Until the 1990s, most museums and historic sites in North America avoided “difficult histories.” Instead, they focused on the celebratory, the patriotic, and the artistically significant, narratives that worked to ensure the “comfort” of visitors. Tours of plantations and sites like Colonial Williamsburg talked about architectural details, but not the true experiences of the enslaved. Museums relied on formalist labels that revealed the artifacts’ materials but not their deeper social and cultural impacts.
One early notable attempt by a major museum to present a “difficult history” was the proposed 1995 Enola Gay Exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM), which was then led by Martin Harwit. He believed that the museum should take up historic and contemporary controversies, such as debates about the use of atomic bombs. He proposed that the Enola Gay Exhibit marking the fiftieth anniversary of the end of WWII include Japanese perspectives about...
