from one place to another, when you displace people, when you wrench people from their homelands, wasn’t that genocide? We don’t make the case that there was genocide. We know there was. Yet here we are.” This is a perplexing statement. The paradox might function on a poetic level in the sense that it would be unnecessary to make the case in support of a claim that is self-evident. Or the paradox could be understood to mean that it would be undignified treatment of the victims to argue over legal technicalities and terminology in face of the suffering that unquestionably occurred. Perhaps Harjo refers to the suspicion that proving the case of genocide would be pointless and would bring no benefit to the Native American community? However, in the context of an exhibition on Native American history with a particular focus on how the US government treated Native Americans, the refusal to even discuss the term seriously is questionable. Genocide is too grave of a collective historical trauma to be ignored and the victim’s suffering must be acknowledged. As discussed in the introduction, the collective violence of such historic events affects descendants of victims over many generations.56 The only remedy possible is to acknowledge and remember what happened followed by addressing psychological and material grievances as much as possible. The

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discussion over the term might be complex and contentious, as it has been among historians, but that should not prevent the debate, least of all in a museum dedicated to the remembrance of Native American past. The film then ends with another disconcerting narrative choice. The voice from the Cherokee Trail of Tears testimonial reappears: “We took the fires with us, we took the embers along. Then, when we got to Oklahoma, we rekindled the fire. Old home or new home, it is the same fire.” It appears that the filmmakers wanted to conclude with an uplifting counterpoint given the depressing content of the film. Yet given the importance of the ending for any narrative, this choice threatens to upend the meaning of the entire film, and thus the whole exhibition. While Harjo just referred to forced removal in the United States as genocide, now the voice-over states, “Old home or new home, it is the same fire,” as if the removal essentially did not matter. The statement is strong not just because it concludes the film but also because it is said by the sole testimonial voice from a victim’s perspective. We know from Holocaust remembrance that no one has more credibility to speak about genocide than the victim.57 It is hard to dismiss the woman who was forced on the Trail of Tears as a child and her claim that removal did not affect that which is most important. Two additional short sections of the exhibition are directly related to cultural genocide.58 They are called “Civilization,” dealing with forced assimilation and “Slaughter of the Bison,” detailing the decimation of the bison population on the Great Plains of the Midwest. Each of these sections makes strong arguments that government policies threatened the existence of Native American nations, which gives further pause to the fact that the NMAI does not discuss genocide and does not include a memorial to honor indigenous victims of US government persecution and oppression. “Civilization: Assault on Indian Nationhood” introduces some of the policies that the US Congress pursued from 1871 onward. The introductory panel clearly describes the position of the US government as pursuing cultural genocide: “Even well-meaning advocates of American Indians believed that the modern world had no room for Native Nations. The rights of Indian sovereignty could scarcely be imagined by policy makers of the time. They believed that Native Nations had to be absorbed into an

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American notion of civilization at whatever cost. To break down Indian resistance, officials used ruthless methods.” The main example presented for these methods is the forced removal of Native American children from their families and isolation from their Native culture in boarding schools. Using testimonial from victims of this policy, the exhibition explains how it was carried out and its intended effects. For example, Lone Wolf (Blackfoot) relates that the children were removed by soldiers against their will and were deprived of all signs of their Native cultures. Frederick Peso (Mescalero Apache) is quoted as follows: “The surest way to kill a race is to kill its religion and its ideals. . . . This is to kill a soul of a people. And when the spirit is killed, what remains?” A juxtaposition of two group photos showing Chiricahua Apache students before and after their transformation at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School during the 1880s provides a powerful visual illustration. A photo from 1884 shows a group of individuals with different dresses and long hairstyles customary in Native American culture. The second photo from 1886 shows the same students in uniform, all wearing the same short haircut. Images and text for the section on “Civilization” could not be clearer in presenting the US government’s policy as an intention to exterminate Native American culture. The next section, “Slaughter of the Bison,” provides a second example of the US government’s attempt to force Native Americans to give up their way of life. Restricting Native Americans’ traditional food sources was seen as an effective way to force Native Americans to become sedentary and adopt a lifestyle of farming. Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano is quoted: “The civilization of the Indian is impossible while the buffalo remains upon the plains.” While the section is explicit about the intention behind the widespread killing of wild buffalo and the government’s encouragement of the practice, it does not provide any detail on the extent of the slaughter or its effect on the Native population. No estimates are provided about how many buffalo were killed or how many Native Americans were affected by the slaughter. This would be essential information to understanding the extent of the crime. The exhibition’s concluding section “Termination: The Turning Point” about the US government’s policy to end recognition of tribes as sovereign nations is presented as a pivot point in Native American history.

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The section’s basic argument is that US government policies to end tribal recognition galvanized Native American resistance, which ultimately succeeded in bringing about a reversal of federal policy during the Nixon administration, following the cultural shift of the 1960s. The introductory panel lists the elements of “termination” policy as aiming to “end U.S. treaty obligations, dissolve reservations, and end federal recognition of Native Nations.” The key to successful resistance and to returning to Native American self-determination is seen in the treaties of the past: “In the late 1900s, Indians began using treaties as powerful tools to turn the tables and demand a return to the balanced, Two-Row way.” A prominent quotation from the Declaration of Indian Rights from 1954 declares that reservations, in most cases the result of treaties, are presented as one key to this goal. While a list of terminated “tribes” and bands from 1953 to 1964 is presented, a list of all nations that no longer exist on the territory of the United States is not presented in the exhibition or elsewhere in the museum. The list of terminated “tribes” is displayed in a tiny font on a geographic map. The exhibition does not make an effort to present the names in a manner that could serve as a memorial to the lost nations, languages, and cultures. Conclusion The narrative rhetoric of the NMAI’s historical exhibitions charts a distinctly different path from those at the NMAH, the USHMM, and the NMAAHC. Especially in its three inaugural exhibitions, there is no linear teleology where history is imagined to progress to a better place for Native Americans. Instead, the narrative structures could be described as rhizomatic. David Heckman applies the concept of Deleuze and Guattari as a metaphor for cultural systems: “The rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines and looks for the originary source of ‘things’ and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those ‘things.’”59 The NMAI resists a cause-and-effect chain of events and instead presents indigenous past and culture as a multitude of experiences organized by indigenous nations. There are shared connections such as geographies, cultural exchanges, or

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histories of colonization. These relations find expression in the narrative structures of the historical exhibitions. For example, Our Peoples features general sections on colonization or collective violence shared across the Americas, which connects sub-exhibitions on individual nations’ histories. The exhibition presents a section of a much larger rhizome that includes all indigenous nations across the Americas. In that sense, the exhibition as the rhizome “has no beginning or end,” in the words of Deleuze and Guattari.60 This narrative structure also applies to Our Universe, Our Lives, and the presentation Who We Are. In the historical exhibition, the painful experience of contact and subsequent colonization are two events among many. This contrasts with the representation of the slave trade at the USHMM, which is presented as a rupture of the time line and the beginning of the African American struggle for freedom. Likewise, at the NMAH and the USHMM, the founding of the United States is presented as a milestone in history that begins the process toward freedom. History splits into two parts, before and after the United States. At the NMAI, the painful past of colonization or the imperial expansion of the United States across the continent are not pivotal junctures on a linear time line, they are part of a much larger interconnected structure of events that may or may not be included in the section of the rhizomatic narrative that is selected for display. This narrative rhetoric allows the museum to implement its focus on survivance because it makes memory of Native American genocide in the manner of memory of slavery at the USHMM impossible. The imagination of Native American past in a rhizomatic fashion precludes representation of colonization or genocide as a singular disruption of history. From November 2015 until September 2016, the NMAI showed a retrospective titled Kay Walking Stick: An American Artist. The title of the exhibition already raises the question of Native American identity, suggesting that the works of Kay Walking Stick would not merely concern indigenous issues but would speak to the American nation as a whole. Indeed, a central work of that exhibition addressed the question of Native American genocide, one of the key instances of collective violence at the foundation of the nation. Walking Stick’s 1991 painting Where Are the Generations? is a diptych consisting of two equal-sized squares (see figure 4.8). The right square depicts a landscape suggestive of the American Southwest, while

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the left side depicts a circle in front of a dark blue background, surrounded by curved lines. The circle, which seems to be receding or falling into an abyss, likewise depicts an empty landscape with murky waters and clouds. Barely legible, within or behind the clouds, is a text written in copper: “In 1492 we were 30 million. Now we are 2 million. Where are the children? Where are the generations? Never born.” This powerful artwork plainly states the vast tragedy of American history through rhetorical questions about the genocide that Native Americans suffered since contact with European colonizers. The accusation of genocide is implicit in the bleak juxtaposition of the numbers “30” and “2” and in the question about the absent generations of Native Americans that were never born. The systemic adverse effects on Native populations and culture resulting from colonization and US expansion form the great void at the center of the inaugural permanent exhibitions of the NMAI, as Vincenti Carpio explains: Conspicuously absent from the museum’s presentation is a clear critique of colonization and its impacts on Indigenous lifeways, religions, and cultures. Although sections in the museum mention colonialism and cultural interpreters mention colonization, a clear sense of who the colonizers are is lacking. As an absent presence, it does not disturb the preconceived notions of different publics and the American historical memory. Yet, while the exhibits’ focus on survival illustrates the resiliency and continuation of Indigenous peoples, the lack of historical context begs the question, Survival from what?61 The devastation brought about by colonization and subsequent nationstates on the indigenous populations across the Americas was not clearly stated, let alone explored in detail in any of the permanent or temporary exhibitions of the first or second iteration. The profoundly disturbing scale on which Native populations were decimated and cultures disappeared is not explored in the museum. A universally accepted number of Native American victims does not exist because the estimates vary widely in the literature.62 However, historians do not debate that Native Americans suffered unimaginable collective violence through European colonization, that populations declined precipitously, and that many languages and

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Figure 4.8. Where Are the Generations? Kay Walking Stick (1991, 24 × 48 inches, oil on canvas and wood panel with copper). Photo by Beckett Logan. Reproduced courtesy of Kay Walking Stick.

cultures were violently eradicated in that process. The NMAI would be a place to unambiguously communicate the scale of the crime prominently in a way that cannot be missed by any visitor. In addition, while the application of the term “genocide” to Native American history continues to be controversial, it should at least be discussed since it is increasingly embraced by historians and by significant voices from within the Native American community.63 The term “genocide” must not be hidden within a single statement of a short film or in a single work of art in an exhibition that was shown for less than one year. In summary, the NMAI’s commitment to survivance, reflected in its narrative and visual rhetoric, is in conflict with memory of Native American genocide. Consequently, there is also no nonnarrative memorial space dedicated to the victims of that genocide at the NMAI, in contrast to the USHMM. There, such memory is the core mission, which is also evident in the USHMM’s main exhibition and its Hall of Remembrance. While the NMAAHC certainly devotes much more narrative and visual rhetoric to the memory of collective violence of the slave trade, slavery, and Jim Crow, it also includes no memorial to the victims of collective violence. As discussed in the introduction, the burden of this memory by no means falls on the NMAI alone. However, as with the NMAAHC, as long as such

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memory remains suppressed on the National Mall, the NMAI presents the only hope for breaking this silence. The following conclusion will imagine how such memory of collective violence in US history could be visualized and remembered outside the walls of the museums in plain sight on the National Mall.

conclusion looking back, moving forward

But to be honest, as an African American, I’m tired of mourning. I’m tired of carrying the burden. But what I realize is that the challenge for all of us is, this is a time for America to finally confront its tortured racial past. Lonnie G. Bunch, “Meet the Press,” June 7, 2020

Imagine a national memorial dedicated to the memory of America’s painful past on the National Mall, a memorial that would remember and honor the victims of America’s rise to become the world’s dominant nation. We don’t have to merely imagine what such a memorial could look like since the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (NMPJ) and the complementary Legacy Museum opened on April 26, 2018, in Montgomery, Alabama (see figure C.1). The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which proposed and built the memorial and museum, describes it as “the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved Black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence.”1 Inspired by the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin and the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, the memorial sits on a six-acre site near the center of the city. It occupies roughly the same area as the World War II Memorial.

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Figure C.1. National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Photo reproduced courtesy of Equal Justice Initiative ⁄ Human Pictures.

To facilitate a thought experiment for this conclusion, let’s picture a memory site like the NMPJ on the grounds between the Washington Monument and the World War II Memorial. How would such a memorial impact the memory of painful past on the National Mall? How would it change the national imagination of that space? Before answering these questions, let me explore the memory discourse at the NMPJ. Acknowledging the Pain on the Mall The NMPJ combines sculptures, art, design, and quotations to create a singular memorial site for the victims of white supremacy in the United States. Near the entrance, visitors encounter a haunting group of lifesize figurative sculptures depicting a group of seven chained enslaved Africans in agonizing poses (see figure C.2). The piece by Ghanaian sculptor Kwame Akoto-Bamfo features horrifying detail such as the tortured facial expression of an enslaved mother who is carrying her baby.2 The centerpiece of the site is a memorial square consisting of 805 hanging steel rectangles resembling the shape of coffins for each county in which a confirmed lynching took place. The counties and the names of lynching victims are inscribed onto each cuboid (see figure C.3). The abstract memorial design presents a visualization of a comprehensive study conducted by the EJI documenting well over four thousand lynchings that oc-

Figure C.2. Detail of Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s Nkyinkyim installation, which depicts a slave coffle. Photo reproduced courtesy of Equal Justice Initiative.

Figure C.3. Each county with recorded lynchings is represented by one of the 805 steel rectangular cuboids that feature inscriptions of the names of victims together with the dates of their murders. Photo reproduced courtesy of Equal Justice Initiative ⁄ Human Pictures.

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curred in twelve southern states.3 The metal columns suspended from the ceiling echo the visuals of lynchings. Some of the lynchings are briefly described, and the trivial reasons for the public murders such as “alleged robbery” or “walking behind the wife of his white employer” make the experience only more unbearable.4 The overall design is reminiscent of the Berlin Holocaust memorial. Like the Berlin memorial, the NMPJ presents a visualization of the scale of suffering and pain. Currently, there is no equivalent memorial on the National Mall to remember the collective violence committed against either African Americans or Native Americans. The NMPJ’s central memorial square features a large-font dedication to the victims, which acknowledges what happened and states why it should be remembered: For the hanged and beaten. For the shot, drowned, and burned. For the tortured, tormented, and terrorized. For those abandoned by the rule of law. We will remember. With hope because hopelessness is the enemy of justice. With courage because peace requires bravery. With persistence because justice is a constant struggle. With faith because we shall overcome. The inscription makes explicit the acknowledgment that is implicit in the memorial’s visual design. In a video recorded at the occasion of the memorial’s opening, Josephine Bolling McCall, the daughter of lynching victim Elmore Bolling, comments on the importance of acknowledgment for the descendants of victims: “We have not been acknowledged—my family—as victims of a lynching, and this is the first opportunity that someone will actually acknowledge the terrorism that we faced. . . . It’s important that the people to whom the injustices have been given are actually being recognized, and at least some measure—some measure—of relief is sought through discussion.”5 McCall concludes by expressing hope that the acknowledgment could contribute to improving race relations in the United States. The memorial’s acknowledgment of painful past is expanded in detail in the adjacent museum complementing the NMPJ, called

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the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration (TLM). The museum’s main exhibition documents the painful trajectory of African American history from enslavement, to the segregation and racial terrorism of Jim Crow, to economic and legal racial inequality, and it concludes in the present with the era of mass incarceration. Critic Campbell Robertson commented in his review of the NMPJ simply, “There is nothing like this in the country.”6 Certainly there is no comparable memorial space dedicated to painful history of the United States anywhere in Washington, DC. In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, Lonnie G. Bunch expressed the exhaustion of the African American community of carrying the burden to remember and remind others of their pain in the past. Yet he also acknowledged that the need for the nation to remember is as urgent as ever.7 Adding a memorial like the NMPJ to the Mall would lift the burden of remembering America’s painful past from the shoulders of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). The moral imperative to remember injustice is on the entire nation. Perpetrators or descendants of perpetrators cannot change the past, but they can accept the responsibility to acknowledge and remember what happened. As long as they refuse to accept that responsibility, the victims or descendants of victims have little choice but to take on themselves the arduous work of keeping the memory alive. The closest approximation to the NMPJ and TLM in the context of the National Mall is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). As discussed in the introduction, Holocaust memory in general has become a template for remembering crimes against humanity after World War II. Holocaust survivors such as Elie Wiesel have established an ethics and practice of remembering the horrors of the past. The USHMM has introduced a standard of how the narrative about horrific crimes against humanity can be presented in a museum. Its permanent exhibition occupies 36,000 square feet and is more than three times the size of the entire TLM. Consequently, it tells the brief history of the Holocaust in much more detail, exhibiting many more objects and visual displays than any other exhibition about painful memory in the country.8 Of course, the USHMM acknowledges a crime committed “over there,”

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by a different nation, Nazi Germany, and integrates seamlessly with the patriotic discourse of the National Mall by framing the United States as liberator, as argued in chapter 2. The NMAAHC likewise is committed to memory of painful past in its historical exhibition belowground. Especially the exhibitions on slavery and Jim Crow fully admit to the atrocities that happened on US soil. In its narrative and visual strategies, the museum follows in several ways the exhibition template of the USHMM. However, as argued in chapter 4, the NMAAHC also integrates with the larger national ideologies of the Mall by emphasizing the ideals of liberation and freedom, by presenting a “rising up” narrative about African American history and by suggesting a comforting sense of closure regarding the dark past of racial discrimination. Integrating painful African American past with the National Mall is achieved at the cost of minimizing the reach of past injustice and pain into the present. By contrast, the NMAI does not remember collective violence in a way that would be comparable to either the USHMM, the NMAAHC, or the NMPJ and TLM. As detailed in the previous chapter, the NMAI does not present a clear picture of the extent of pain in Native American history by emphasizing, for example, statistics about victims, which is a matter of course for Holocaust memory and is also adapted in part by the NMAAHC. The NMAI employs few objects or other visual means to communicate the horror of what occurred, as is done extensively at the USHMM, the NMAAHC, and NMPJ. The key explanation is the NMAI’s determination to emphasize survivance. Further, the museum’s initial decision to avoid linear, expert-curated historical exhibitions precluded narrative rhetoric analogous to the NMAAHC. The NMAI’s justified attempt to “decolonize the museum,” to use Amy Longtree’s phrase, resulted in a double bind.9 On the one hand, the museum has not curated an exhibition presenting a clear account of collective violence endured by indigenous peoples in the Americas. Due to the complexity of that history, which involves hundreds of indigenous nations in North America alone, such an exhibition would have had to narrow and simplify in order to communicate effectively. It would have been impossible to even approximate representing the multitude of perspectives on suffering in the Native American past. On the

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other hand, the unconventional narrative structures especially of the museum’s first iteration (for example, in Our Peoples) and the narrower focus of the second iteration (for example, on treaties in Nation to Nation) of exhibitions were not suited for emotionally impactful storytelling. Certainly, some painful chapters of Native American history are presented, but no exhibition at the NMAI has attempted to emulate the detail and scale of the pain depicted in the two aforementioned museums. It is not surprising, then, that the question of genocide, whether understood literally or in the sense of a cultural genocide, is barely mentioned at the NMAI. Just as it is difficult to imagine a site like the NMPJ on the National Mall, a serious exploration of genocide on US soil is not yet possible on the Mall because it is incompatible with its dominant discourse of American innocence and benevolence. The NMAAHC manages to circumnavigate this conundrum by integrating its horrific histories of pain with the imagination of the United States as an agent of liberty (liberation) and progress toward freedom. Acknowledging Native American genocide as a precondition of the United States’ existence would challenge this national imagination at the core. Artistic practice could present a third way outside the binary of linear and postmodern narrative for memory of painful past on the Mall. The examples of Kay Walking Stick’s painting on genocide discussed in chapter 4 or the sculpture of Kwame Akoto-Bamfo capturing the horror of slavery at the NMPJ show how artists have explored a visual language for representing extreme experiences that are impossible to capture with narrative alone. The counter-monuments by Edgar Heap of Birds and Sam Durant present other interesting examples.10 Durant’s conceptual piece Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington D.C. (2005) directly engages memory on the National Mall. It imagines relocating thirty memorials from around the country dedicated to the remembrance of casualties from the “Indian Wars” and arranging them around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and on the lawn in front of the Washington Monument. Durant’s proposal rests on two considerations fundamental to my study. First, it is important to bring remembrance of painful past from the periphery to the center on the National Mall. Second, remembering the nation’s pain on the National Mall would change the meaning of

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existing memory sites and “activate a dialogue between the well-known memorials adjacent to it,” especially with the Washington Monument, since several of Durant’s suggested memorials are also obelisks.11 Following such examples of contemporary art, the NMAI could commission artists to capture and communicate the pain in Native American history, which should also be displayed outside of the museum in the public spaces of the National Mall since the vast majority of visitors to the Mall do not enter the museum. Following Kirk Savage’s suggestion, such memory sites could be organized as temporary exhibitions, allowing for many attempts to solve the paradox of representing the unimaginable.12 Perhaps, over time, one or more particularly successful works would emerge, which could eventually be installed permanently. In any case, without acknowledging painful past first, as the NMPJ forcefully demonstrates, the important steps of honoring the victims and linking the past with the present cannot even be imagined. Naming the Pain, Honoring the Victims Once the pain of the past has been acknowledged, remembering and honoring the victims follows naturally. A Holocaust museum without any spaces dedicated to the memory of victims is not imaginable. I have called such memory spaces nonnarrative spaces to distinguish them from the museums’ narrative exhibitions detailing the pain of victims. Such nonnarrative spaces are often minimally designed, demand silence, and include ritualistic elements such as the option to light a candle. They invite reflection, prayer, or meditation. Thus, they resemble sacred spaces as they are found in many religious or spiritual traditions. The NMPJ features several reflection spaces. One is located within the central memorial square (see figure C.4). The square’s sparse design recalls the Hall of Remembrance of the USHMM and the Contemplative Court of the NMAAHC. As in the USHMM, the reflection space is explicitly dedicated to victims of racial terror, as a wall inscription proclaims: “Thousands of African Americans are unknown victims of racial terror lynchings whose deaths cannot be documented, many whose names will never be known. They are all honored here.” Similar to the Contemplative

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Figure C.4. Nonnarrative memorial space with inscription honoring victims. Photo reproduced courtesy of Equal Justice Initiative.

Court, the space features streaming water, which flows down a black wall. In one decisive aspect the NMPJ’s nonnarrative space differs from that of the NMAAHC as the latter is not dedicated to the memory of victims but celebrates leaders and their ideas about liberation and progress. Surprisingly, the NMAI features no indoor reflective memorial space. The NMAI’s first and only memorial is the National Native American Veterans Memorial, which opened in November 2020. It is dedicated to the memory of Native American veterans who served in the United States military, while for more than a century many Native Americans fought against the country.13 At the same time, the countless Native American victims of colonization and US imperial expansion remain without a memorial space on the Mall. The Native American Veterans Memorial further adds to the present militarization of the National Mall and reflects the requirement of integrating memory of painful past with the Mall’s dominant patriotic discourse. It also echoes the emphasis of African American military history in the exhibitions We Return Fighting and Double Victory of the NMAAHC. As alluded to previously, none of the museums discussed in this book features a memorial honoring victims of painful histories in the public

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space outside of the museums. Such a memory site in the public space would be crucial for two reasons. First, without such a memorial on the National Mall, the painful chapters remain quarantined inside the NMAAHC and the NMAI. In 2019, about 8 percent of visitors to the National Mall visited the NMAAHC, and less than 4 percent visited the NMAI.14 Thus only a small minority visits either museum. What is more, many of those who are not interested in visiting those two museums are likely most in need of being reminded of America’s painful past, whereas many who visit, for example, in the case of African Americans, hardly require a reminder of their ancestors’ hardships. Therefore, it would be essential that national pain is remembered, and victims are honored beyond the walls of the museums. Second, a memorial to victims on the National Mall would validate the importance of a particularly painful chapter in US history, as any permanent installation on the Mall requires de facto endorsement by the US government. Such a memorial would come as close as possible to expressing a national consensus about the past. Critics have rightfully warned against a proliferation of monuments, especially victim memorials dedicated to the suffering of specific groups. If one victimized group is honored with a memorial, others are sure to follow demanding the same. Moreover, too many memorials could produce memorial fatigue and be counterproductive. As mentioned, Kirk Savage has even called for a moratorium to building any new permanent memorials at all.15 Generally, I sympathize with such calls for restraint at central and overburdened locations. After all, space at the center is limited, and emphasis of what is displayed is in danger of being diluted. Still, in select cases exceptions are not just warranted but must be made. One example of a justified exception is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe located next to the Brandenburg Gate and in sight of the Reichstag, the German parliament. The Holocaust was not just one more horrific event in German history. It represented a break in modern history itself, a liminal event that impacted the constitution of the successor nations to Nazi Germany. Faced with unspeakable crimes against humanity in its own history, first in West Germany and then in unified Germany, Holocaust memory gradually became part of a national public discourse. This evolution ultimately made it possible that, in 1999, a decisive majority of the German parliament could vote in favor of build-

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ing a major Holocaust memorial in its own vicinity and one of the nation’s most central locations. In the case of the United States, two chapters in its painful past justify an exception for inclusion on the National Mall: atrocities committed against Native Americans and against African Americans. They are what theologian Jim Wallis has called “America’s original sin.” Wallis remembers a backlash to a sentence he first wrote in a cover article of Sojourners in 1987: “The United States of America was established as a white society, founded upon the near genocide of another race and then the enslavement of yet another.” Receiving overwhelming condemnation and support at the same time, Wallis rejected both, calling his sentence merely “a historical statement of the facts.” He explained the necessity of this simple acknowledgment drawing on Christian theology: “There will be no superficial or merely political overcoming of our racial sins—that will take a spiritual and moral transformation as well. Sin must be named, exposed, and understood before it can be repented of.”16 Why should “America’s original sin” receive preferential treatment in the nation’s memory? At risk of stating the obvious, the United States could not have developed in the way that it has without the displacement of most Native Americans, including the complete disappearance of some nations, large-scale forced removal of populations, occupation and exploitation of previously used lands, and cultural genocide. Without those events, the United States could not exist in the form it exists today geographically or economically. Likewise, the crime of slavery and subsequent racial discrimination deserves recognition because it made a crucial contribution to the nation’s economy starting even before the Founding era. In addition, the atrocities committed during capture, the Middle Passage, chattel slavery, and segregation stand out in US history regarding the cruelty and the scale of the crime. In a sense the US government has already confirmed the special status of African American and Native American history by endorsing the establishment of the NMAI and the NMAAHC on the National Mall. Yet, following Wallis’s argument, more is needed. The “original sin” should be acknowledged publicly to remember the victims, for the sake of their descendants, and for a chance to heal the nation. A national memorial would signify a national consensus about the past be-

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cause it could not be established without bipartisan support of Congress. It would at the same time strengthen that consensus given the number of visitors each year and the symbolic importance of the Mall to the nation. Once the atrocity is named as expression of acknowledgment and apology, it is still not sufficient. In Wallis’s theology, repentance “is about turning completely around and going in a whole new direction.”17 In secular terms this would mean fundamental reform to fight structural racism and a willingness to address past injustice in a comprehensive and meaningful way, as the NMPJ forcefully demands. This would require a broad program concerning all aspects of structural inequality that is linked to the painful past. Enduring Pain: Linking the Past to the Present The NMJP’s website gives a straightforward answer to the motivation behind remembering painful histories. It asks, “Why build a memorial to victims of racial terror?” and answers that the Equal Justice Initiative “believes that publicly confronting the truth about our history is the first step towards recovery and reconciliation.”18 This answer captures succinctly what I argue in this book about memory of painful past on the National Mall. Throughout my reading of memory on the Mall, I was interested in enduring pain, that is, pain that is lingering, that is rooted in the past but continues to adversely affect people today. The NMPJ emphasizes the present by connecting past racial terror to structural discrimination today. In fact, alleviating present racial inequity is the primary mission of the EJI, and remembrance is only a means to that end: “The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.”19 The NMPJ lives up to this mission in two important ways. First, the memorial space charts a path from the past to the present, leading from slavery (the Kwame Akoto-Bamfo installation), to segregation and lynching (the central memorial square), to structural racism in the criminal justice system, expressed by Hank Willis Thomas’s sculpture Rise Up (see figure C.5). The sculpture is a multilayered piece inspired by

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Figure C.5. Hank Willis Thomas’s sculpture Rise Up at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Photo reproduced courtesy of Equal Justice Initiative ⁄ Human Pictures.

a 1967 photograph of Ernest Cole showing miners during a medical examination in South Africa.20 At the same time, the raised hands of the figures refer to present injustice in the United States by alluding to the gesture and the slogan “Hands up, don’t shoot,” which originated during protests in response to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 19, 2014. Subsequently, the gesture and slogan featured prominently during protests of the Black Lives Matter movement that spread globally in 2020. Thus, Rise Up combines references to 1960s South African apartheid and a contemporary protest movement to comment on systemic racial discrimination within US law enforcement today. As the Black bodies in the sculpture appear to be drowning, the work makes a strong statement about the deadly threat of structural racism in the United States. Referring to “beautiful memorials to presidents and to victims and fallen soldiers” on the National Mall while overwhelmingly Black victims of gun violence are being forgotten, Thomas has criticized the nation’s remembrance discourse at the center.21 Rise Up at the NMPJ is an effective response to correct this omission.

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Second, the adjacent TLM emphasizes in its historical narrative the continuity from the past to the present. At the entrance, visitors are reminded of the building’s history as it is prominently explained on a wall: “You are standing on a site where enslaved people were warehoused.” The detailed historical exhibition begins with the kidnapping of Africans and leads all the way to racial discrimination today. As EJI director Bryan Stevenson puts it: “We want people to understand, there is this line from slavery to this racial bias and discrimination that we see today.”22 The exhibition explains how a racial hierarchy was introduced to justify slavery, which subsequently continued during segregation as racial terrorism and produced transgenerational poverty. While progress was made during the civil rights era, racial prejudice survived and manifested, for example, in a biased criminal justice system. Ultimately, the mission of the EJI and the museum is to initiate a process of truth and reconciliation today. As Stevenson said, echoing Wallis, national pain “cannot be lifted until we shine a light of truth on the destructive violence that shaped our nation.”23 On the National Mall, the link between histories of national pain and today’s pain is for the most part still overlooked. While the NMAI embraces social justice in its mission, only the USHMM connects memory of past pain with the call for action in the present. The museum’s exhibitions on present-day genocides emphasize one of the most urgent imperatives of the Holocaust: “Never again!” The museum strives to educate the public about recent genocides and about “what they can do to prevent these atrocities in the future.”24 The museum seeks impact by asking visitors to sign a pledge of action to reduce the threat of genocide in the future. In contrast to the NMPJ and the USHMM, the museums on the National Mall dedicated to US history neglect the linkage between past pain and inequities of today. The National Museum of American History (NMAH) abdicates its responsibility and largely relegates the dark chapters of African American and Native American history to the NMAI and the NMAAHC. As I have argued above and in the previous chapters, those museums either lack a comprehensive account of past persecution (NMAI) or attempt to integrate it within an uplifting narrative of national progress (NMAAHC). As discussed in chapter 3, the NMAAHC pays little attention to structural racism in the United States today such as extreme wealth inequality or

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racial discrimination in the legal system. Consequently, the connection between racism of the past and inequities of the present remains largely hidden. Likewise, the NMAI refers only sporadically to the existential challenges faced by many Native Americans today, such as health disparities or extreme poverty. The museum does not explain how contemporary suffering in the Native American community results from centuries of painful experiences. Changing Memory, Changing the National Imagination In conclusion, let me return to the thought experiment of picturing a national memorial to painful past on the National Mall. I would like to end with a few preliminary thoughts on why such a memorial on the National Mall is necessary and how it would impact the national imagination as currently presented on the Mall. The NMPJ surpassed the most optimistic projections and attracted some 400,000 visitors in its first year.25 While such memorials throughout the country are necessary to alter the national consensus about its painful past, they are not sufficient. They cannot replace an equivalent statement on the National Mall, which is visited by over 25 million visitors each year.26 Equally important as the amount of visitors is the symbolic significance of presence on the National Mall, which could only be realized after extensive public debate. Distributed memory at the periphery precedes memory at the center. It is a required precursor of inclusion at the nation’s memorial core. Still, acknowledgment at the center remains indispensable as an expression of national agreement about the past. It would indicate and contribute to a political will that would be necessary to begin the difficult task of addressing foundational grievances rooted in US history, including reparations for slavery and the return of treaty lands to Native Americans.27 A memory space like the NMPJ on the National Mall would fundamentally transform its memorial landscape.28 Currently, the Mall reflects militarism as the core of the national imagination. As discussed before, Erika Doss has argued that the National World War II Memorial shifted the meaning of the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, which now “serve as militarized monumental

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bookends” to the World War II Memorial.29 The three main monuments along the Mall’s central axis reflect America’s celebration of its military power as perhaps the last remaining consensus in an increasingly fragmented nation. Adding a memorial dedicated to the remembrance of America’s painful past would fundamentally alter the expression of the national imagination on the National Mall. First, it would impact the meaning of the existing built environment surrounding it. While the Washington Monument would remain at the center, a remembrance of slavery next to it would modify its meaning. In addition to George Washington’s military and political achievements, it could no longer be ignored that he too embodied the nation’s original sin as a slaveholder. The Washington Monument would then also represent the fundamental paradox inherent in the founding of the nation, which proclaimed the ideals of liberty and individual human rights for some yet allowed the institution of slavery to continue. The NMAAHC’s reevaluation of the Founding era would move beyond the museum’s walls into the open. That critique would also be significantly expanded to include the nation’s most important Founding Father, fundamentally changing memory of the nation’s origin itself. A monument like the NMPJ on the Mall would further change the meaning of the Lincoln Memorial. While Abraham Lincoln would continue to be acknowledged as the president who preserved the Union and signed the Emancipation Proclamation, it would also be clear that another dark age followed for African Americans in the form of Jim Crow and racial terror. In addition, memory of the 1862 massacre in Mankato, Minnesota, could be added to the Lincoln Memorial. In the nation’s largest mass hanging, thirty-eight Sioux men were executed without a fair trial.30 The execution of the verdict was authorized by Abraham Lincoln. Naturally, such a memorial would also be in conversation with the NMAAHC by remembering and honoring African American victims of the past, but the effect on the public would be largely independent of how that history is framed in exhibitions inside the NMAAHC since most visitors to the Mall never enter it. A national memorial to painful past would not just change the National Mall; it would impact the national imagination. Currently, unfettered patriotism rooted in imperial military ambitions dominates the discourse

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on and around the Mall. In addition, Enlightenment ideals of human rights, equality, and progress are celebrated at the Jefferson Memorial and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. The United States is envisioned as a benevolent imperial and universal force for good,31 both domestically through the spread of democracy, human rights, and civil rights, and internationally as a liberator of the world from totalitarian regimes (World War II Memorial, Korean War Memorial, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Vietnam War Veterans Memorial, and the USHMM). A memorial to painful past at the center of the Mall would moderate imperial ambitions by acknowledging the dialectical inverse of America’s imagined universal benevolence. Further, it would mean a check on patriotism since remembering America’s painful history would expose and remind of contradictions at the core of the American project. It would be admitted in plain view that alongside the achievements and successes of the nation, significant debts have also accumulated, especially toward Native Americans and African Americans, debts that are still waiting to be repaid. In sum, the Mall would no longer be a one-dimensional celebration of American triumph, but it would then remember the multifaceted struggles of the past and remind visitors that the originating promise of liberty and equality remains unfulfilled. Visualizing a major memorial to America’s painful past such as the NMPJ on the National Mall stretches the imagination. This is reflected in the museum exhibitions dealing with America’s painful past on the Mall. I have argued in this study that we find significant continuities in the memory of painful past across the NMAH, the USHMM, and the NMAAHC. They all present linear, teleologic narratives that integrate painful past within dominant national ideologies. They provide narrative closure that largely relegates inequity and injustice to the past. They use narrative and visual rhetoric to affectively engage the audience and foster patriotism. Finally, they also reflect the militarization of memory on the Mall by emphasizing the sacrifice and victories of military veterans, often at the expense of remembering the culpability of the United States in atrocities at home and abroad. In contrast, the NMAI employs nonlinear, rhizomatic narratives with little affective engagement and no narrative closure. The museum’s em-

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phasis on survivance minimizes its attention to painful past and collective violence against Native Americans. While the NMAI does not celebrate like the other museums core national mythologies such as progress or freedom, it also does not discuss genocide, which would fundamentally challenge the imagination of the United States as a benevolent force. Although the NMAI still diverges in its narrative rhetoric, it also has gradually shifted to move in the direction of its peers in recent years. Its second-generation permanent exhibitions present a more conventional approach to narrative and visual rhetoric. They also retreat from the hemispheric perspective to focus more on indigenous relations with the United States. The new American Indian Veterans Memorial indicates that even the NMAI is not immune to the celebration of the US military on the National Mall. The museums’ embrace of social justice as a core value varies greatly, which can already be observed in their mission statements. Yet all three museums dealing with domestic US history ultimately do not emphasize the connection between the past and social injustice in the present. The USHMM alone presents a permanent exhibition with an activist- and future-oriented orientation. Given the significant racial inequity in the United States rooted in the past, this omission of the other three museums is disturbing. At least at the national center, remembering the past has not yet lived up to the ideal of multidirectional memory that Michael Goldberg had envisioned. Here, memory remains fiercely competitive. Just as the literal real estate of the Mall is limited and closely guarded, so are the memories about the national past and the national imagination that can be expressed on the National Mall. The renewed Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 included attacks on memory sites across the nation, which sometimes turned violent. Civil unrest and widespread calls for fundamental change may force the nation to finally see and acknowledge openly the connection between painful past and injustice today. This could propel forward the transformation of the larger national imagination, which would inevitably have to include remembering painful past more fully on the National Mall. In the final months of the 2020 election campaign, President Donald J. Trump saw challenges to mainstream national memory as a wedge issue to mobilize his voter base. Repeatedly, he claimed at rallies that Democrats

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“want to take down all monuments in Washington.”32 Trump had already employed such scare rhetoric during a press conference following the Unite the Right Rally at Charlottesville in 2017, in which he infamously commented that there “were very fine people on both sides” during the tragic violence between white supremacist groups and counterprotesters.33 Rhetorician Samuel Perry argued that Trump mourned “the mythical loss of whiteness,” rather than joining the outrage over the neo-Nazi march.34 Indeed, during the same press conference, Trump lamented sarcastically a future attack on the memory of the Founding Fathers during a heated exchange: Was George Washington a slave owner? So, will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down—excuse me—are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him. Good. Are we going to take down the statue? Cause he was a major slave owner. Are we going to take down his statue? So you know what? It’s fine. You are changing history, you’re changing culture.35 While changing the past is not possible, change in culture is inevitable. With that, our view of history evolves, which affects monuments, memorials, and historical museums as discussed in this study.36 Trump thought to ask a rhetorical question in August 2017, but the Trust for the National Mall was already planning to include information on the Jefferson Memorial about Jefferson’s history of enslaving people.37 During the height of Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon, statues of Washington and Jefferson were pulled down.38 Lucian K. Truscott IV, journalist, bestselling author, and direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson, called in an oped for exchanging the statue of his ancestor with one of Harriet Tubman. He concluded, “To see a 19-foot-tall bronze statue of a Black woman, who was a slave and also a patriot, in place of a white man who enslaved hundreds of men and women is not erasing history. It’s telling the real history of America.”39 The standard charge of “erasing history” often leveled against attempts to revise the memorial landscape misses the mark. Space at the symbolic center that is the National Mall is scarce. How much history is being “erased” by the current status quo on the Mall? While

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a removal of iconic monuments and memorials may not be productive, a contextualization of such memorials certainly could be. A committee tasked by the city’s mayor with reviewing monuments in Washington, DC, in 2020 made that recommendation, which found support from the likes of Harvard history professor and Thomas Jefferson biographer Annette Gordon-Reed and best-selling George Washington biographer Alexis Coe.40 The museums discussed in this book have begun the difficult task of incorporating memory of national pain. Yet, as I have argued throughout, those efforts are still constrained by the larger discourse of patriotism and exceptionalism dominating the memorial landscape of the Mall. Conversely, it is hard to imagine a contextualization of the Washington Monument as long as George Washington’s practice of slavery is not even discussed in the NMAAHC or the NMAH. It is incumbent on the historical museums on the Mall—and elsewhere—to break this circular logic. The NMPJ and TLM as well as countless smaller memory sites across the nation are leading the way, demonstrating an unyielding honesty about unbearably painful pasts. It is memory work of this kind that eventually will make it possible to remember such pain fully, in the open, through a memorial to the victims, for all to see on the National Mall.

notes

Introduction: The National Mall and Memory of Painful Past 1. Joe Biden, “Transcript of Vice President Joe Biden’s Video Message for George Floyd’s Funeral in Houston, Texas,” Medium, June 11, 2020, https:// medium.com/@JoeBiden/transcript-of-vice-president-joe-bidens-video-mes sage-for-george-floyd-s-funeral-in-houston-texas-c427064ad51; Michael Moore, “emergency podcast system—Don’t Be a Bystander,” Rumble (podcast), May 29, 2020, https://rumble.media/episode/episode-84-emergency-podcast-system -dont-be-a-bystander/. In addition, several editorials demanded a revision of public memory of US past. See, for example, Brian Boucher, “People Are Calling for Museums to Be Abolished. Can Whitewashed American History Be Rewritten?” CNN, June 27, 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/natural-history-mu seum-whitewashing-monuments-statues-trnd/index.html; Michael Hirsh, “If Americans Grappled Honestly with Their History, Would Any Monuments Be Left Standing?” Foreign Policy, June 24, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/24 /america-statues-monuments-washington-jefferson/. 2. Al Sharpton, “Reverend Al Sharpton Eulogy Transcript at George Floyd’s Memorial Service,” Rev.com, June 4, 2020, https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts /reverend-al-sharpton-eulogy-transcript-at-george-floyd-memorial-service. 3. Tim Cook, “Speaking Up on Racism,” June 2020, https://www.apple.com /speaking-up-on-racism. 4. Lonnie G. Bunch, “Statement from Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch,” Smithsonian Institution, May 31, 2020, https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/statement -secretary-lonnie-g-bunch. 5. David French, “American Racism: We’ve Got So Very Far to Go,” French Press, June 7, 2020, https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/american-racism -weve-got-so-very. 6. Elie Wiesel, “Elie Wiesel’s Remarks at the Dedication Ceremonies for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, April 22, 1993,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed November 30, 2020, https://www.ushmm .org/information/about-the-museum/mission-and-history/wiesel. 7. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2003), 88. 8. Erika Doss, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 207. 9. Fath Davis Ruffins, “Revisiting the Old Plantation: Reparations, Reconciliation and Museumizing American Slavery,” in Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global

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Transformations, ed. Ivan Karp et al. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 399. 10. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, Marion Dolores Pratt, and Lloyd A. Dunlap (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 253. 11. Brett Williams, “A River Runs through Us,” American Anthropologist 103, no. 2 (2001): 411–412. 12. Notable exceptions include the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial, the Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism during World War II, and a few smaller historical markers remembering slavery. 13. For a discussion of these and several other memorials dedicated to painful histories, see Doss, Memorial Mania, chaps. 5 and 6. 14. See, for example, John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, 8th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1988); Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970); Eric Foner, America’s Black Past: A Reader in Afro-American History (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). 15. See page 35. 16. Publications in this field are far too numerous to list. For introductory reading lists on racial inequity of the past and social injustice in the present, see “Racial Justice, Racial Equity, and Anti-Racism Reading List,” Harvard Kennedy School, 2020, https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/library-knowledge -services/collections/diversity-inclusion-belonging/anti-racist; “A Duke Reading List of Studies of Race, Politics and History,” Duke Today, August 16, 2017, https:// today.duke.edu/2017/08/duke-reading-list-studies-race-politics-and-history. 17. Other important Hollywood films that feature slavery in the United States include Beloved (1998) and Amistad (1997), which portray trauma and memory of trauma caused by the violence of slavery. See Natalie Zemon Davis, Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), chap. 4. 18. Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 105. 19. Kirk Savage, Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011), 4. 20. National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, National Mall and Memorial Parks Little-Known Facts (Washington, DC, 2019), https://www.nps .gov/nationalmallplan/Documents/Media/NAMA%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf.

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21. “About the Smithsonian,” Smithsonian Institution, 2019, https://www .si.edu/about. 22. “Mission and History,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2019, https://www.ushmm.org/information/about-the-museum/mission-and-history. 23. “Visitor Stats,” Newsroom of the Smithsonian, 2020. 24. Italics in original. Greg Dickinson, Carole Blair, and Brian L. Ott, Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010), 24. In my usage of the terms “place” and “space,” I am following the definition of Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001); see also Marie-Laure Ryan, Narrative as Virtual Reality 2: Revisiting Immersion and Interactiveity in Literature and Electronic Media (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 86. 25. Dickinson et al., Places of Public Memory, 16, 25, 27, 29 (italics in original). 26. For a discussion of Hollywood narrative style, see David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge, 2005), chaps. 12–49; Kristin Thompson, Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 10–21. 27. Bordwell et al., Classical Hollywood Cinema, 15; see also David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2017), chap. 3; E. Ann Kaplan, “Classical Hollywood Film and Melodrama,” in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, ed. John Hill and Church Gibson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 273–277. 28. Ruffins, “Revisiting the Old Plantation,” 397. 29. Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 66; David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 4–12. 30. Bordwell et al., Classical Hollywood Cinema, 24–33. 31. Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art, 85–86. 32. I use the term “nonnarrative” to emphasize the contrast with the historical exhibitions, but not in the way the term has been used to depict certain experimental or avant-garde narratives in film or literary studies. Although these spaces share certain aspects of such narratives, for example, in their attempt to provide the visitor a transcendental experience, that cannot be represented by conventional narrative forms. 33. Roger Friedland and Richard D. Hecht, “The Powers of Place,” in Religion, Violence, Memory, and Place, ed. Oren Baruch Stier and J. Shawn Landres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 34, 35.

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34. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). 35. Deleuze, Cinema 2, 274. 36. See pages 35–36 for a discussion of Landsberg’s notion of prosthetic memory. 37. David Norman Rodowick, Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 90. 38. Bal, Narratology, 67–88; Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art, chap. 6. 39. Lev Kuleshov, Kuleshov on Film: Writings by Lev Kuleshov (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 129. 40. Bold in the original. Richard Kearney, “Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutic Imagination,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 14, no. 2 (1998): 118. 41. Kearney, “Paul Ricoeur,” 119. 42. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture (London: Routledge, 2000), 25. 43. Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art, chap. 4. 44. See pages 135–138 for a discussion of the Jefferson display at the NMAAHC. 45. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997); Wilhelm Dilthey, Selected Works, vol. 4: Hermeneutics and the Study of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014); Paul Ricoeur and John B. Thompson, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Richard Kearney and Domenico Jervolino, “Gadamer and Ricoeur on the Hermeneutics of Praxis,” in Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of Action, ed. Richard Kearney (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014). 46. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, The Educational Role of the Museum, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2009), 47–49 (quotation on 49), 51. 47. Lee H. Skolnick, “Beyond Narrative: Designing Epiphanies,” in Museum Making: Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions, ed. Suzanne Macleod, Laura Hourston Hanks, and Jonathan Hale (London: Routledge, 2012), 86. 48. Julia Rose, Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 4. 49. Etienne G. Krug, World Report on Violence and Health (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2002), 215. 50. This report discusses collective violence and its effects in the recent past of

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the twentieth century, while the atrocities discussed in this book occurred largely during the preceding centuries. If anything, the effects on affected populations during previous centuries were even more destructive and enduring since the mitigating humanitarian responses of our time, which are also listed in the report, did not exist. Krug, World Report, 229–234. 51. Michael Harris Bond, “Culture and Collective Violence: How Good People, Usually Men, Do Bad Things,” in Voices of Trauma: Treating Psychological Trauma across Cultures, ed. Boris Drozdek and John P. Wilson (New York: Springer, 2007), 32. 52. Bruce D. Baker, Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America’s Students (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2018), 19. 53. Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane, Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the Challenge for American Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2014), 3. 54. See, for example, Derrick Bell, Race, Racism, and American Law, 6th ed. (New York: Aspen Publishers, 2008); Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw et al., eds., Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (New York: New Press, 2010); Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, eds., Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013); Alexander Papachristou and Patricia J. Williams, eds., Blind Goddess: A Reader on Race and Justice (New York: New Press, 2011); Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2017). 55. Bell, Race, Racism, and American Law, 69. 56. Jennifer Bronson and E. Ann Carson, Prisoners in 2017, U.S. Department of Justice, 2019, 10–15, https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p17.pdf. 57. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2012), 58. 58. Alexander, 191–200. 59. Cornell West, foreword to Alexander, x. 60. “American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month: November 2017,” US Bureau of the Census, 2017, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for -features/2017/aian-month.html; “Income and Wealth in the United States: An Overview of Recent Data,” Peter G. Peterson Foundation, September 13, 2018, https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2018/09/income-and-wealth-in-the-united-states -an-overview-of-data. 61. “Selected Population Profile in the United States: American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates,” US Bureau of the Census, 2017, https://data.census.gov /cedsci/table?q=selected%20population%20profile&tid=ACSSPP1Y2017.S0 201&hidePreview=false. Some tribes have benefited from casino operations, such

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as the Cherokee, who now have one of the strongest tribal economies in the country. See James J. Davis, Vincent J. Roscigno, and George Wilson, “American Indian Poverty in the Contemporary United States,” Sociological Forum 31, no. 1 (2016): 9. One of the problems resulting from such success stories is the public perception that Native American poverty is no longer an urgent problem due to wealth accumulation from gambling operations. The data does not support this conclusion. Spilde and Taylor argue that “the designation ‘richer’ must be understood across Indian Country to mean ‘less bad off,’” and, in addition, Akee et al. suggest that the “effect of Indian gaming varies tremendously across tribes.” Katherine Spilde and Jonathan B. Taylor, “Economic Evidence on the Effects of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act on Indians and Non-Indians,” UNLV Gaming Research and Review Journal 17, no. 1 (2013): 23; Randall K. Q. Akee, Katherine A. Spilde, and Jonathan B. Taylor, “The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and Its Effects on American Indian Economic Development,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 29, no. 3 (2015): 186. 62. “Selected Population Profile in the United States.” 63. Kimberly R. Huyser, Isao Takei, and Arthur Sakamoto, “Demographic Factors Associated with Poverty among American Indians and Alaska Natives,” Race and Social Problems 6, no. 2 (2014): 123; Kimberly R. Huyser, Arthur Sakamoto, and Isao Takei, “The Persistence of Racial Disadvantage: The Socioeconomic Attainments of Single-Race and Multi-Race Native Americans,” Population Research and Policy Review 29, no. 4 (2010): 542; K. Whitney Mauer, “Indian Country Poverty: Place-Based Poverty on American Indian Territories, 2006–10,” Rural Sociology 82, no. 3 (2017): 2. 64. Davis et al., “American Indian Poverty,” 7. 65. See, for example, David Myer Temin and Adam Dahl, “Narrating Historical Injustice: Political Responsibility and the Politics of Memory,” Political Research Quarterly 70, no. 4 (2017): 915–916. 66. Stephen Harper, “Statement of Apology to Former Students of Indian Residential Schools,” June 11, 2008, https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100015 644/1571589171655. 67. U.S. Congress, “S.J.Res.14: A Joint Resolution to Acknowledge a Long History of Official Depredations and Ill-Conceived Policies by the Federal Government Regarding Indian Tribes and Offer an Apology to All Native Peoples on Behalf of the United States,” June 18, 2009, https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th -congress/senate-joint-resolution/14/text. 68. U.S. Senate, “S.Con.Res. 26: A Concurrent Resolution Apologizing for the Enslavement and Racial Segregation of African Americans,” 2009, https://www .govtrack.us/congress/bills/111/sconres26/text; U.S. House of Representatives, “H.Res.194 (110th): Apologizing for the Enslavement and Racial Segregation of

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African-Americans,” July 29, 2008, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110 /hres194/text. 69. Angelique M. Davis, “Apologies, Reparations, and the Continuing Legacy of the European Slave Trade in the United States,” Journal of Black Studies 45, no. 4 (2014): 281. 70. Richard Sandell and Eithne Nightingale, eds., Museums, Equality and Social Justice (New York: Routledge, 2012), 3. The authors cite evidence from the following sources: Richard Sandell, Museums, Society, Inequality (London: Routledge, 2002), esp. Mark O’Neill, “The Good Enough Visitor,” 24–40; Lois H. Silverman, The Social Work of Museums (New York: Routledge, 2010); Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and Education: Purpose, Pedagogy, Performance (New York: Routledge, 2007); Mark O’Neill, “Cultural Attendance and Public Mental Health—from Research to Practice,” Journal of Public Mental Health 9, no. 4 (2010): 22–29; Richard Sandell, Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference (London: Routledge, 2007); Jocelyn Dodd et al., Rethinking Disability Representaion in Museums and Galleries (Leicester: Research Center for Museums and Galleries, University of Leiscester, 2008); Kylie Message, New Museums and the Making of Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2006); Jennifer Barrett, Museums and the Public Sphere (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). For a theoretical discussion of the impact of culture, including museums, on society, see Tony Bennett, Making Culture, Changing Society (New York: Routledge, 2013). 71. Sandell and Nightingale, Museums, Equality and Social Justice, 3. 72. Tristram Besterman, “Museum Ethics,” in A Companion to Museum Studies, ed. Sharon J Macdonald (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), 431. 73. David Fleming, “Museums for Social Justice: Managing Organisational Change,” in Sandell and Nightingale, Museums, Equality and Social Justice, 73; see also Dawn Casey, “Museums as Agents for Social and Political Change,” in Museums and Their Communities, ed. Sheila Watson (London: Routledge, 2007), 292–299. 74. Fleming, “Museums for Social Justice,” 74. 75. “About the Museum,” International Slavery Museum, National Museums Liverpool, 2020, https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/about-international-sla very-museum. 76. Paul Williams, “Memorial Museums and the Objectification of Suffering,” in The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics: Redefining Ethics for the Twenty-FirstCentury Museum, ed. Janet Marstine (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), 220. 77. Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 1–2; Walter Benn Michaels, “Plots against America: Neoliberalism and Antiracism,” American Literary History 18, no. 2 (2006): 290. 78. Michael Rothberg, “Against Zero-Sum Logic: A Response to Walter Benn

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Michaels,” American Literary History 18, no. 2 (2006): 303–311; Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 1–7. 79. Rothberg, “Against Zero-Sum Logic,” 304. 80. Doss, Memorial Mania; Marita Sturken, Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). 81. Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 310. 82. See, for example, the struggle over how to memorialize George Washington in Savage, Monument Wars, 36–60. 83. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 37–38, quotations on 40. 84. Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture, 25. 85. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 182–83. 86. Pierre Nora and Lawrence D. Kritzman, Realms of Memory: Conflicts and Divisions, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), xvii, xviii. 87. The American edition consists of three volumes whereas the French edition is composed of seven volumes. 88. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7, 13. 89. Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 86. 90. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006), 3. 91. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000). 92. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7. 93. For a recent history of US empire including a comprehensive bibliography, see Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the Greater United States (London: New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019). 94. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 161, 162. 95. Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 3. 96. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 205, 206. 97. Paul Connerton, “Seven Types of Forgetting,” Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 60, 61. 98. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 443–56, quotations on 449, 448. 99. Ricoeur, 450–452. 100. Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New York: Routledge, 2012), 14.

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101. Jay Winter, “The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the Memory Boom in Contemporary Historical Studies,” Canadian Military History 10, no. 3 (2001): 54–66. 102. In 2016 the formal establishment of the new discipline was completed by establishing the Memory Studies Association at the inaugural conference in Amsterdam. 103. Alison Landsberg, “Memory, Empathy, and the Politics of Identification,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 22, no. 2 (2009): 222, 228. 104. Sturken, Tourists of History, 15. 105. Sturken, 18. 106. Those exhibitions follow an approach to historiography as it was established in the West by Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886). 107. Doss, Memorial Mania, 9, 13. 108. Doss, 115–116. 109. Grief and anger are also the two key emotions summoned by the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York, which is one of the most important memory sites in support of the U.S. national imagination outside of Washington, DC.

Chapter 1. Framing Painful Past for the Nation 1. “Mission and History,” Smithsonian National Museum of American History, 2020, https://americanhistory.si.edu/museum. 2. “Visitor Stats.” 3. See, for example, Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New York: Atheneum, 1994); Jonathan Shay, Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming (New York: Scribner, 2002); Erin P. Finley, Fields of Combat: Understanding PTSD among Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press / Cornell University Press, 2011). 4. See, for example, Stephanie McCurry, Women’s War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019); Anica Pless Kaiser et al., “Women at War: The Crucible of Vietnam,” SSM— Population Health 3 (December 2017): 236–244. 5. About 10 percent of the 132 past exhibitions currently listed on the NMAH’s website have been dedicated to the memory of painful history discussed in this book. I am not considering them here since they are no longer shown and hence do not affect the museum text as it is presented today and in the future. Although some of them were very important, most were only shown for a comparatively short period of time. For example, the crucial exhibition Slavery at Jefferson’s Mon-

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ticello: The Paradox of Liberty, which was the inspiration and namesake of the Jefferson exhibition at the NMAAHC, was only on display for about ten months in 2012. By contrast, the main exhibitions discussed here have been on display with short interruptions since 1914 (The Star-Spangled Banner), since 1964 (The Gunboat Philadelphia), and since 2004 (The Price of Freedom). None of these exhibitions has a scheduled closing date, and they can be expected to remain on display for the foreseeable future. Futhermore, most of these past exhibitions were very small and not comparable in importance or prominence to the exhibitions discussed in this chapter. 6. “Today in Smithsonian History: December 17, 1912,” Torch, December 17, 2017, https://torch.si.edu/2017/12/december-17-1912-2/. 7. Robert M. Poole, “Star-Spangled Banner Back on Display,” Smithsonian Magazine, November 2008, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/star-spangled -banner-back-on-display-83229098/. 8. Poole. 9. In the Rotunda the Charters of Freedom are presented, which are the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. 10. Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 2. 11. Marvin and Ingle, 2. 12. Marvin and Ingle, 63. 13. Gordon M. Sayre, The Indian Chief as Tragic Hero: Native Resistance and the Literatures of America, from Moctezuma to Tecumseh (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), chap. 8. 14. Susan K. Barnard and Grace M. Schwartzman, “Tecumseh and the Creek Indian War of 1813–1814 in North Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 82, no. 3 (n.d.): 500. 15. George C. Daughan, 1812: The Navy’s War (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 80. 16. David Stephen Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 146. 17. Frank A. Cassell, “Slaves of the Chesapeake Bay Area and the War of 1812,” Journal of Negro History 57, no. 2 (1972): 148. 18. “The Price of Freedom: Americans at War,” National Museum of American History, accessed November 14, 2019, https://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions /price-of-freedom. 19. At the NMAAHC, African American veterans are honored primarily through the exhibition Double Victory: The African American Military Experience. At the NMAI, Native American Veterans Memorial.

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20. David Stephen Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Modern America: From the Indian Wars to the Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007); John Tirman, The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Vasja Badalicˇ, The War against Civilians (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); David Isenberg, “Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 118: The Pitfalls of U.S. Covert Operations” (Washington, DC, 1989), https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/pitfalls-us-covert -operations. 21. Scott Boehm, “Privatizing Public Memory: The Price of Patriotic Philanthropy and the Post-9/11 Politics of Display,” American Quarterly 58, no. 4 (2006): 1149–1150, quotations on 1148, 1164. 22. Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 26. 23. Annette Kolodny, “Among the Indians: The Uses of Captivity,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 21, nos. 3–4 (1993): 191. 24. Fritz Hirschfeld, George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal (Columbia, MS: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 8, 3. 25. For a discussion of the lack of representation of George Washington at the NMAAHC, see pages 138–139. 26. Richard W. Etulain and Michael P. Malone, The American West: A Modern History, 1900 to the Present, 2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 170. 27. Margo Kasdan and Susan Tavernetti, “Native Americans in a Revisionist Western: Little Big Man (1970),” in Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film, ed. Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), 122–125. 28. See, for example, Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right, 1st paperback ed. (New York: Hill & Wang, 2005), chap. 3. 29. Lee Irwin, “Freedom, Law, and Prophecy: A Brief History of Native American Religious Resistance,” American Indian Quarterly 21, no. 1 (2006): 35–55; Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (Boston: Beacon, 2015); Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492–Present (New York: Routledge, 2015). 30. For the effects of Jackson’s policies on Native Americans, see, for example, Grant Foreman, Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989); Zinn, People’s History of the United States, chap. 7. 31. Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (New York: Back Bay Books, 2008), 80.

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32. For a discussion of the representation of Andrew Jackson at the NMAI, see pages 180–182. 33. In fact, Russell Thornton estimates that the actual population loss was much higher. Thornton, “Cherokee Population Losses during the Trail of Tears: A New Perspective and a New Estimate,” Ethnohistory (Columbus, Ohio) 31, no. 4 (1984): 289–300. 34. See, for example, Dunbar-Ortiz, Indigenous Peoples’ History, 145–146; Jeffrey Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground (New York: Penguin, 2010), 80–103. 35. Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 151–156. 36. See, for example, Pamela B. Deters, Douglas K. Novins, and Spero M. Manson, “American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research: Editorial,” American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research 11, no. 2 (2004): 60–82; Karl A. Hoerig, “In Honor of Struggle,” American Anthropologist 104, no. 2 (2002): 642–646. 37. Denise Cuthbert and Marian Quartly, “Forced Child Removal and the Politics of National Apologies in Australia,” American Indian Quarterly 37, no. 1 (2013): 178–202. 38. Ian Austen, “Canada Offers an Apology for Native Students’ Abuse,” New York Times, June 12, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/world/americas /12canada.html. 39. Ian Austen, “Canada’s Forced Schooling of Aboriginal Children Was ‘Cultural Genocide,’ Report Finds,” New York Times, June 2, 2015, https://www .nytimes.com/2015/06/03/world/americas/canadas-forced-schooling-of-aborig inal-children-was-cultural-genocide-report-finds.html. 40. For a discussion about the use of the term “genocide” at the NMAI, see pages 186–188 and 191–192. 41. Antonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta, Confluence Narratives: Ethnicity, History, and Nation-Making in the Americas (Lanham, MD: Bucknell University Press, 2016), 53. 42. For example, the Wikipedia page currently lists thirty-eight distinct Indian wars. “List of Wars Involving the United States,” Wikipedia, accessed July 20, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United _States#18th-century_wars. 43. Paul D. Escott, Lincoln’s Dilemma: Blair, Sumner, and the Republican Struggle over Racism and Equality in the Civil War Era (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), chap. 7. 44. Alice Elizabeth Malavasic, The F Street Mess: How Southern Senators Rewrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

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45. C. Peter Ripley, Witness for Freedom: African American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 18. 46. In addition, the exhibition includes one graphic image of former enslaved person Private Gordon showing scars on his back. 47. Evan Carton, Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 332–333. 48. Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 217, 213. 49. C. K. Barrow and J. H. Segars, Black Southerners in Confederate Armies: A Collection of Historical Accounts, 1st Pelican ed. (Gretna, LA: Pelican Press, 2007), chap. 1. 50. Escott, Lincoln’s Dilemma, chap. 4. 51. The literature on American empire is vast. For recent discussions on the topic, see A. G. Hopkins, American Empire: A Global History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019); Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019); Scott Laderman and Tim Gruenewald, eds., Imperial Benevolence: U.S. Foreign Policy and American Popular Culture since 9/11 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2018). 52. Adriane Lentz-Smith, Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 4–10, quotation on 4. 53. Lentz-Smith, Freedom Struggles, 4. 54. Neil A. Wynn, The African American Experience during World War II (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 5. 55. Wynn, African American Experience, chap. 5. 56. James B. Gardner, “Contested Terrain: History, Museums, and the Public,” Public Historian 26, no. 4 (2004): 12. For a discussion of the NMAH’s fear of appearing unpatriotic after September 11, see Message, New Museums, 126–130. 57. “US President—National Vote,” Our Campaigns, 1788, accessed June 11, 2019, https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=59542. 58. Doss, Memorial Mania, 207. 59. One could argue that national war memorials in general do not remember victims of the enemy. However, a practice is not justified simply because it is common. In my view, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial should also remember the millions of victims on the other side, which applies especially to the Vietnam War because it has always been controversial.

Chapter 2. American Liberation, Part I 1. Code of Federal Regulations 3: The President 1978 Compilation and Parts 100 and 101 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1979), 250. 2. See Paul Harvey Williams, Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate

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Atrocities (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 3–9; Paul Williams, “Memorial Museums”; Amy Sodaro, Exhibiting Atrocity: Memorial Museums and the Politics of Past Violence (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018). 3. Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999), 15 (italics in original). 4. Jenny Edkins argues that in the late twentieth century Holocaust memory shifted to emphasize rescue and liberation as a component to project “globalised humanitarian power.” Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 171. 5. Sodaro, Exhibiting Atrocity, 57. 6. Edward Tabor Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 17. 7. Jimmy Carter, “Address to the Nation on Energy and National Goals: ‘The Malaise Speech,’” American Presidency Project, July 15, 1979, https://www.presi dency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-nation-energy-and-national-goals-the -malaise-speech. Presidential job approval data is also taken from the American Presidential Project website, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data /presidential-job-approval. 8. See Francesco G. Duina, Winning: Reflections on an American Obsession (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 9. Dave Boyer, “Trump Says U.S. ‘Never Wins Wars’ Anymore,” Washington Times, February 27, 2017, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/27 /donald-trump-says-us-never-wins-wars-anymore/. 10. Carter, “Address to the Nation on Energy and National Goals.” 11. Wiesel, Report to the President: President’s Commission on the Holocaust (Washington, DC, 1979; reprinted by the United States Memorial Museum, June 2005), 7. On the particular significance of 1978 for Holocaust memory in the United States, see Gary Weissman, Fantasies of Witnessing: Postwar Efforts to Experience the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 9. 12. Sodaro, Exhibiting Atrocity, 57. 13. Winter, “Generation of Memory,” 60. 14. “Frequently Asked Research Questions,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Accessed November 30, 2020. https://www.ushmm.org/collec tions/ask-a-research-question/frequently-asked-questions. 15. James Ingo Freed, “The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,” Assemblage 9 (1989): 59, 62, 65. 16. Freed, 71. 17. Visitors can enter the museum either from Fourteenth Street SW or from

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Raoul Wallenberg Place SW. For this chapter, I assume visitors enter on the main entrance on Fourteenth Street. 18. Tim Cole, “Nativization and Nationalization: A Comparative Landscape Study of Holocaust Museums in Israel, the US and the UK,” Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture 23, no. 1 (2004): 139. 19. Wiesel, Report to the President, cover letter. 20. Wiesel, Report to the President, 15. 21. Linenthal, Preserving Memory, 217, 218. 22. Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich, Holocaust Memory Reframed: Museums and the Challenges of Representation (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014), 77. 23. James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 344. 24. Elie Wiesel, “The Trivialization of the Holocaust,” New York Times, April 16, 1978. See also Linenthal, Preserving Memory, 129. 25. James Ingo Freed, “The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum—A Dialogue with Memory,” Curator: The Museum Journal 38, no. 2 (1995): 99. 26. See, for example, Michael Bernard-Donals, Figures of Memory: The Rhetoric of Displacement at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017), 25–26; Eleanor Heartney, “Lost at the Museum,” Washington Post, August 24, 1997. 27. Doss, Memorial Mania, 50. 28. Cole, “Nativization and Nationalization,” 139. 29. It is important to note that the USHMM with this quotation also projects a reflection of the horror that it remembers on its outside, visible from the public spaces of the National Mall. By contrast, the painful past of the NMAAHC and the NMAI is not visible from the outside. It remains hidden from view. 30. Weissman, Fantasies of Witnessing, 215. 31. See page 140 for a discussion of the Emmett Till exhibition. 32. An example would be Saving Private Ryan (1998), which begins with a frame narrative set some forty-five years after the end of World War II, or Titanic (1997), which begins with a frame narrative set in 1996. 33. Doss, Memorial Mania, 51. 34. Sodaro, Exhibiting Atrocity, 49. 35. The USHMM website states about the railcar: “It is not certain that the rail car on display in the Museum’s Permanent Exhibition was used for the deportation of human beings, but it is typical of the type of rail car used in deportations from the German Reich.” “German Railways and the Holocaust,” United States

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Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed February 5, 2018, https://encyclopedia .ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-railways-and-the-holocaust. 36. See Thomas D. Fallace, “Playing Holocaust: The Origins of the Gestapo Simulation Game,” Teachers College Record 109, no. 12 (2007): 2642–2665. 37. “German Railways and the Holocaust.” 38. Sodaro, Exhibiting Atrocity, 50–51. 39. One museum in the United States that might be remotely comparable in its visual rhetoric of violence and suffering would be the September 11 Museum in New York. 40. Robert McAfee Brown, Elie Wiesel: Messenger to All Humanity (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 69. 41. The US military also forced German civilians to see the atrocities in the camps in person. Since this was naturally limited, photographic documentation proved essential. Barry Trachtenberg, The United States and the Nazi Holocaust: Race, Refuge, and Remembrance (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 134–135. 42. Savage, Monument Wars, 287. 43. Edward T. Linenthal, “The Boundaries of Memory: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,” American Quarterly 46, no. 3 (1994): 426, 428. 44. Linenthal, 428. 45. One could argue that the Soviet Army did not liberate most of those camps since they were abandoned by the time the Soviets arrived. On the other hand, the Nazis only abandoned the camps because of the approaching Red Army, which therefore ended the killing in the death camps. 46. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 51. 47. For an in-depth discussion of the liberation of concentration and extermination camps, see Dan Stone, The Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and Its Aftermath (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). 48. Ernest Renan, “What Is a Nation?” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1991), 11. 49. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 206. 50. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 448–449. 51. Wiesel, Report to the President, 9–10, emphasis added. 52. “Mission and History,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2019, https://www.ushmm.org/information/about-the-museum/mission-and-history. 53. “Pledge to Prevent Genocide Now,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed February 5, 2018, https://engage.ushmm.org/cpg-rwanda -pledge.html. Since the pledge can also be submitted online, the number of those who make the pledge at the museum is likely to be much smaller than 240,000.

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54. Reviews of the USHMM on Google.com and Tripadvisor.com as of January 2021. 55. Linenthal, Preserving Memory, chap. 2; Cole, “Nativization and Nationalization,” 133ff.; Freed, “United States Holocaust Memorial Museum” (1989), 59ff. 56. Nora and Kritzman, Realms of Memory, xvii, xviii. 57. Cole, “Nativization and Nationalization,” 134. 58. Freed, “United States Holocaust Memorial Museum—A Dialogue with Memory,” 95. 59. Novick, Holocaust in American Life, 15. 60. There are several smaller exhibitions on the ground floor and below ground. However, unlike the other museums discussed in this book, the main exhibition covers the vast majority of exhibition space at the USHMM.

Chapter 3. American Liberation, Part II 1. Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 51; see also David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (New York: Vintage Books, 2015); Foner, America’s Black Past. 2. Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 104. 3. Hurt R. Douglas, Agriculture and the Confederacy: Policy, Productivity, and Power in the Civil War South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 1. 4. Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014); Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); see also Bell, Race, Racism, and American Law; Alexander, New Jim Crow. 5. The act was sponsored by Sam Brownback in the Senate and John R. Lewis in the House of Representatives. The struggle to build a national memorial museum dedicated to African Americans first began with Black Civil War veterans out of frustration over continued discrimination during the early twentieth century. Robert Leon Wilkins, Long Road to Hard Truth: The 100-Year Mission to Create the National Museum of African American History and Culture (Washington, DC: Proud Legacy Publishing, 2016), chap. 2. 6. “Black Historian to Head Smithsonian’s National Museum of AfricanAmerican History,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 47 (2005): 63. 7. “About the Museum,” National Museum of African American History and Culture, accessed June 1, 2020, https://nmaahc.si.edu/about/museum. 8. “About the Museum.”

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9. A limited amount of same-day tickets were available at the door in the morning and later distributed online. 10. Only the National Air and Space Museum (7 million), the National Museum of Natural History (6 million), and the National Museum of American History (3.8 million) attracted more visitors in 2017. “Visitor Stats.” 11. See, for example, Wesley Morris, “Visiting the African-American Museum: Waiting, Reading, Thinking, Connecting, Feeling,” New York Times, December 25, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/25/arts/design/smithsonian-mu seum-african-american-museum-history-culture-wesley-morris.html?_r=0; Greg Carr, “The Smithsonian’s New Black History Museum and the Riches Within,” Ebony, September 16, 2016, https://www.ebony.com/news/smithsonian -museum/#axzz4MKD5XVoU. 12. Kathleen Kendrick, Official Guide to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2017), 22–23. 13. Kriston Capps, “The Unlikely Trick of the Smithsonian’s New African American Museum,” Bloomberg Citylab, September 23, 2016, para. 9, https:// www.citylab.com/design/2016/09/the-smithsonians-new-african-american-mu seum-is-deceptively-large/501449/. 14. Jacqueline Trescott, “African American Museum’s Revised Design Gets Favorable Reviews by NCPC,” Washington Post, September 3, 2010, http://www.wash ingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/02/AR2010090204955.html. 15. Capps, “Unlikely Trick,” para. 6. 16. Kriston Capps, “How the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture Works,” Bloomberg Citylab, September 15, 2016, para. 11, https:// www.citylab.com/design/2016/09/how-the-new-smithsonian-african-american -museum-works/500246/. 17. Major museum benefactors are featured more prominently than in any of the other museums discussed in this book. For example, the main theater is named after Oprah Winfrey in honor of a $12 million donation, a gallery on the third floor is named after Michael Jordan in recognition of a $5 million donation, and the stairs leading down from the ground floor are called the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Staircase in exchange for a $10 million donation. The largest honor goes arguably to billionaire David M. Rubinstein, who is the namesake of the History galleries, also for $10 million. The History galleries house the largest exhibition of the museum and one of the most important history exhibitions in the nation. Rubinstein is the cofounder and cochairman of the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms. On his personal company website, he is described as “a leader in the area of Patriotic Philanthropy” (“David M.

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Rubenstein,” Carlyle Group, 2019, https://www.carlyle.com/about-carlyle/team /david-m-rubenstein). One of his other donations featured thereafter benefited the restoration of the Washington Monument. I am not suggesting that there is a direct link between interests of important donors and curatorial decisions, but to believe that creative or scientific work could be completely independent of the interests of those who finance it, be they private citizens or the government, would be naive. What does “Patriotic Philanthropy” mean exactly in the case of the NMAAHC? It is one of the goals of this study to reflect critically on the relationship between patriotism and the memory of horrific national histories. 18. Carolyn Jenkins, “Visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture,” Black Star News, October 30, 2016, para. 4, http://www .blackstarnews.com/others/others/visiting-the-national-museum-of-african -american-history-and-culture. 19. For a detailed explanation of this visual phenomenon, see Jan J. Koenderink et al., “Pointing Out of the Picture,” Perception 33, no. 5 (2004): 513–530. 20. Africans helped build the Spanish garrison of Saint Augustine starting in 1565, and by 1600 some forty Africans were held there as property of the royal outpost. Robin D. G. Kelley and Earl Lewis, To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans to 1880 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 56–57. 21. See pages 125–128 for a more detailed comparison with the Holocaust Museum. 22. The exhibition label describes the film as follows: “This video provides a glimpse into the landscape, cultures, history, intellect, skill, and diverse people and places found throughout the continent of Africa before the 15th century.” 23. See, for example, Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), 13. 24. Formatting and bold as in the original. 25. Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie, Rebellious Passage: The Creole Revolt and America’s Coastal Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 10. 26. For example, England abolished the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, and in 1833 the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which was implemented on August 1, 1834. See Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 27. This section is comparable to the depiction of the death camps in the Holocaust Museum, described on pages 97–99. 28. Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 45–49. 29. See, for example, Kelley and Lewis, To Make Our World Anew, 15; Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 45.

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30. Maya Rhodan, “African American History Museum to Host Artifacts from Wrecked Slave Ship,” Time, June 2, 2015, para. 3, http://time.com/3905457/afri can-american-history-museum-to-host-artifacts-from-wrecked-slave-ship/. 31. It is noteworthy that the image caption does not mention that the society responsible for publishing the illustration was British. 32. See, for example, Megan Garber, “The Museum That Resurrected a Slave Ship,” Atlantic, September 30, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment /archive/2015/09/the-resurrection-of-a-slave-ship/408322/; Rhodan, “African American History Museum to Host Artifacts.” 33. This quotation is taken from the memoir of Olaudah Equiano. He survived passage on a slave ship, was freed in 1767, joined the abolitionist movement in London by the 1780s, and published his memoir in 1789. 34. For the discussion of the gunboat Philadelphia, see pages 47–48. 35. See the discussion of the model of the Crematorium II at Auschwitz-Birkenau on page 98. 36. Quoted in Ruffins, “Revisiting the Old Plantation,” 401. 37. Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 35. 38. Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: US Bureau of the Census, 1975), chap. Z. 39. “Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade—Estimates,” Slave Voyages: The TransAtlantic Slave Trade Database, 2016, http://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment /estimates. 40. Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 65; Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, chap. A. 41. For a discussion of the compromise between free and slave states, see Kelley and Lewis, To Make Our World Anew, 128–141. 42. Morris, “Visiting the African-American Museum,” para. 18. 43. Layout, capitalization, and bold follows the original display. 44. That text reads: “The United States of America was founded on dissent. American colonists waged a war for the principle that no one—no king, no lord, no president—held the right to rule without the consent of the people. This demand for popular sovereignty grew out of the experience of the Founders, who understood the power granted by liberty. It also sprang, in part, from the actions and political philosophies of enslaved men and women, who contested the right of any person to dominate another. Freedom was revolutionary, contagious and incomplete.” 45. For a discussion of how Locke’s theology of equality influenced Jefferson, see Allen Jayne, Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy and Theology (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998), 56ff.

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46. Toussaint Louverture was a leader of the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), which was a successful antislavery and anticolonial uprising by former enslaved people against French colonial rule. Elizabeth Freeman was the first enslaved African American to successfully file a lawsuit in 1781 against a slaveholder to assert her freedom. Benjamin Banneker was a self-taught free African American who worked as a surveyor, wrote almanacs, and had a correspondence with Thomas Jefferson on the issue of slavery. Finally, Phillis Wheatley was an enslaved African American who became the first female African American to publish poetry in 1773. 47. I would like to thank Erika Doss for alerting me to this problematic phrasing in the exhibition’s title. 48. In addition to Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin, other Founding Fathers who enslaved people at some point in time included Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase, Button Gwinett, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, John Jay, Richard Henry Lee, James Madison, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Benjamin Rush, and Edward Rutledge. Anthony Iccarino, “The Founding Fathers and Slavery,” Britannica.com, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic /The-Founding-Fathers-and-Slavery-1269536. 49. See, for example, Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2011), 140–141. 50. Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2014), 268. 51. One should note that the Jefferson display in the NMAAHC has its origin in a larger exhibition on slavery and Jefferson, which opened in 2012 in the National Museum of American History and was co-organized by the Smithsonian and Monticello (the Thomas Jefferson Foundation). This exhibition, called Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: The Paradox of Liberty, was the first major exhibition on the practice of slavery by a Founding Father on the National Mall. 52. 24/7 Wall St. estimated his peak net worth at an inflation-adjusted $113.3 million and placed him third behind John F. Kennedy and Donald Trump. Grant Suneson, “America’s 12 Wealthiest Presidents,” 24/7 Wall St., February 12, 2018, https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/02/12/americas-12-wealthiest-pres idents/. However, Michael Klepper and Robert Gunther estimated the net worth of historical figures as a percentage of their contemporaneous gross national product, which ranks Washington as among the top hundred wealthiest Americans in history, well ahead of any other president. Michael M. Klepper and Robert E. Gunther, The Wealthy 100: From Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gates (New York: Citadel Press, 1996). 53. While Washington’s manumission is often emphasized, he could also be

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unforgiving in his treatment of enslaved people, as is exemplified in his manhunt for the escaped Ona Judge. See Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (New York: 37 Ink / Atria, 2017). 54. See, for example, the dust cover and pages 7 and 11 of the Smithsonian’s book on the museum’s history: Mabel O. Wilson and Lonnie G. Bunch, Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2016). 55. “The Washington Monument,” National Museum of African American History and Culture, Accessed January 3, 2021. https://nmaahc.si.edu/washing ton-monument-mobile. 56. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 448–449. See the discussion of forgetting and the national imagination on pages 33–35. 57. Among the most prominent structures in Washington, DC, that were built using slave labor is the Capitol Building. Congress unveiled the Slave Labor Commemorative Marker in 2012, which is displayed in Emancipation Hall, named for the contribution of slave labor to the creation of the building. At the same time, Statuary Hall at the US Capitol still features statues of eleven leaders of the Confederate States of America. 58. Jesse J. Holland, The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2016), 63ff. See also “Slavery and the White House,” White House Historical Association, accessed March 3, 2019, https://www.whitehousehistory.org/press-room/press-fact-sheets/slavery-and -the-white-house; Chris Myers Asch and George Derek Musgrove, Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 16ff. 59. “Transcript: Read Michelle Obama’s Full Speech from the 2016 DNC,” Washington Post, July 26, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-poli tics/wp/2016/07/26/transcript-read-michelle-obamas-full-speech-from-the -2016-dnc/. 60. Callum Borchers, “How the Media Covered Michelle Obama’s ‘House That Was Built by Slaves’ Line,” Washington Post, July 26, 2016, https://www.washing tonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/26/how-the-media-covered-michelle -obamas-house-that-was-built-by-slaves-line/. 61. Asch and Musgrove, Chocolate City, 17. 62. Asch and Musgrove, 17. 63. As the White House Historical Association points out: “Presidents Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Tyler, Polk, and Taylor relied on slave labor in the White House. The enslaved persons and families lived in the basement/ground

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floor of the White House” (“Slavery and the White House”). For a detailed history of enslaved people living in the White House, see Holland, Invisibles. 64. For a discussion of the enduring pain of slavery and its aftermath, see Hartman, Scenes of Subjection. 65. “Black Reparations,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2010, https:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/black-reparations. 66. Boris I. Bittker, The Case for Black Reparations (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003). See also David Horowitz, Uncivil Wars: The Controversy over Reparations for Slavery (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002); Randall Robinson, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks (New York: Plume, 2000); Ana Lucia Araujo, Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). 67. John Conyers Jr., “H.R.40—115th Congress (2017–2018): Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act,” Congress. gov (2018), https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/40. 68. Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy (New York: One World, 2018), 158–159. See also Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” Atlantic, June 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07 /tanehisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me/397619/. 69. Khorri Atkinson, “Reparations: Where the 2020 Democratic Candidates Stand,” Axios, April 14, 2019, https://www.axios.com/reparations-2020-presiden tial-candidates-02cce9ac-082e-4777-955b-33c8196e64c0.html; David Brooks, “The Case for Reparations,” New York Times, March 7, 2019, https://www.nytimes .com/2019/03/07/opinion/case-for-reparations.html. 70. Lonnie G. Bunch, “America’s Moral Debt to African Americans,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 6, 2014, para. 4, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history /americas-moral-debt-african-americans-180951675/. 71. “Highest to Lowest—Prison Population Total,” World Prison Brief, accessed March 4, 2019, http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison -population-total?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All. 72. Alexander, New Jim Crow, 58, 21. 73. Alexander, 97ff. 74. For a history of the Black Lives Matter movement, see Christopher J. Lebron, The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 75. For data on and discussion of the relationship between racial segregation, wealth inequality, and gun violence in Chicago, see Stef W. Kight and Michael Sykes, “The Deadliest City: Behind Chicago’s Segregated Shooting Sprees,” Axios, 2018, https://www.axios.com/chicago-gun-violence-murder-rate-statistics-4ad

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deeec-d8d8-4ce7-a26b-81d428c14836.html. For detailed studies of the relationship between poverty, race, and violent crime in the United States, see James F. Short Jr., Poverty, Ethnicity, and Violent Crime (New York: Routledge, 1997); Samuel Walker, Cassia Spohn, and Miriam DeLone, The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2012). 76. See pages 16–18. 77. Over the course of half a dozen visits during December 2016, I was sometimes alone and never saw more than a handful of visitors in the Contemplative Court, despite the fact that the museum was extremely busy during the first months after opening, when I first visited. 78. For the full speech given at the First Montgomery Improvement Association Mass Meeting on December 5, 1955, see Martin Luther King Jr., “Montgomery Bus Boycott,” Digital History, December 5, 1955, http://www.digitalhistory .uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid=3625. 79. Joanne Pope Melish, Marcia Chatelain, and Hasan Kwame Jeffries, “Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.,” Journal of American History 104, no. 1 (2017): 145. 80. V. P. Franklin, “John Hope Franklin, Reparations, and Making Black Lives Better,” Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies 9, no. 5 (2016): 109. 81. John Hope Franklin, One America in the 21st Century: Forging a New Future, The President’s Initiative on Race / The Advisory Board’s Report to the President, Washington, DC, 1998, https://clintonwhitehouse2.archives.gov/Initiatives/OneAmerica/PIR .pdf. 82. Quoted in Franklin, “John Hope Franklin,” 110.

Chapter 4. Remembering and Forgetting Genocide 1. Liz Hill, “A Warrior Chief among Warriors: Remembering U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye,” American Indian 15, no. 1 (2014), 27–33. 2. US Congress, 101st Congress, “National Museum of the American Indian Act,” 1989, https://americanindian.si.edu/sites/1/files/pdf/about/NMAIAct.pdf. 3. “Visitor Stats.” 4. “Vision and Mission,” National Museum of the American Indian, 2019, https://americanindian.si.edu/about/vision-mission. 5. Ray Silverman, “The Legacy of Ethnography,” in Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 9. 6. Amy Lonetree, “‘Acknowledging the Truth of History’: Missed Opportunities at the National Museum of the American Indian,” in The National Museum of

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the American Indian: Critical Conversations, ed. Amy Lonetree and Amanda J. Cobb (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 306. 7. Only in 2019 did the museum add a critical interpretation to reflect on the implied racism in a diorama about the imagined meeting between Dutch settlers and the Lenape in the seventeenth century. Ana Fota, “What’s Wrong With This Diorama? You Can Read All About It,” New York Times, March 20, 2018, https://www .nytimes.com/2019/03/20/arts/design/natural-history-museum-diorama.html. 8. Lonetree, “‘Acknowledging the Truth of History,’” 306. For a discussion of the connection between eugenics, social Darwinism, and natural history museums in the United States, see Michelle Henning, Museums, Media and Cultural Theory (New York: Open University Press, 2006), 49–50. 9. For a discussion of the elevator ride at the USHMM, see pages 93–94, and for the discussion of the same at the NMAAHC, see pages 120–121. 10. W. Richard West and Amanda J. Cobb, “Interview with W. Richard West, Director, National Museum of the American Indian,” American Indian Quarterly 29, no. 3 (2007): 519. 11. For a discussion of the complicity between colonialism and ethnographic museums in Great Britain, see Anthony Alan Shelton, “Museum Ethnography: An Imperical Science,” in Cultural Encounters: Representing “Otherness,” ed. Elizabeth Hallam (London: Routledge, 2000), 155–193. 12. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed, 2012), chap. 1. 13. Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, reprint ed. (London: Routledge, 1995), 75–79. For a discussion of the debate about a new value system grounded in scientific discovery during the founding of the Smithsonian, see Marlana Portolano, “Increase and Diffusion of Knowledge: Ethos of Science and Education in the Smithsonian’s Inception,” Rhetoric Review 18, no. 1 (1999): 65–81. 14. Viv Golding, “Collaborative Museums: Curators, Communities, Collections,” in Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections and Collaboration, ed. Viv Golding and Wayne Modest (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 16. For a discussion of indigenous models of curation as a social practice, see Christina Kreps, “Non-Western Models of Museums and Curation in Crosscultural Perspective,” in A Companion to Museum Studies, ed. Sharon J. Macdonald (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), 466–468. For a discussion of decolonization of museums in Canada, see Ruth B. Phillips, Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2012). 15. For a discussion of the term “survivance,” see pages 179–180.

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16. West and Cobb, “Interview with W. Richard West,” 518. 17. Elizabeth Archuleta, “Gym Shoes, Maps, and Passports, Oh My! Creating Community or Creating Chaos at the National Museum of the American Indian?” in Lonetree and Cobb, National Museum of the American Indian, 181–207; Janet Berlo and Aldona Jonaitis, “‘Indian Country’ on the National Mall: The Mainstream Press versus the National Museum of the American Indian,” in Lonetree and Cobb, National Museum of the American Indian, 208–240. 18. Jacki Thompson Rand, “Why I Can’t Visit the National Museum of the American Indian: Reflections of an Accidental Privileged Insider, 1989–1994,” Common-Place 7, no. 4 (2007), para. 10, http://commonplace.online/article/why-i -cant-visit-the-national-museum-of-the-american-indian/. 19. See, for example, Myla Vicenti Carpio, “(Un)Disturbing Exhibitions: Indigenous Historical Memory at the NMAI,” in Lonetree and Cobb, National Museum of the American Indian, 290–308; Sonya Atalay, “No Sense of the Struggle: Creating a Context for Survivance at the NMAI,” in Lonetree and Cobb, National Museum of the American Indian, 267–289. 20. See, for example, Edward Rothstein, “Museum with an American Indian Voice,” New York Times, September 21, 2004; Edward Rothstein, “Identity Museums Challenge History’s Received Truths,” New York Times, December 28, 2010. 21. “List of Federal and State Recognized Tribes,” National Conference of State Legislatures, 2020, https://www.ncsl.org/research/state-tribal-institute/list -of-federal-and-state-recognized-tribes.aspx. 22. Judith Ostrowitz, “Concourse and Periphery: Planning the National Museum of the American Indian,” in Lonetree and Cobb, National Museum of the American Indian, 113. 23. Beverly R. Singer, “The Making of Who We Are, Now Showing at the NMAI Lelawi Theater,” American Indian Quarterly 29, no. 2 (2005): 468. 24. Conflicts over and environmental destruction of Native American lands are a perennial issue as old as colonialism in the Americas. For a recent example, see Kyle Powys Whyte, “The Dakota Access Pipeline, Environmental Injustice, and US Settler Colonialism,” in The Nature of Hope: Grassroots Organizing, Environmental Justice, and Political Change, ed. Char Miller and Jeff Crane (Louisville: University of Colorado Press, 2019). 25. Singer, “Making of Who We Are,” 167, 168. 26. Amanda J. Cobb, “The National Museum of the American Indian as Cultural Sovereignty,” in Lonetree and Cobb, National Museum of the American Indian, 342–343. 27. Cynthia Chavez Lamar, “Collaborative Exhibit Development at the Smith-

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sonian’s National Museum of the American Indian,” in Lonetree and Cobb, National Museum of the American Indian, 147 (quotation), 146. 28. The nations represented in the exhibition are the Pueblo of Santa Clara (Española, New Mexico, USA), Anishinaabe (Hollow Water and Sagkeeng Bands, Manitoba, Canada), Lakota (Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, USA), Quechua (Communidad de Phaqchanta, Cusco, Peru), Hupa (Hoopa Valley, California, USA), Q’eq’chi’ Maya (Cobán, Guatemala), Mapuche (Temuco, Chile), and Yup’ik (Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Alaska, USA). 29. Gwyneira Isaac, “What Are Our Expectations Telling Us? Encounters with the National Museum of the American Indian,” in Lonetree and Cobb, National Museum of the American Indian, 252. 30. Atalay, “No Sense of the Struggle,” 276. 31. See, for example, Philip Jenkins, Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 32. The represented nations were Campo Band of Kumeyaay Indians (California, USA), urban Indian community of Chicago (Illinois, USA), Yakama Nation (Washington State, USA), Igloolik (Nunavut, Canada), Kahnawake (Quebec, Canada), Saint-Laurent Metis (Manitoba, Canada), Kalinago (Carib Territory, Dominica), and Pamunkey Tribe (Virginia, USA). 33. Gerald Vizenor, ed., Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 1. 34. Pauline Wakeham, “Performing Reconciliation at the National Museum of the American Indian: Postcolonial Rapprochement and the Politics of Historical Closure,” in Lonetree and Cobb, National Museum of the American Indian, 375. 35. The represented nations were the Seminole Tribe of Florida (USA), Tapirapé (Mato Grosso, Brazil), Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma (USA), Tohono O’odham Nation (Arizona, USA), Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation (North Carolina, USA), Nahua (Guerrero, Mexico), Ka’apor (Maranhão, Brazil), and Wixaritari (Durango, Mexico). 36. For example, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz uses the term “genocide” or one of its derivatives dozens of times in her history of Native America, Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. David E. Stannard used the terms “genocide” and “Holocaust” to describe colonization in North and South America in American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993). More recently, Jeffery Ostler published Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019). See also Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-

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versity Press, 2017). In addition to historians, Native American leaders and activists have routinely used the concept for centuries and have mobilized the term recently to call for a return of land in response to California’s official apology for “the brutal genocide and war of extermination.” See Sam T. Levin, “‘This Is All Stolen Land’: Native Americans Want More than California’s Apology,” Guardian, June 21, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/20/california -native-americans-governor-apology-reparations. 37. Carpio, “(Un)Disturbing Exhibitions,” 293. 38. James Lujan, “A Museum of the Indian, Not for the Indian,” American Indian Quarterly 29, no. 3 (2015): 516. 39. For example, David Stannard estimated the total number at 100 million in American Holocaust, 151. 40. Joe Heim, “The Head of National Museum of the American Indian on What We Should All Know,” Washington Post, November 23, 2016. 41. Originally, the exhibition was only scheduled to remain open until 2018. 42. The other treaties are Treaty of Canandaigua between the Haudenosaunee and the United States, 1794; Treaty of New York between the Muscogee Nations and the United States, 1790; Horse Creek Treaty, 1851; Treaty between the Potawatomi Nations and the United States, 1836; Treaty K, between the Native Nations in California and the United States, 1852; Medicine Creek Treaty between the Nisqually, Puyallup, and Squaxin Island Nations and the United States, 1854; Treaty between the Potawatomi Nations and the United States, 1809; and the Treaty between the Navajo Nation and the United States, 1868. 43. Carpio, “(Un)Disturbing Exhibitions,” 295. 44. See, for example, Dunbar-Ortiz, Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, chap. 2. 45. Mark S. Weiner, “Exhibition Review: ‘Nation to Nation: Treaties between the United States and American Indian Nations,’” Journal of American History 103, no. 1 (2016): 148. 46. For an introduction to the process of colonizing indigenous populations, see Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 21–26. 47. See Sharon J. Macdonald, “Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities,” Museum and Society 1, no. 1 (2003): 1–16. 48. Carpio, “(Un)Disturbing Exhibitions,” 284. 49. This is quoted from an order given to Maj. Gen. John Sullivan in 1775, quoted in Dunbar-Ortiz, Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, 77. 50. Dunbar-Ortiz, 81, 82. 51. Dunbar-Ortiz, 67; Jeffrey Ostler, “Genocide and American Indian History,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, March 2, 2015, https://oxfordre

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.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore -9780199329175-e-3. 52. Andrew Jackson, “Fifth Annual Message to Congress,” 1833, https:// millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-3-1833-fifth -annual-message-congress. 53. Madley, American Genocide, 3. 54. See page 127 for the discussion of the slave ship exhibition. 55. This was the case as of summer of 2018, when I last visited the NMAI. I cannot rule out that I might have missed other mentions of genocide despite numerous visits to the museum between 2012 and 2018. However, it was certainly not prominently discussed anywhere and much less represented through visual and narrative rhetoric in any of the exhibitions. 56. See page 21 for the discussion of collective violence. 57. Consider, for example, the privileged position of testimony from Holocaust survivors such as Primo Levi or Elie Wiesel. See also Dori Laub, “Truth and Testimony: The Process and the Struggle,” in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. Cathy Caruth (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 61–75. 58. For a discussion of cultural genocide, see Lawrence Davidson, Cultural Genocide (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012). 59. David Heckman, “Gotta Catch ’em All: Capitalism, the War Machine, and the Pokemon Trainer,” Rhizomes 5 (2002), http://rhizomes.net/issue5/poke/glos sary.html. 60. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 25. 61. Carpio, “(Un)Disturbing Exhibitions,” 296. 62. For example, Scott McKenna estimates that the indigenous population declined by 130 million during the first two hundred years after contact. Scott L. McKenna, American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 375. 63. See, for example, Russell Means, Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997).

Conclusion: Looking Back, Moving Forward 1. “The National Memorial for Peace and Justice,” Equal Justice Initiative, 2018, https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/memorial.

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2. The sculpture is called Nkyinkim, which refers to an ancient Ghanaian symbol that is associated with the proverb “Life’s journey is twisted.” “Nkyinkyim,” Adinkra Symbols and Meanings, 2016, http://www.adinkrasymbols.org/symbols /nkyinkyim. 3. Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror (Montgomery, AL: Equal Justice Initiative, 2017). 4. Noelle Trent, “Review: The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, by Bryan Stevenson,” Public Historian 41, no. 1 (February 2019): 134. 5. Khaleda Rahman, “‘We Will Remember,’” Daily Mail, April 23, 2018, https:// www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5646801/Poignant-memorial-lynched-Amer ica-opens.html. 6. Campbell Robertson, “A Lynching Memorial Is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It,” New York Times, April 25, 2018, https://www.nytimes .com/2018/04/25/us/lynching-memorial-alabama.html. 7. Lonnie G. Bunch, Meet the Press, June 7, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com /meet-the-press/meet-press-june-7–2020-n1226966. 8. “Frequently Asked Research Questions,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Accessed November 30, 2020. https://www.ushmm.org/collections /ask-a-research-question/frequently-asked-questions. 9. Amy Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). 10. For a discussion of their work, see Doss, Memorial Mania, 356ff. 11. Linda Theung, “Sam Durant: Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington, D.C.,” Unframed, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, November 17, 2014, https://unframed.lacma.org/2014/11/17 /sam-durant-proposal-white-and-indian-dead-monument-transpositions-wash ington-dc. 12. Savage, Monument Wars, 312. 13. “National Native American Veterans Memorial,” National Museum of the American Indian, accessed December 7, 2019, https://americanindian.si.edu /nnavm/. 14. “Visitor Stats.” 15. Savage, Monument Wars, 312. 16. Jim Wallis, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America, paperback ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2016), 33, 34. 17. Wallis, 58. 18. Emphasis added. “National Memorial for Peace and Justice.” 19. “About Equal Justice Initiative,” Equal Justice Initiative, accessed November 29, 2019, https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/about.

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20. The photo was first published in 1967 in Ernest Cole, House of Bondage: A South African Black Man Exposes in His Own Pictures and Words the Bitter Life of His Homeland Today (New York: Random House, 1967). 21. Charmaine Picard, “‘Public Art Is Propaganda, Frankly’: Hank Willis Thomas Discusses Gun Violence and the Urgent Need for Alternative Memorials,” Art Newspaper, October 31, 2019, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/inter view/hank-willis-thomas-public-art-is-propaganda-frankly. 22. “EJI’s New Legacy Museum,” YouTube, April 11, 2017, https://www.you tube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=SMvPXAowNgk&feature=emb_logo. 23. “National Memorial for Peace and Justice.” 24. “About the Museum,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2019, https://www.ushmm.org/information/about-the-museum. 25. Keith Schneider, “Revitalizing Montgomery as It Embraces Its Past,” New York Times, May 21, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/business/mont gomery-museums-civil-rights.html. 26. National Park Service, “National Mall and Memorial Parks Little-Known Facts.” 27. In a 2019 national survey, nearly 90 percent of Republicans and over 50 percent of Democrats rejected reparations for slavery. Lynn Vavreck, John Sides, and Chris Tausanovitch, “What Is Voters’ Highest Priority? There’s a Way to Find Out,” New York Times, December 5, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05 /upshot/impeachment-biggest-issue-voters-poll.html. 28. For a discussion of how a memory site such as the NMPJ could contribute to a discussion about reparations, see Marouf Hasian and Nicholas S. Paliewicz, “Taking the Reparatory Turn at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice,” International Journal of Communication 14 (2020): 2227–2245. 29. Doss, Memorial Mania, 207. 30. Carol Chomsky, “The United States–Dakota War Trials: A Study in Military Injustice,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 1 (1990): 13–98. 31. See also Laderman and Gruenewald, Imperial Benevolence. 32. Justin Vallejo, “Trump Says Democrats Want to ‘Blow Up’ Mount Rushmore and Take Down Washington Monument,” Independent, September 4, 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election/trump-blow -mount-rushmore-washington-monument-a9704326.html. 33. The violence included the murder of protester Heather Heyer by a white supremacist. Donald J. Trump, “Full Transcript and Video: Trump’s News Conference in New York,” New York Times, August 15, 2017, https://www.nytimes .com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-press-conference-transcript.html. 34. Samuel Perry, “President Trump and Charlottesville: Uncivil Mourning and White Supremacy,” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 8, no. 1 (2018): 71.

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35. Trump, “Full Transcript and Video.” 36. Reinhart Koselleck has shown how the meaning of memorials changed at the example of war memorials in Europe. Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). 37. Joel Gherke, “Jefferson Memorial Exhibit Update Will Acknowledge Slavery Record,” Washington Examiner, August 20, 2017, https://www.washingtonexam iner.com/jefferson-memorial-exhibit-update-will-acknowledge-slavery-record. 38. Gillian Brockell, “Historians: No, to Removing Jefferson, Washington Mouments. Yes, to Contextualizing Them,” Washington Post, September 2, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/09/02/removing-washington -monument-jefferson-memorial-historians. 39. Lucian K. Truscott IV, “I’m a Direct Descendant of Thomas Jefferson. Take Down His Memorial,” New York Times, July 6, 2020, https://www.nytimes .com/2020/07/06/opinion/thomas-jefferson-memorial-truscott.html. 40. Brockell, “Historians.”

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index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Abeel, John III (Cornplanter), 178, 179 Adams, Abigail, 131 Adjaye, David, 114, 116–117, 118 affect affective identification with victims in NMAAHC, 37, 185 affective identification with victims in USHMM, 37, 81, 86–87, 91–97, 105, 185 cultural shift toward affective form of national memory, 93 museums’ avoidance of anger and grief, 37–38 nonnarrative memorial spaces as space for affective work, 17 summoning of, as strategy in museums of National Mall, 37–38 African American painful past as America’s “original sin,” 205 author’s writing on, 9 as indictment of American ideal of freedom, 111 as inseparable from US history, 111–112 lack of memorial to, 77–78 movies and TV shows about, 9, 216n17 necessity of national recognition of, 198, 205–206 notable dates in, 120–121 ongoing effects of, 9, 21 as unacknowledged on National Mall, 7 USHMM as distraction from, 109 Akoto-Bamfo, Kwame, 196, 197, 201 Alexander, Michelle, 22–23, 145 American dream, educational inequality and, 21–22 American exceptionalism continuing belief in, 36

memorials to painful past as challenge to, xi, 3 as theme of National Mall memorials, 214 American flag, as totem, 44–46. See also Star-Spangled Banner American ideology forgetting in creation of, 33–34 freedom as central value in, 109, 132, 135 George Washington and, 180 NMAAHC narrative supporting, 116, 132 NMAH narrative supporting, 40, 55 revision of, as goal of acknowledgment of painful past, 7, 24–25, 38 USHMM narrative supporting, 109 See also freedom, US progress toward; national identity, American; national memory American Indian Movement, 8, 62 American nationalism American flag as totem of, 44–45 and marginalization of painful past, 32 as National Mall theme, 80 NMAH as model for museums’ fostering of, 39 reinforcement through selective memory, 103 as target of USHMM, 80 USHMM affirmation of, 81, 82, 83–85 Anderson, Benedict, 32–33, 34, 103 Angel of History, Benedict Anderson on Paul Klee’s, 33 Angelou, Maya, 122 Apartheid Museum (Johannesburg), 195 art, addressing US genocide through, 191–192, 193, 201–202

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Asch, Chris Myers, 143 Atalay, Sonya, 162 Atchinson, David Rice, 65 Attucks, Crispus, 131 Australia, response to human rights violations against Native peoples, 64 Baker, Bruce D., 21 Banneker, Benjamin, 135 Barboncito (Navajo chief ), 183 Beecher, Henry Ward, 65 Bell, Derrick, 22 Benjamin, Walter, 33 Besterman, Tristam, 27 Bittker, Boris, 144 Black Lives Matter movement, 145, 207, 213 Blair, Carole, 13–14 Boehm, Scott, 53 Bond, Michael Harris, 21 Bordwell, David, 15, 16 Brinch, Boyrereau, 131 Brooks, David, 144 Brown, John, 68 Brown, Michael, 207 Brownback, Sam, 64 Bunch, Lonnie G. on burden of remembering African American painful past, 199 on George Floyd killing, 1–2 on NMAAHC slavery exhibition, 127 opening of NMAAHC, 2, 112 on reparations, 144 Bush, George H. W., 85 Canada, recompense for cultural genocide against Native peoples, 64 Capitol Building construction by slave labor, 142, 236n57 statues of Confederate leaders still displayed in, 236n57 Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 188 Carpio, Vincenti, 192 Carter, Jimmy, 80, 82–83, 85, 103 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882–1943), 72 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 111 Civil Rights Act of 1968, 121

civil rights movement 1960s and, 8 mass incarceration of African Americans as response to, 22–23 NMAAHC exhibits on, 116, 118, 120, 121, 139, 140–141, 208 World War I and, 71 World War II and, 72 Clinton, Bill, 85, 88, 148 Coates, Ta-Nehesi, 144 Coe, Alexis, 214 Cole, Tim, 88, 94, 108 collective memory American, USHMM’s contribution to, 101–103 creation through official histories, 35, 103 forgetting as component of, 33–34, 103 social unity as goal of, 30 as stipulated by forces in present, 32, 101–103 collective violence definition of, 21 long-term effects of, 21, 24 and painful past, 21 See also national pain collective violence of US museums’ portrayal of, 5, 10, 30 need for markers at sites of, 6 need for recognition of, 6, 24, 39 See also painful past colonialism Enlightenment ideas and, 153 ethnography and, 151–152 Smithsonian Institution and, 153 Columbus, Christopher, NMAH failure to critique, 75 Congress apology to African Americans, 26 apology to Native Americans, 25–26, 64 Connerton, Paul, 34 Conyers, John, 144 crimes against humanity by US lack of memorials to, 3 and national pain, 20

INDEX

USHMM as model for remembrance of, 5, 12, 29–30, 81, 84, 199 See also national pain; painful past critical race theory, 22 Cuguano, Ottobah, 124 Davis, Angelique, 26 Davis, James J., 24 Davis, Jefferson, 66, 67 de Bry, Theodor, 167, 168 Declaration of Independence failure to apply to African Americans, 55, 137, 148–149 in NMAAHC account of African American progress, 121 in NMAAHC Jefferson display, 19, 130, 133–136, 134, 140 in NMAH exhibits, 19, 55, 76 Declaration of Indian Rights (1954), 190 Deleuze, Gilles, 16, 190–191 Dickinson, Greg, 13–14 domestic decolonization, 31–32 Doonyontat, 54 Doss, Erika, 4, 29, 37–38, 77, 93, 96, 209 Douglas, Stephen, 65 Douglass, Frederick, 70, 120 Douglass, Jesse C., 182 Duina, Francesco, 83 Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne, 180 Duncan, Greg J., 22 Durant, Sam, 201–202 education system, racial inequalities in, 21–22 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 85–86, 94–95 EJI. See Equal Justice Initiative Eliade, Mircea, 16 Eltis, David, 128 emotions. See affect Enlightenment ideas celebration in Mall museums, 109, 135, 210 and colonialism, 153 and privileging of one epistemology over others, 156 Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), 195, 196–198, 206

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ethnography and colonialism, 151–152 NMAI rejection of, 151–152 European nation-states imperialism and racism of, 33 and savagery of slavery, 122–123 Exhibiting Atrocities (Sodaro), 82 Ferguson, Missouri, protests, 207 film and prosthetic memories, 36 time-images and movement-images in, 17 See also Hollywood movie narratives Finkelman, Paul, 137–138 Fleming, David, 27 Floyd, George, 1–2, 144, 199 forgetting as component of collective memory, 33–34, 103 and creation of national identity, 33–35, 103, 142 as strategy of evasion, 34–35 types of, 34 Founding Fathers current removals of memorials to, 212–213 slavery as norm among, 137, 235n48 Franklin, Benjamin, 130, 137 Franklin, John Hope, 112, 125, 128, 148 Freed, James Ingo, 86–87, 91, 92, 109 freedom, US progress toward advancement through violence of, as central theme of NMAH exhibitions, 42 celebration of, at NMAH, 40 ignoring of African American and Native American freedoms in, 42 and militarized discourse on National Mall, 42, 203, 209, 211 portrayal of, in National Mall museums, 4 as US national ideology, 4, 15, 40 See also teleological narrative of US history Freeman, Elizabeth, 135 Friedland, Roger, 16–17

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Gardner, James B., 72 Ghost Dance movement, 62 Goldberg, Michael, 28–29, 212 Gordon-Reed, Annette, 214 Gover, Kevin, 171, 173, 187 Greenough, Horatio, 74, 75, 75 Guattari, Felix, 190–191 Halbwachs, Maurice, 30, 101 Hammond, James, 66 Hansen-Glucklich, Jennifer, 91 Harjo, Susan Shown, 175, 186 Harper, Francis, 147 Heap of Birds, Edgar, 201–202 Hecht, Richard D., 16–17 Heckman, David, 190 Heye, George Gustav, 150 Hirschfeld, Fritz, 5 historical studies, as threat to national identity, 103 historical trauma genocide as, 187 secondary trauma from, 99–100 Hollywood movie narratives museum narratives’ similarity to, 15 narrative perspective in, 16 reflection of American ideology in, 15 USHMM and, 92–93, 94, 95, 97, 105 Holocaust functions of US memory of, 82 German civilians forced to act as witnesses to, 230n41 memory of, and globalized humanitarian power, 228n4 Presidential Commission on, on US failures, 80, 81, 83, 89–91 as ultimate Other to US national imagination, 82, 88 US film documentation of, 99 Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean, 19–20, 30 Horse Shoe Bend, Battle of, 59, 60 Hurston, Zora Neal, 126 Huyssen, Andres, 33, 34 identity politics, and memory boom, 34 Imagined Communities (Anderson), 32–33 Indian Removal Act of 1830, 181

Ingle, David W., 44–45 Initiative on Race committee, 148 International Slavery Museum, 27 interpretation of museum exhibits cultural context and, 20 hermeneutic cycle in, 19–20 importance of beginning and ending and, 16 museum narratives as, 20 Isaac, Gwyneira, 161 Jackson, Andrew in NMAH exhibit on Indian removals, 57–59 views on Native Americans, 181 See also NMAI Nation to Nation “Bad Acts, Bad Paper” exhibit Japanese American internment NMAH exhibit on, 72, 73 reparations for, 25 Jefferson, Thomas quotation at entrance to USHMM, 88 racism of, NMAAHC failure to address, 137–138 removal of monuments to, 213–214 on reparations, 144 as slave owner, 144 and slavery, HMAH exhibition on, 235n51 See also NMAAHC Jefferson Paradox of Liberty display Jefferson Memorial addition of information on Jefferson as slaveholder to, 213 effect of Mall memorial to painful past on legacy of, 211 Jim Crow, as contradiction of American ideal of freedom, 111 Johnson, Andrew, 70 Jordan, Michael, 116, 118, 232n17 Kearny, Richard, 18–19 Kerr-Ritchie, Jeffery R., 124 Key, Francis Scott, 43–44, 45 King, Martin Luther, Jr., NMAAHC on, 147

INDEX

King, Martin Luther, Jr. memorial, 9, 77, 78 Kuleshov, Lev, 18 Lamar, Cynthia Chavez, 161 Landsberg, Allison, 34–35 Lanzman, Claude, 99 law enforcement, racial inequality in, 22 Legacy Museum (TLM) association with NMPJ, 195 exhibitions, 198–199, 208 linking of present suffering to past injustice, 199, 206, 208 legal system, U.S., racial inequality in, 22 Lentz-Smith, Adrienne Danette, 71 lieu de mémoire (memory spaces), 31, 108 Lincoln, Abraham effect of Mall memorial to painful past on legacy of, 210 NMAAHC exhibit on, 120 in NMAH Civil War exhibit, 66, 67, 67, 68–70 as racist, NMAH failure to address, 69 on slavery in Washington, DC, 7 Lincoln Memorial, meaning of memorial to painful past on National Mall and, 210 World War II memorial and, 209–210 Lindneuz, Robert, 61 Linenthal, Edward T., 82, 91, 100, 101 Little Bighorn, Battle of, 62 Lonetree, Amy, 152, 200 Louverture, Toussaint, 135 Lujan, James, 170 Madison, James, 137, 144 Madley, Benjamin, 184 Malavasic, Alice Elizabeth, 65 Mandela, Nelson, 147 Mankato, Minnesota, massacre (1862), 210 Marvin, Carolyn, 44–45 mass incarceration of African Americans as continuation of America’s racism, 199 Legacy Museum exhibition on, 199 NMAAHC’s failure to address, 145

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as response to civil rights movement, 22–23 McCall, Josephine Bolling, 198 memorial museums, as political instruments, 84 memorials emotions manipulated by, 37 to Founding Fathers, current removals of, 212–213 late-twentieth century rise in popularity, 34 as rhetorical, 13–14 See also museums and memorials to painful past memorial spaces, nonnarrative to African American painful past, lack of, 77–78 characteristics of, 16–17, 202 and Deleuze’s time-image, 17 as final stop of historical exhibition, 18 importance to memorial museums, 106–107 as indication of museum’s intentions, 18 lack of, at NMAI, 107–108, 193, 203 memorial to painful past on National Mall and, 202 at NMAAHC, 107–108, 146 at NMAH, 108 at NMPJ, 202–203, 203 significance of, 5 as space for affective work demanded by memory of painful pasts, 17 Star-Spangled Banner display at NMAH as, 42, 108 as term, 217n32 USHMM Hall of Remembrance as, 18, 106–108, 107 memorial to painful past on National Mall and changed meaning of Mall, 201–202, 210–211 as check on US patriotism and imperialism, 210–211 critics’ arguments against, 204 Durant’s Proposal as example of, 201–202 as expression of national consensus, 204, 205–206, 209

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memorial to painful past on National Mall (continued) as first step in larger effort to reshape America, 206 and national expiation, 205 necessity of, 199, 204–206, 208, 209 NMPJ as model for, 195, 196, 209 and nonnarrative memorial space, 202 as prerequisite for slavery reparations and return of Indian lands, 209 public visibility of, 209 as reminder of unpaid debt to Native Americans and African Americans, 211 symbolic importance of, 209 Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Berlin), 195, 198, 204 memory boom of early twenty-first century, 8–9 competitive vs. complementary approaches to, 28–29 dependence on social context, 30 forgetting required for, 33–34 multidirectional, 29, 212 and past as reconstructed from present, 30 as prerequisite to change, x prosthetic, 34–35 scholarship on, 28–38 time-image and, 17 See also collective memory; forgetting; national memory Memory, History, Forgetting (Ricoeur), 34–35 memory sites Mall as highest US concentration of, 108 rhetorical characteristics of, 14 See also lieu de mémoire memory studies as academic field, 34 methodologies, 3–4 memory techné employed by museums, 14 Michaels, Walter Ben, 28, 109 military, US museums’ presentation as agents in fight for liberty, 4

portrayal in NMAI, 5 segregation in, 71 minority groups consciousness raising in 1960s, 8 growing numbers of, and acknowledgment of painful past, 8 minority memories impact on national memory, 31–32 upsurge after 1960s, 31 mise-en-scène in analysis of museum visuals, 19 at entrance to USHMM, 95 in NMAAHC’s exhibits, 130, 136, 157 in NMAH exhibits, 44, 62 in NMAI exhibits, 181 Morris, Wesley, 132–133 Mount Rushmore and American unwillingness to face painful past, x contrast with Wounded Knee, vii–ix Native American views on, viii–ix Murnane, Richard J., 22 Muscogee Treaty of 1790, 179 museum exhibits and mise-en-scène, 19 selection process, need for evaluation of, 34 selective presentation of history, 33–34, 141–142 See also interpretation of museum exhibits; narratives in museum exhibits museums critical evaluation of selection process, as necessity, 142 emotions manipulated by, 37–38 late-twentieth century rise in popularity, 34 power to influence public opinion, 26–27 repressive erasure in, 34 responsibility to address painful past, 28 responsibility to address social justice, 27 as rhetorical, 13–14 selection process required to create narratives, 33–34, 141–142

INDEX

staff, difficult job of, x standard methodologies, Western values inherent in, 156 museums and memorials to painful past examples of, 25 expansion of archives of important historical moments as goal of, 32 factors feeding interest in, 8–9 lag in creation of, 9 as necessary acknowledgment, 25 necessity of social justice commitment, 27 recent proliferation of, 7–8 as tool for raising support for acknowledgment, 26 See also memorial to painful past on National Mall museums on National Mall control over public interpretation of history, 11 as crucial centers of national memory, 31 lack of outdoor memorials to painful past, 203 lag in addressing painful past, 9–10 locations of, 10, 11 and national pain, failure to recognize, 208–209 new museums remembering painful past, 3 patriotic focus of, 211 portrayal of painful experiences as past, 4 shaping of national identity by, 10, 30, 37 similar presentations of painful past in, 211 social unity as goal of, 30–31 teleological accounts of US history in, 4 Musgrove, George Derek, 143 narratives in museum exhibits as assembled from smaller narratives, 18–19 creation of new social imaginations, 19 framing by beginnings and endings, 16

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and narrative perspective, 16 sequential experience of, as film-like, 14–15 as type of interpretation, 20 See also teleological narrative of US history national anthem display on, in NMAH Star-Spangled Banner exhibit, 43–44 and Star-Spangled Banner veneration, 43 writing of, 45 national communal bonds effect of remembering painful past on, 32–33 as imagined, 32 sustaining through visual representations, 19 national identity danger of suppressing memories to create, 35, 142 forgetting required to shape, 33–35, 103, 142 historical studies as threat to, 103 memory places in construction of, 14 museums in forging of, 103 national identity, American acknowledgment of painful past as threat to, 3, 4, 5 and American benevolence and pure intentions, 36 national pain as challenge to, 8 Native American genocide as challenge to, 88 Nazis and Holocaust as ultimate Other to, 82, 88 NMAAHC failure to challenge, 148 role of USHMM in, 108–109 shaping by national museums, 10, 30, 37 slavery as challenge to, 88 unequal education as challenge to, 22 Vietnam War as challenge to, 8 See also American ideology; national memory nationalist politicians global rise of, 32 rejection of painful past by, 32

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National Mall and American benevolence, memorial to painful past as challenge to, 201, 211 and American benevolence, NMAI failure to challenge, 180, 201 American benevolence as theme of, 36 American exceptionalism as theme of, 214 American nationalism as theme of, 80 criticism of racist America on, as not yet possible, 149 existing memorials to painful past, 216n12 lack of central memorial to African American victims, 77 lack of central memorial to Native American victims, 77 limited space on, and choice of national memories to emphasize, 28–29, 212, 213–214 marginalization of war victims, 77 and memorial fatigue, 204 memory sites, high concentration of, 108 militarized discourse, memorial to painful past as check on, 210–211 militarized discourse on, 4–5, 42, 72, 77, 203, 209, 211 and national pain, failure to recognize, 144, 208 number of visitors, 10–11, 209 and painful past, failure to recognize, 7, 9, 142–144 prominent memory to painful past as necessity, 6, 14 sites built with slave labor, need for signs identifying, 142 and slavery, failure to address, 6, 7, 139, 142, 143–144 and victims of United States, lack of monuments recognizing, 142 visitors, percentage visiting NMAAHC and NMAI, 204 See also memorial to painful past on National Mall; museums on National Mall

National Memorial for Peace and Justice (NMPJ), 196 described, 196–198, 197 goals of, 206–207 Legacy Museum associated with, 195, 198–199 linking of present suffering to past injustice, 199, 206, 208 as model for memorial to painful past on National Mall, 195, 209 models for, 195, 198 nonnarrative memorial spaces at, 202–203, 203 number of visitors, 209 opening of, 196 on reasons for memorial, 206 Rise Up sculpture at, 206–207, 207 and willingness to acknowledge painful past, 7–8 national memory forgetting in creation of, 34–35, 103 government influence on sites of, 10 impact of minority memories on, 31–32 as limited resource, 28–29 and marginalization of painful past, 7, 30 memory places in construction of, 31, 93, 108 National Mall as central site of, 38, 108 nineteen sixties and, 2 NMAI and, 180 repressive erasure in, 34 social unity as goal of, 30–31 surge in last quarter of twentieth century, 34 and willingness to address painful past, 3 See also American ideology; collective memory; painful past National Museum of African American History and Culture. See NMAAHC National Museum of African American History and Culture Act of 2002, 112, 231n5 National Museum of American History. See NMAH

INDEX

National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), Native Americans displays in, 150, 152, 239n7 National Museum of the American Indian. See NMAI National Museums Liverpool (NML), and social justice focus of museums, 27 national pain, museums’ presentation of as challenge to American national identity, 25 comparative analysis of effectiveness, 5 NMAAHC’s failure to adequately address, 200, 208–209, 212 NMAH’s failure to adequately address, 208, 212 NMAI’s failure to acknowledge, 163–164, 164 NMAI’s failure to adequately address, 208–209, 212 possibility of, 24–25, 149 as responsibility, 28 national pain (ongoing pain from past wrongs) as accepted fact, 24 acknowledgment of painful past necessary for healing of, 25 addressing through compensatory legislation, 25 of African Americans, present effects of, 9, 21–23 as cancer-like, 20–21 definition of, 20 examples of, 21–24 lack of US museum to commemorate, 3 of Native Americans, present effects of, 21, 23–24 as unrecognized on National Mall, 208 Native American lands environmental damage to, 160, 240n26 return of, as consequence of acknowledging painful past, 209 Native American painful past as challenge to American national identity, 88

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decolonizing museum methodologies demanded by, 153 need for national memorial to, 26 prominent memory on National Mall, as necessity, 6 as unacknowledged on National Mall, 7, 77–78 US apology for, 25–26, 64 US failure to compensate Native Americans for, 26 Native Americans and casino income, 219–220n61 collective violence against, long-term effects of, 21, 23–24 human remains in museum collections, 152 Mankato, Minnesota, massacre (1862), 210 number of tribes, 155 poverty and poor health in, ix–x, 23–24 tribes formerly inhabiting Washington, DC, area, 6, 7 Native Americans, genocide against as America’s “original sin,” 205 necessity of national recognition of, 205–206 as term, 167, 241–242n37 New Jim Crow, The (Alexander), 22–23 Newsome, Steven, 128 Nightingale, Eithne, 26–27 nineteen sixties cultural changes affecting memory of painful past, 8 upsurge of minority memories in, 31 NMAAHC (National Museum of African American History and Culture) above-ground floors, celebrations of African Americans’ accomplishments on, 114, 115–116, 118 affective identification with victims in, 37, 185 and African American pain, relegation to past, 148 African American veterans, honoring of, 138

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NMAAHC (National Museum of African American History and Culture) (continued) below-ground floors’ historical exhibits, 114–115, 116, 117–118 and challenge of telling story of slavery in patriotic context of National Mall, 112–113 channeling of grief and anger into national pride, 38 on Civil War, emphasis on African American experience in, 68 donors, prominent recognition of, 232–233n17 as endorsement of African Americans’ special status, 205 existence of, as progress, 6 failure to challenge national imagination, 148 founding of, 2, 112 Gates Foundation stairway, 146, 232n17 and George Washington, deference to, 117, 138–139, 214 Heritage Hall, 114 importance of, 12–13 and larger militaristic Mall theme, 203 location of, 10, 11 missed opportunities to critique racist US history and culture, 142–146 mission statement, 113 ongoing racial inequality, failure to address, 23, 118 as part of larger remembrance effort, 6 popularity of, 11–12, 114 and present pain, failure to address, 200, 208–209, 212 proximity to Washington Monument, 116, 118, 138 “rising up” as theme of, 116, 200 Scholarly Advisory Committee, 112, 148 and social justice, failure to address, 149, 151 summoning affect as strategy of, 37 teleological narrative of progress

toward freedom and success, 113–114, 119–120, 122, 139, 140, 141–142, 146, 148, 201 USHMM influence on, 93, 109, 112, 121, 149, 200 and US military, celebration of, 149 visitor identification with victims as strategy of, 37 Washington Monument, failure to critique, 138–139 website, on Washington Monument, 139 NMAAHC, on painful past Holocaust Museum as benchmark for representation of, 29–30 need for memorial to, on National Mall, 199 optimistic framing of, 113 as small part of exhibitions, 110 unwillingness to connect to present, 36–37 and USHMM as benchmark for narrating crimes against humanity, 81 NMAAHC building criticisms of, 117–118 design of, 114–115, 115, 116–117, 117 distinctiveness on Mall, 114 interpretation of museum layout, 117–118 NMAAHC Contemplative Court, 146–148 justice and freedom as themes of, 18 lack of reference to victims in, 107–108, 146–147, 193, 203 as nonnarrative memorial space, 107–108, 146 as outside main museum pathway, 146, 238n77 NMAAHC Double Victory exhibit, 50, 138, 203 NMAAHC Jefferson Paradox of Liberty display, 19, 130–131, 133–135, 134, 136, 140, 235n51 failure to adequately critique Jefferson, 141 and implied triumph of liberty, 141 Jefferson as racist, failure to address, 137–138 on Jefferson as slave owner, 136–137

INDEX

on paradox of slavery in land of liberty, 135–135 NMAAHC Journey Toward Freedom exhibition on American Revolution as beginning of Black freedom, 130–132, 135 on Boston Massacre, 131 on civilizations in pre-colonial Africa, 122 critique of failed opportunities in, 136–138, 140–141 elevator ride beginning, 16, 110, 119–121 Emmett Till exhibit, 95, 110, 140 entrance to, 118–120, 120 on European cultures, savagery of, 122 on European nation-states as precondition for transatlantic slave trade, 123 on European nation-states’ contrast with liberty-loving US, 123–124 failure to address ongoing racism, 141 first exhibits in, 121 Founding Fathers, failure to criticize, 137 and George Washington, failure to critique, 138–139 implied completion of journey in, 141 on Jim Crow, 140 notable exhibits, 115 Obama’s inauguration as culmination of, 16, 116, 118, 139, 141 Oprah’s success as culmination of, 118, 141 overview of, 115 similarity to NMAH narrative, 141 on slave rebellions, 131 slave ship São José exhibition, 127, 185 teleological narrative of progress toward freedom and success, 4, 15, 113–114, 119–120, 122, 139, 140, 200 three major sections of, 115 use of lighting and ambiance in, 121, 130, 132–133 on violence of African American journey, 140 NMAAHC Journey Toward Freedom exhibition, on slavery, 122, 122–130

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approaches to depicting violence of, 126–127 display practices vs. NMAH, 127 display practices vs. USHMM, 125–126 displays to emphasize magnitude of crime, 185 failure to adequately address, 142–144 horrors of, 124–130, 125 and Middle Passage, horrors of, 124–126, 127–128 misleading comparison of US and European slave trades, 129 as most popular exhibit, 109–110 number of victims, failure to emphasize, 128–129 origins of, 123–124 as paradox in land of liberty, 135–138 stories of individual victims of, 66 NMAAHC We Return Fighting exhibition, 203 NMAH, and painful past addressing of, 39–40, 59, 72, 77, 78 benchmark set by framing of, 39 new exhibits on, 3 temporary exhibits addressing, 41, 223–224n5 NMAH (National Museum of American History) and African American history, obligation to include, 40–41 and American imperialism, failure to critique, 75 as benchmark for dominant account of US history, 12, 39 comprehensive depiction of US history as goal of, 39 display of iconic objects as sacred, 40 display practices vs. NMAAHC, 127 emphasis on self-sacrifice for country, 48 exhibits on slavery, 112 founding of, 12 identification with national community as goal of, 37 Jefferson and slavery exhibition, 235n51 location of, 10, 11

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NMAH (National Museum of American History) (continued) missed opportunities to address African American and Native American history, 49 “more human future” as goal of, 39–40 narrative structure vs. NMAI, 191 narrative supporting US national ideology, 40 and Native American history, obligation to include, 40–41 popularity of, 11–12, 40 and present pain, failure to address, 208, 212 sequence of exhibits, 47 on slavery, failure to adequately address, 65–67 social justice commitment of, 39 teleological narratives in, 4, 15 War of 1812 exhibits, 49–50, 59 Washington as slave owner, failure to address, 54–55, 74–75 See also Star-Spangled Banner display at NMAH NMAH exhibitions focusing on military history construction of national identity in, 41–42 emphasis on patriotism and heroism, 41 failure to address racial injustice, 41 failure to address suffering of war, 41 marginalization of African Americans and Native Americans, 41 as parallel to larger patriotic statement on Mall, 77 preservation of freedom through violence as central theme of, 42 NMAH Gunboat Philadelphia exhibit, 47–49 NMAH Nation We Build Together exhibit, 73–77 on African Americans and slavery, 76–77 “American Democracy” exhibit, 75, 76 celebration of diversity in, 78

challenging of US ideals, 74 on Declaration of Independence, 76 entrance, Washington sculpture at, 74–75, 75 on exclusion from political process based on race and gender, 77 exhibits in, 75–76 on Haitian Revolution, 76–77 inclusion as theme of, 73 “Many Voices, One Nation” exhibit, 75 missed opportunities in, 77 on Native American land, US seizure of, 76 and painful past, addressing of, 78 rejection of teleological narrative, 78–79 on slavery, 76 NMAH Price of Freedom exhibit, 50–73 American imperialism, failure to address, 70 on Black veterans, mistreatment of, 71 on Bleeding Kansas, 65 central mission of showing US benevolence, 73 on Cherokee Trail of Tears, 60–61 Civil War exhibit, 65–69, 67 on Constitution, 56 on Creek Indian War, 58–59 criticism of triumphalist perspective of, 53 on Custer, 61–62, 63 depiction of Native Americans, 53–54, 56–57 entrance, emphasis on whiteness at, 50–51, 51, 53 failure to address impact of US military on civilian populations of other countries, 51–53 final exhibit, emphasis on whiteness at, 51 focus on honoring veterans, 73 focus on military history, 50 and framing of US military on Mall, 72 on French and Indian War, 53 human rights violations against Native Americans, failure to adequately address, 64

INDEX

on Indian Removal policy, 57–61 on Japanese internment camps, 72, 73 lack of graphic violence in, 110 marginalization of non-whites in, 51, 52, 55–56, 66, 68, 71–72 Native American perspective, inadequate focus on, 61–63 Native American suffering, failure to adequately address, 57–61, 63–65 opening during Iraq War, 72 and painful past, inadequate treatment of, 59, 72 popularity of, 47, 50 on Reconstruction, 69–70 on Revolutionary War, 53–56 on September 11 attacks, wars following, 70 on Sioux wars, 61–63 and stereotype of Native Americans as savages, 58 tribute to Unknown Soldier at end of, 16 on US assimilation policy, 63–64 on US military as benevolent force, 70, 78, 110 on Vietnam War, 70 Wars of Expansion exhibit, 57–65 white racism, failure to address, 69, 72 on World War I, 70–71 on World War II, 70, 71–72 on Wounded Knee massacre, 62–63 NMAI (National Museum of the American Indian) Americans exhibit, 155 collections of, 150, 151 community curators in, 151, 153, 156, 161 criticisms of early exhibitions, 154 decolonizing museum methodology used by, 153, 200 and departure from conventional museum practice, 151 as endorsement of Native Americans’ special status, 205 entrance experience vs. USHMM and NMAAHC, 156–157 existence of, as progress, 6 focus on present, 152, 153, 154, 157, 159, 162

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on George Washington, failure to criticize, 179–180 gift shop and restaurant, 151 The Great Inca Road exhibit, 155 and grief, avoidance of expressions of, 38 history from Native American perspective in, 13 honoring of Native American veterans, 73 and indigenous objectification, ending of, 150 international perspective of, 154 Kay Walking Stick exhibition, 191–192, 193 lack of memorial space in, 13, 17 linear narrative, rejection of, 5, 151, 153, 155–156 location of, 10, 11 memorial to Native American veterans, 5, 203 and memorial to painful past on National Mall, 199, 202 multiple large exhibits in, 110, 150, 157 narrative structure vs. other Mall museums, 191 and National Mall theme of US benevolence, failure to challenge, 180 on Native American land, US seizure of, 76 and non-linear narratives, 13, 190–191, 211 and nonnarrative memorial space, lack of, 107–108, 193, 203 opening of, 2, 150 popularity of, 11–12 and poverty and poor health on reservations, depiction of, 24 and present pain, failure to adequately address, 208–209, 212 rhizomatic structure of exhibits at, 3, 153, 156, 190–191, 211 second generation exhibitions, new directions in, 171, 172, 212 and social justice, failure to adequately address, 164 social justice for Native Americans as goal of, 151, 152, 208

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NMAI (National Museum of the American Indian) (continued) and standard museum methodologies, 152–153, 154–156, 171 and survivance, focus on, 5, 153, 154, 159, 162, 165, 191, 193, 200, 211–212 and traditional ethnographic museums, 150, 151–153 and USHMM as benchmark for narrating crimes against humanity, 81 vision and mission statement, 151 visitors, number of, 150 and Western epistemology, rejection of, 161 NMAI, and genocide of Native Americans death toll, importance of emphasizing, 170–171 difficulty of representing full scope of, 200 displays on, vs. USHMM and NMAAHC, 170, 185–186 failure to adequately address, 165–171, 166, 169, 180–181, 185–186, 191–193, 200–201, 212 incompatibility with larger National Mall theme, 201 NMAI as only hope for bringing attention to, 193–194 number of victims, 192–193 NMAI, and painful past different approach to, vs. other Mall museums, 110 exhibits addressing, 155 Holocaust Museum as benchmark for representation of, 29–30 inadequate treatment of, 151, 153–154, 157, 159–169, 172–174, 182–183, 186–188, 190, 211–212 NMAI, Who We Are film avoidance of Western narrative practice in, 155–156 description of, 157–160, 158 focus on present, 157, 159 goals of, 155 nonlinear narrative in, 191

as one of original exhibits, 153, 155 as opening experience, 152, 156–157 and painful past, inadequate focus on, 157, 159, 160 and present problems, failure to mention, 160 NMAI Great Inca Road exhibit, 155 NMAI Nation to Nation “Bad Acts, Bad Paper” exhibit (on Jackson), 171, 181–186 on Cherokee Trail of Tears, 186 contrast with Washington’s diplomacy, 176, 178, 180, 181, 182 critique of US policies in, 180 on devastating consequences of removals, 182–183, 186 final “Indian Problem” film, 186–188 on Indian casinos, 183 on Indian removals, 181–185, 186 on Jackson’s views about Native Americans, 181 and misleading focus on small number of bad actors, 176, 183 on Navajo return to their homeland, 183 painful past, failure to adequately address, 180–181, 182–183, 186–188 on Potawatomi Trail of Death, 182–183 on treaties with California villages, 183–184 on US’s bad motives, 173–175 NMAI Nation to Nation exhibit, 76 balancing of US and Native American perspectives in, 172, 175–176 “Civilization” exhibit on forced assimilation, 188–189 criticisms of, 172 four sections of, 171–172 “Future of Treaties” section, 172 and genocide, failure to adequately address, 172, 181, 183–185, 186–190 “Great Nations Keep Their Word” section, 171–172 ignoring of US imperialism, 176 installation of, 155 introductory film, 173–175

INDEX

naive view of US–Native Americans relations in, 174–175 nations represented in, 241n37 as new direction for museum, 171, 172 optimism about future US–Native Americans relations, 173, 175 and painful past, inadequate treatment of, 155, 172, 173–174, 182–183, 186–188, 190 as replacement for Our Peoples exhibit, 161, 164–165 “Slaughter of the Bison” exhibit, 188, 189 on Tawagonshi Agreement of 1613, 172–174, 174 “Termination” exhibition, 189–190 on treaties as Native American legal tools, 190 treaties selected for discussion in, 172, 242n44 on two-row wampum belt (Guswenta), 172–175, 174 NMAI Nation to Nation exhibit “Serious Diplomacy” section on Washington, 171 contrast with Jackson as bad actor, 176, 178, 180, 181, 182 failure to criticize Washington, 179–180 on US breaking of treaties, 177–178 on Washington as friend of Native Americans, 177–178 NMAI original exhibitions, 153, 155–156 broad inclusion as goal of, 155–156 described, 160–171 focus on present, 162 on founding of US, 161 non-linear narratives in, 155–156, 190 Our Universes as only one remaining, 161 and painful past, inadequate focus on, 161, 162, 163–165, 201 replacement of, 161, 164–165, 171 NMAI Our Lives exhibit criticisms of, 154–155

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described, 161, 162–164 nations represented in, 241n34 nonlinear narrative in, 156, 161, 191 as one of original exhibits, 153, 155, 160–161 on painful past, present effects of, 163–164, 164 and present pain, failure to adequately address, 163–164, 164 NMAI Our Peoples exhibit criticisms of, 154–155 described, 161, 164–169, 166, 169 on European diseases, toll of, 165–167, 168 nonlinear narrative in, 156, 161, 191 as one of original exhibits, 153, 155, 160–161 as only original historical exhibit still up, 164–165 and painful past, inadequate focus on, 165–169 replacement by Nation to Nation, 161, 164–165 NMAI Our Universes exhibit described, 161–162 entry from Who We Are film, 160 nations represented in, 241n30 nonlinear narrative in, 156, 161, 191 as one of original exhibits, 153, 155, 160–161 and sequence of exhibits, 110 NML. See National Museums Liverpool NMNH. See National Museum of Natural History NMPJ. See National Memorial for Peace and Justice Nora, Pierre, 31–32, 108 Novick, Peter, 82, 109 Obama, Barack apology for federal Indian policies, 25–26, 64 as evidence for Black equality, 145 inauguration of, in NMAAHC exhibit, 16, 116, 118, 139, 141 Obama, Michelle, 142

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Oglala Lakota views on Mount Rushmore, viii–ix views on Wounded Knee site, viii Ott, Brian, 13–14 painful past collective violence in, 21 Mall museums’ presentation of, similarities in, 211 present effects of, 9, 20, 208 See also African American painful past; memorial to painful past on National Mall; national pain; Native American painful past; NMAAHC, on painful past; NMAI, and painful past painful past, acknowledgment of beneficial results of, 20–21 effect on national communal bonds, 32–33 existing memorials to, 209 and government apology, 25 impossibility of just future without, 6 inadequate US efforts toward, 26 museums’ responsibility to address, 28 new museums and memorials devoted to, 7–8 political and social goals of, 25, 28 and public memorials, 25 reevaluation of US national ideologies as outcome of, 7 and social justice, 2, 3 as threat to America’s positive selfimage, 3, 4, 5 See also memorial to painful past on National Mall pain of collective violence, ongoing. See national pain Parks, Rosa, 120 Perry, Samuel, 213 Pine Ridge Reservation poverty and poor health on, ix–x wealth disparity on, 23 place of museum, importance of, 14 as term, 217n24 police brutality, NMAAHC’s failure to address adequately, 145

Potawatomi, forced removal of, 182 prescriptive forgetting, in national memory, 34, 103 Presidential Commission on the Holocaust Holocaust Museum’s fulfillment of program of, 104–105 recommendations on UNHMM, 80, 81, 83, 89–91, 103 presidents, slave owners among, 136–137, 144 prison. See mass incarceration of African Americans Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington D.C. (Durant), 201–202 public memory. See national memory Race, Racism, and American Law (Bell), 22 racial discrimination, persistence of, 22–23 racial inequality Floyd killing as impactful example of, 1–2 Initiative on Race committee report on, 148 as ongoing problem, 118 racism blocking of African American equality by, 111 current, need for Mall memorial evoking, 78 Rand, Jacki Thompson, 154 Reagan, Ronald W., 25, 85 Realms of Memory (Nora et al.), 31 Red Sticks Confederacy, 58–59 Renais, Alain, 99 Renan, Ernest, 103 reparations Franklin on, 148 movement for, 144 NMAAHC’s failure to address, 144–145 as potential outcome of acknowledging painful past, 28, 209 repressive erasure in national memory, 34 Ricoeur, Paul, 18–19, 34–35, 103, 142 Rise Up (Thomas), 206–207, 207

INDEX

Robertson, Campbell, 199 Rodowick, D. N., 17 Rosenzweig, Roy, 9–10 Rothberg, Michael, 28–29 Rubinstein, David M., 119, 120, 232–233n17 Ruffins, Fath Davis, 15 Sacred Ground (2016 film), viii, ix, ix Sandell, Richard, 26–27 Savage, Kirk, 10, 29, 99–100, 105, 202, 204 Schmidtpeter, Ludwig, ix, x science, as political, 153 segregation US apology for, 26 US failure to compensate African Americans for, 26 Sharpton, Al, 2 Sherman, William Tecumseh, 183 Shoah (1985 film), 92, 99 Simbo, Prince, 131–132 Singer, Beverly R., 158–159, 160 slavery abolition of, US lag behind Europe in, 124 in America, before Independence, 111 benefits to US economy, 111–112 as challenge to American national identity, 88 as contradiction of American ideal of freedom, 111 as little-mentioned on Mall before NMAAHC, 112 as norm among Founding Fathers, 137, 235n48 ongoing effects of, 112 slave population as percentage of whole, 129–130 slave population increase after Revolution, 129–130, 131, 132 as unacknowledged on National Mall, 6, 7, 139, 142, 143–144 US apology for, 26 US failure to compensate African Americans for, 26 in Washington, DC, 7, 143

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See also NMAAHC Journey Toward Freedom exhibition, on slavery slavery, acknowledgment of prominent memory on National Mall, as necessity, 6, 7, 142, 143–144 as threat to America’s positive selfimage, 5, 34 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, 153 Smith, Martin, 100 Smith, Paul Chaat, 165–166, 167 Smithsonian Institution and colonialism, 153 control over public interpretation of history, 11 Native American human remains held by, 152 and struggle to manifest inclusive democratic civility, xi social justice commitment of museums acknowledgment of painful past and, 2, 3 as moral responsibility, 27 NMAAHC failure to address, 149, 151 NMAH responsibility to address, 39–40 as NMAI goal, 151, 152, 208 NMAI’s failure to address, 164 USHMM commitment to, 27–28 variation across Mall museums, 212 ways of expressing, 27–28 social unity, as goal of collective memory, 30 Sodaro, Amy, 82, 84, 97 Sontag, Susan, 3, 28, 29, 32, 109 space, as term, 217n24 Staiger, Janet, 15, 16 Star-Spangled Banner history of display, 42–43 importance to national imagination, 42 Smithsonian magazine article on, 43 Star-Spangled Banner display at NMAH, 42–47, 44 avoidance of Native Americans and African Americans in, 45, 46 construction of national identity in, 42 emphasis on patriotism and military, 46

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Star-Spangled Banner display at NMAH (continued) and flag as national totem of blood sacrifice necessary to preserve nation, 44–46 national anthem in, 43–44, 45 as nonnarrative memorial space, 42, 108 sacred aura surrounding, 40, 43–44, 44 on War of 1812, 45–46 Stevenson, Bryan, 208 St. Pierre, Mark, x structural inequality, overcoming, as goal, 206 structural racism, blocking of African American equality by, 111, 113 Sturken, Marita, 36 survivance definition of, 162–163 NMAI focus on, 5, 153, 154, 159, 162, 165, 191, 193, 200, 211–212 Swalley, Larry, ix Takaki, Roland, 60 Taylor, Recy, 140 Tecumseh, 49, 57, 58–59 teleological narrative of US history as capitalist and individualist, 15 freedom as goal in, 4, 15, 34 marginalization of those not contributing to main narrative, 15 in museums on National Mall, 4, 15 at NMAAHC, 113–114, 119–120, 122, 139, 140, 141–142, 146, 148, 201 at NMAH, 4, 15 remembering painful past as challenge to, 4, 34 in USHMM main exhibit, 4, 15, 81, 201 teleological narratives in Hollywood films, 15 Thelen, David, 9–10 Thomas, Hank Willis, 206–207, 207 Thompson, Christine, 15, 16 time-image, memory and, 17 tourism, and proliferation of US national identity, 36 Tourists of History (Sturken), 36

Treaty of Canandaigua of 1794, 179 tribal lands, return of, as goal of acknowledging painful past, 28 Truman, Harry S., 121 Trump, Donald J., 73–74, 82, 83, 212–213 Truscott, Lucian K., IV, 213 Truth, Sojourner, 9 United States economic power, and pain inflicted on Native Americans, 24 foundation in crimes against humanity, 112 history, African American history as inseparable from, 111–112 imperialism and racism of, pain caused by, 33 See also American ideology; crimes against humanity by US; national identity, American; painful past USHMM (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) affirming of US nationalism and patriotism in, 81, 82 as benchmark for narrating crimes against humanity, 5, 12, 29–30, 81, 84, 199 calls for recognition of US failures in, 80, 81, 83–84, 89–91, 104, 105 Carter’s political motives for founding, 82–83 central Hall of Witness, 81, 91, 93 channeling of grief and anger into national pride, 38 consonance with Mall’s celebration of US militarism, 81, 84–85 consonance with NMAH’s celebration of US militarism, 104 control over public interpretation of history, 11 criticism of, for distracting from crimes against African Americans and Native Americans, 109 criticism of nationalism and militarism as obvious theme for, 80 design of building, 86–87, 91, 92

INDEX

displays to emphasize magnitude of crime, 185 entrance, flags of US Army divisions that liberated camps, 88–89, 89, 108 exhibit offering written pledge to combat genocide, 105–106 exiting from, as simulation of liberation, 108 exterior patriotic displays, 85, 87 flattery of US visitors in, 103 glass walls listing names of destroyed communities, 185 Hall of Remembrance in, 18, 106–108, 107 heavy security at, 88 location of, 10, 11, 28 memorial space dedication to Holocaust victims, 18, 106–108, 107 as negative space within National Mall patriotic agenda, 108–109 number of Holocaust victims, importance of, 128 as official history, 103 as only museum with exhibition on linking past and present pain, 208 opening of, 2, 12, 80 popularity of, 11–12 as precedent for Mall museums about painful past, 29 presidential quotations at entrance, 85–86, 88, 229n29 separation of visitors from surrounding city, 86, 93 showing US benevolence, 72–73 as single-event museum, 109 social justice commitment of, 105 ticketing and entrance to, 81 unique features vs. other Mall museums, 109–110 USHMM main exhibit, 91–104 as activist and future-oriented, 212 affective identification with victims in, 37, 81, 86–87, 91–97, 105, 185 Auschwitz-Birkenau barrack exhibit, 97 Auschwitz gate exhibit, 97 chronological presentation, 95–96

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claustrophobic atmosphere of, 87, 93 criticisms of, 92 display practices vs. NMAAHC, 125–126 Eisenhower in, 94–95 elevator ride, video shown in, 18–19, 82, 94 elevator ride beginning, 16, 81, 82, 91–92, 93–94 exhibit focusing on single shtetl, effect of, 185 exit, display on US liberation of camps at, 82 final exhibits, 100–103, 102 focus on honoring veterans, 72, 73 focus on US liberation of camps, 81, 82, 84, 86, 88–89, 94, 95, 100–103, 102, 103–104, 105, 199–200 “From Memory to Action” exhibit on present and future genocides, 105–106 Hollywood-style storytelling used in, 92–93, 94, 95, 97, 105 ID cards of victims given to visitors, 92, 97, 100 mass killings, exhibit on, 98–99, 125–126, 127 model of Auschwitz Crematorium II, 98, 125–126 narrative structure vs. NMAI, 191 Nazi medical experiments exhibition, 97–98 necessity of graphic images in, 99 overstatement of US role in camps’ liberation, 100–103, 102 personal belongings of victims, display of, 98–99, 99 railcar exhibit, 96–97, 98, 229–230n35 sections of, 81–82 Selektion exhibition, 97, 98 sensory shocks as device in, 96–97, 100 teleological narrative in, 4, 15, 81, 201 and US collective memory, 101–103 on US soldiers as heroic saviors, 81 visitors’ critical reflection, dampening of, 92–93, 95, 100, 104–105 visitors’ emotional suffering, uses of, 100, 105–108

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Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 78, 227n62 Vietnam War, 8, 83 Vincenti Carpio, Myla, 170, 172, 179 Vizenor, Gerald, 162 Wakeham, Pauline, 164 Walking Stick, Kay, 191–192, 193, 201 Wallis, Jim, 205–206 War of 1812 museums’ failure to explicate role of African Americans and Native Americans in, 49–50 NMAAHC exhibit on, 49–50 NMAH exhibits on, 45–46, 49–50, 59 Washington, DC as built on site of slave plantation, 143 calls for contexualizing monuments in, 213–214 sites build with slave labor, need for signs identifying, 142, 236n57 slavery and slave trade in, 7, 142–143 Washington, George effect of Mall memorial to painful past on legacy of, 210 NMAAHC deference to, 117, 138–139, 214 NMAH deference to, 54–55, 74–75 peace medals given to Native Americans, 178 quotation at entrance to USHMM, 88 as slave owner, 137, 144, 235–236n53 statue of, at entrance to NMAH Nation We Build Together exhibit, 74–75, 75 See also NMAI Nation to Nation exhibit “Serious Diplomacy” section on Washington Washington Monument failure to address slavery at, 139 meaning of, changed by World War II memorial, 209–210

meaning of, with memorial to painful past on National Mall, 210 NMAAHC and, 116, 118, 138–139 Weiner, Mark, 175 Weissman, Gary, 95 West, Cornell, 23 West, Walter Richard, Jr., 152–153 Western culture, claimed superiority of, as justification for Indian policies, 181 “What is a Nation?” (Renan), 103 Wheatley, Phillis, 135 Where Are the Generations? (Walking Stick), 191–192, 193, 201 White House, and slavery, 142, 236– 237n63 WHO. See World Health Organization Wiesel, Elie, 2–3, 89–90, 92, 104, 199 Williams, Paul, 27 Winfrey, Oprah, 118, 141, 145, 232n17 winning, American obsession with, 83 Winter, Jay, 34, 85 World Health Organization (WHO), 21 World Report on Violence and Health (WHO), 21, 218–219n50 World War I, and civil rights movement, 71 World War II and civil rights movement, 72 Mall memorial to, and militarized discourse, 77, 209–210 NMAH Price of Freedom exhibit on, 70, 71–72 Wounded Knee, South Dakota, 23, 24, 62 Wounded Knee site, memorials at, vii– ix, viii Young, James, 92