The overarching thesis of Reflections on the History Wars, Ken Yellis’ response to the Enola Gay controversy, is that too often Museums and the Public cannot agree on the role of Museums in public history. This disconnect is enhanced by a general failure of curators and designers to properly convey their intensions prior to implementing an exhibit aimed at telling or retelling a story about the past. Let us consider then the effect history itself has on culture over time. While we are trying to explain the past, the past has already changed us.
Let the Enola Gay controversy serve as a testimony. According to Edward T. Linenthal, early disagreements on the content of an exhibit centered on the subjective perspectives of war veterans, and staff that reported to a curator who viewed the horrors of the war as a European child. It took an entirely new post war generation of decision makers to act. Whether we like it or not, we are all owned by the past and are just as captivated by it as it is aware of its own prosperity. If history lives, then it finds agency and sustenance through people. Sects of historians and the public cannot agree on what makes good history. This explains why schools are declining their humanities offerings. However, this lack of interest is not reflected in the deep feelings of the public according to The Presence of the Past.
In the politically charged atmosphere of Public history, history can and must be influenced by the stakeholder audience. It's not called public history because it only satisfies a few; public history strives to at least partially satisfy the many. Where so called traditional historians call themselves elite because they are free from the subjective mob, public historians are elite precisely because we are not.
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