Conflict Over Exhibits Goes on Display

On a Saturday night last December, Museum of Science & Industry employees here looked on in amazement as some 25 people gathered outside the building to demonstrate against, of all things, the institution’s seemingly innocuous new agricultural exhibit, “The Farm.”

The highly vocal protesters were a loose coalition of family farm supporters and animal rights activists opposing what they claim is a distorted, Pollyannaish view of modern agribusiness portrayed by the exhibit.

The museum was rented that evening for a Farm Bureau dinner, and the attendees had to walk a gantlet of angry placards and other signs as they entered the building. The demonstrators, called Families Against Rural Messes, were peaceful, orderly but, to be sure, passionate, as they loudly branded the show a “lie” and rebuked organizers for failing to depict “hog factories” and hens crammed into minuscule cages.

The farm protest came as a surprise to Museum of Science & Industry officials, who were reminded--in case they’d forgotten--that no exhibit is immune from becoming a rallying point for a particular point of view.

As museums become increasingly popular venues and attendance grows, the stories they tell and the artifacts they put on display receive more and more scrutiny from the public and media.

And administrators have become more aware that not everyone likes, or agrees with, what they see.

“We have art museums, history museums and science museums in our umbrella and there is not one of them that has not been touched by controversy, not one area, in my six years here,” says David Umansky, chief of public affairs for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “No one can really avoid it.”

Museum administrators and curators have increasingly found themselves grappling with a variety of headaches. Here is a sampling:

* In one of the higher-profile controversies, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani threatened in 1999 to cut off funding for the Brooklyn Museum of Art because of its “Sensation” exhibit, which included a dissected cow and pig, castrated male dummies lashed to a wire, and “The Holy Virgin Mary” painting with its clump of elephant dung.

* The Florida International Museum in St. Petersburg drew intense protest from the International Indian Treaty Council, plus other Native American groups, over an exhibit featuring ancient Incan remains from Peru. Protesters were upset at how the display was presented, citing advance publicity that they said created a “Halloween” atmosphere by emphasizing ghoulish aspects of the native culture.

* Paintings of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh in an Oakland art gallery drew 1,500 demonstrators last year. Many of the objectors were Vietnamese refugees or U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War, who labeled the exhibit “propaganda” for the Asian nation. Other Vietnamese paintings drew similar protests a few months earlier when they were shown in a Southern California museum.

* Colonial Williamsburg, the restored historical community depicting 18th century life in Virginia, touched off objections from the NAACP and other civil rights groups when it reenacted slave auctions with actors. Those opposed to the dramatizations said they ‘trivialized” and “turned into entertainment” one of the most painful chapters in U.S. history. Officials said the auctions, which ran as scheduled, served to educate visitors.

Mutants on Display in Science Exhibit

Museum of Science & Industry officials in Chicago would be well-advised to heed these examples in October when they unveil an exhibit likely to ignite far more protest than the farm display did, and perhaps as much as any other museum exhibit has ever generated.

It will be called “Genetics: Decoding Life.”

Museum of Science & Industry officials say they will tackle the subject in a comprehensive way that will exceed anything ever done by any U.S. museum. Among items to be part of the show will be live, genetically altered frogs, mutant flies and cloned mice.

These may sound more like ingredients for a witch’s brew. And in some ways they are. Recent biotechnical advances in gene research--from cloning healthier dairy cows and sheep to altering food crops to tinkering with embryonic human cells--have drawn serious ethical and religious debate from special-interest groups and the general public.

The Chicago museum’s ambitious aim is to have a cutting-edge exhibit, exploring the latest advances as well as the social ramifications of scientists altering plant, animal and human genes. But it could touch off a powder keg.

At the very least, museum officials are braced for what they’re terming “lively dialogue” next October.

“Science is so exciting right now and a hot topic in museums, yet people have trouble grasping exactly what’s going on,” says Gary Edson, executive director of Texas Tech University’s highly respected School of Museum Science. “It’s important that museums keep people stimulated by exploring issues, but you always run a risk. DNA, cloning--it’s all a very confusing soup of ideas to many. Certainly not everyone is going to agree with what’s being done and shown.”

Widening the Scope of Public Education

Richard Hayes, director of the San Francisco-based Exploration Initiative, a loose federation of environmental groups exploring ways to influence public policy on genetic engineering, said it is imperative for museum curators to be responsible in such public education campaigns.

“It cuts both ways,” said Hayes, former assistant political director of the Sierra Club. “You don’t ever want to say artists and curators can’t put something out there. That’s anathema. But you do want to say they have to take responsibility like anybody else. They need to be aware of how consequential this whole area of genetic modification is. What is at stake is our common human future.

“Human genetic modification could be the most dangerous technology since the hydrogen bomb. Like each of us, curators and artists need to decide whether they want their work to encourage or discourage its use.”

Whether it’s demonstrators at the door, letters in the newspapers, callers on radio talk shows or simple boycotting of the institution, this disagreement can manifest itself in a variety of ways.

“The thing we have to keep in mind is that, in these media-savvy days of the Internet and cable television’s insatiable appetite for content, it is much easier for one small group to grow in a hurry,” said the Smithsonian’s Umansky. “This makes it a lot easier to raise the level of any controversy.”

At Texas Tech, says Edson, the curriculum studied by future museum administrators and curators increasingly covers areas such as censorship, stewardship and controversy. “One way we look at it is in the context of how to work with issues and exhibits that stimulate outsiders and deal with the problems they may create,” he said.

Nearly six years ago, in what many in the museum world agree was a textbook example of an exhibition gone wrong, the National Air and Space Museum touched off a storm of protests with plans for a display commemorating the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II. Veterans groups and politicians were opposed to the intended interpretation of events, which they felt was too deferential to the Japanese and pacifist point of view.

The methods used to organize the exhibit also came into question, and the display’s eventual thrust was changed as a result of the objections. The pressure led to the resignation of the museum’s director, Martin Harwit.

As a result of this controversy, the Smithsonian, which operates the National Air and Space Museum, created a six-page internal guideline to be followed when organizing subsequent exhibits. It covers an entire system for accountability, budget and chain of command in planning.

“Museums in general, and the Smithsonian in particular, are increasingly flash points in the debates that characterize our nation’s transition from a society that depends for coherence on a single accepted set of values and practices to one that derives its strength and unity from a deep tolerance of diversity,” noted the Smithsonian directive. “This happens because museums, to fulfill their missions, must prepare exhibitions that record and illuminate this transition.”