Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
November 2000 | Volume 51, Issue 7
Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
November 2000 | Volume 51, Issue 7
On November 15, just a week after the first presidential election of the new millennium, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History will open an ambitious new exhibition, “The American Presidency.” The 7,000-square-foot show will cover all 41 past American Presidents and will be organized thematically, not chronologically. Its sections will include “Presidential Campaigns,” “Inaugural Celebrations,” “Life at the White House,” “Assassinations and Mourning,” “The Media and the Presidency,” and “Life After the Presidency.”
Some of America’s greatest treasures will be on view, among them George Washington’s uniform, the portable lap desk that Jefferson used to draft the Declaration of Independence, and the top hat that Lincoln wore the night he was assassinated. But the exhibit will attempt to go beyond merely displaying such icons; its mandate is to show both how the Presidency has affected American culture and how the pressures of a democratic society in turn have shaped the office. Drawing on the Smithsonian’s vast collections as well as those of other museums, the assemblage is designed to give visitors an in-close, intimate view of life in the White House. It will be a permanent installation.
This past July 1 talked with the director of the National Museum of American History, Dr. Spencer Crew, in his handsome Washington office, as he and the curators Lonnie Bunch and Harry Rubenstein worked with evident excitement on the show.
Many of the museum’s current exhibits emphasize American social history, but this one looks like a return to more traditional political history—to what some people derisively call the history of dead white men.
In a sense it is a return to an older kind of history, but it seemed a natural with the election of 2000 right upon us, and a balance to our show on the First Ladies. Moreover, it weds political history to social history, one of our undeniable strengths. There’s White House fashion and furniture, for example, but it is directly related to how various Presidents, beginning with Washington, used dress, furniture, and manners to shape the character of the Presidency.
The show has had an amazingly fast turnaround, just months, from its announcement to its completion. Whose idea was it? Soon after the Smithsonian Institution’s new secretary, Lawrence Small, came on board in January 2000, he urged us to do a show on the Presidents, and we jumped on the idea. So we’ve had since March to try to mount the kind of exhibit that normally takes two to three years. But we already possessed an enormous collection of objects related to the Presidency, so it wasn’t so much a matter of looking for new material as of finding fresh and exciting ways to organize and assemble them. In a sense, it was like writing a biography of a President. We had to make hard decisions about what to select and what to leave out. You, as director, seem to have taken a hands-on role. I’m quite