I confess, however, that with The Man Who Made America on
the scene, I now have deeper concerns about Gilder's professed
intention to mount "mainstream" exhibits. History
exhibits in museums, let's remember, have been battlegrounds
in recent years, and the definition of "mainstream"
has been hotly contested. Since the 1960s, a generation of
historians and curators has largely succeeded in throwing
open the doors of many a marble mausoleum, and getting museums
to embrace the experience of a far broader range of Americans
than they had ever before been willing to represent. Not only
are women and people of color now routinely depicted extensively
but vast numbers of white males as well-the farmers and miners
and sailors and steelworkers and clerks and professionals
who had never before been deemed of sufficient stature to
warrant inclusion in the halls hitherto stuffed with the portraits
and possessions of "historically correct" statesmen
and entrepreneurs. At long last the American past is as crowded
and diverse and contentious and fascinating as is the American
present, and the people packing into history museums, local
historical societies, preserved historic places and National
Park Service sites have been drawn in part by the novel presence
of their forebears' voices and stories.
History museums have also taken to exploring a far wider
range of subjects than politics and finance-certainly important
but hardly all-encompassing. They now tackle sexuality and
consumerism, journalism and crime, architecture and cinema,
religion and race relations, class conflict and foreign policy,
among many other topics.22
These advances (I betray my bias) galvanized vigorous resistance
from right wing ideologues, prominent among them being Newt
Gingrich (that aegis most useful to Gilder and his colleagues).
This is not the place to rehearse the last dozen years of
combat, but just to remind readers that Gingrich has been
a stalwart soldier in the history wars. He's attacked the
History Standards, assaulted the Smithsonian as "a plaything
for left-wing ideologies," and denounced this generation
of historians as being too critical of America. As an antidote,
Gingrich, who for a time offered a televised course called
"Renewing American Civilization," has proposed we
stop "laughing at McGuffey Readers and laughing at Parson
Weems's vision of Washington" and get back to "teaching
about the Founding Fathers".23
In this context it's a bit alarming that Gilder has been
pushing a Ben Franklin show toward the N-YHS batter's box.
It's not just that there ain't much Gothamic about the great
Philadelphian. What if it proved only the first of a series
of celebratory shows on assorted Founding Fathers (at least
those of a Federalist persuasion) with John Adams, John Marshall,
and Rufus King (a home town hero, at least) crowding the on
deck circle? And why would they stop there, if they are really
out to Renew American Civilization, and save America from
the nattering historical nabobs of negativity? The ranks of
great Men Who Made America are legion: antebellum statesmen
(Webster, Clay, Calhoun), the Civil War leadership (Lincoln,
Grant, Lee), captains of industry and finance (Rockefeller,
Carnegie, Morgan), right wing Republican Presidents (Coolidge,
Hoover, Reagan). So many Heros, so little time: the possibilities
are endless.
Alhough space is not. What if they decided to commission a
statue to commemorate each Hero? To which nooks and crannies
of the N-HYS building would the metallicized patriots be retired
after their turn in the limelight? Presumably they could be
left in the hallways for a while - like patients in under-funded
hospitals - but sooner or later mightn't the corridors be
crammed with great bronze men? Perhaps they could mount them
on the roof, have the building sprout heroes, as does the
Surrogate's Courthouse (originally the Hall of Records) down
on Chambers Street, which was festooned with 54 heroic sculptures
(actual and allegorical) back in 1899-1907, when this sort
of thing was last really popular.
This fantasy is far fetched, I admit, but perhaps not totally
so. In an article for the Manhattan Institute's City Journal,
architectural historian and New York Sun columnist Francis
Morrone fondly recalls this memorializing era - he applauds
the massed legions atop the Surrogate's Court in particular
- and regrets only that we've fallen away from statuolatry.
Indeed he calls "for a revival of the tradition"
in order "to fill out the picture our forebears began,"
because "in the long run, a society can't flourish without
vibrant public ideals and reverence for its heroes."24
I'm in fact quite sympathetic to Morrone's desire to strengthen
civic memory by recollecting forebears who exemplified cherished
collective values, though I would opt for a more diversified
spectrum (and definition) of civic heroes - there weren't
many women up there on the roof, nor many working-class (or
African-American) heroes on public display - and the spheres
of New York's civic life are far more variegated than the
political and literary bandwidths to which he and sculptors-past
have been attuned. (I'm with him on a statue for Edith Wharton,
however: long overdue!)
Nor do I really think statues are the best way to honor
our exemplary citizens. They're far too limited a form, reliant
as they are on prior knowledge of the individual being pedestalized.
They're also far too one-dimensional, unable in their muteness
to convey the complexity of the person being heroized, much
less the times in which they lived. One reason statues have
been superseded is that we have come up with far better methods
of commemoration - popular biographies, tv docudramas and
documentaries, film epics, web sites, and yes, museum exhibitions
- all of which afford the possibility of explaining not merely
exhorting, historicizing not simply fetishizing.
I believe our generation finds these approaches more congenial
in part because they're less condescending. It would be a
pity if the possibilities of the museological medium, so dramatically
expanded and enhanced in recent years, were to be reversed
by a return to 1950s (or 1890s) mindsets and methodologies,
themselves tied to the notion that civic virtue was something
to be inculcated from above, rather than cultivated though
reasoned interaction with the public. The great irony and
failing of the current show, as Rothstein notes so perceptively,
is that it "respects the citizenry less than Hamilton
did," for the Founder, though decidedly no populist,
always argued his case in the court of public opinion.
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