By Mike Wallace
I think Edward Rothstein's New
York Times review of the Alexander Hamilton exhibition at
the New-York Historical Society is right on target: the show
is seriously flawed and deeply condescending.1
But I'm not convinced it's correct to lay the lion's share
of responsibility for the exhibition's failings at designer
Ralph Applebaum's door. Applebaum's client wanted a "blockbuster"
- mammoth crowds, lines around the block - and the designer
sought to oblige. He provided a format heavy on audiovisual
gimmicks - "straining for sensation" (as Rothstein
puts it) - and light on explanatory text, as if a more reasoned
presentation would alienate attendees. James Traub essentially
concurs with Rothstein's assessment, suggesting in his Times
Magazine review that the exhibition - which he finds by turn
baffling and hectoring - dumbed down its presentation to pack
people in.2
It's true that in an effort to enhance
turnout and reach new audiences, worthy goals I heartily share,
the show opted for flash and scrimped on text - without, in
the end, garnering the desired crowds. But the exhibit's flaws
go beyond packaging and style to conception and content -
to what it says, not just how it says it - and responsibility
here properly rests with Applebaum's client.
That client, we should be clear, was only technically the
New-York Historical Society. Responsibility for the Hamilton
exhibition is explicitly attributed to, and proudly claimed
by, the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History, an organization
founded by recently arrived N-YHS Trustees Richard Gilder
and Lewis Lehrman. James Basker, Gilder-Lehrman's President,
is listed as Project Director. The exhibition was in effect
outsourced - or in-sourced, given the Institute's expanding
presence within the Society. The N-YHS served merely as host
body.
Before the show opened, there was widespread concern that
the right wing proclivities of Messrs. Gilder and Lehrman
might color future Society offerings. I took a wait-and-see
position, because the Gilder-Lehrman Institute had been scrupulous
in the past about not imposing a political litmus test on
scholarship it supported. Besides, a conservative assessment
of Hamilton might well have proved interesting, and the curator
assigned the task, Richard Brookhiser (an editor of the right
wing National Review), had written a good short biography
of Hamilton - polemical and boosterish, but smartly argued
and elegantly written. Now, however, with the disappointing
results on view, it seems appropriate to ask if the exhibit's
flaws are in fact related to its promoters' politics.
At a technical level, some of the show's more amateurish defects
can perhaps be attributed to Gilder-Lehrman's reliance on
staff chosen more for ideological than museological credentials.
Project Manager Basker, when not managing Gilder-Lehrman affairs,
is an English professor at Barnard. Curator Brookhiser has
never worked in museums, so far as I'm aware, and mounting
exhibits demands different skills than writing books.
The constraints of ideology are more directly evident in
the spin put on Hamilton's career and its putative impact
on our contemporary world. Most visitors will have trouble
discerning any coherent thesis here, but for those aware of
what's been downplayed or excised from the historical (and
contemporary) record, and who know just how debatable some
of the interpretive assertions are, the exhibit takes on a
more partisan cast. There's nothing wrong with having a point
of view on these issues - Hamilton's been a lightning rod
for criticism and acclaim for over two hundred years now -
but it would have been more respectful of (and interesting
for) museum-goers had Gilder-Lehrman's biases been acknowledged.
In the analysis that follows I'm going to restore some of
the deleted information and recall some of the contending
interpretations, on the assumption that most viewers aren't
professional historians. I'll draw on a variety of scholarly
studies, but limit direct references to Ron Chernow's marvelous
Alexander Hamilton, the most recent biography, and in my judgment
the best. Chernow is as ardent and persuasive an admirer as
one could hope for in one's biographer. But he scrupulously
acknowledges criticisms of Hamilton by contemporaries and
historians, rebutting those he considers ill-founded, accepting
those he believes merited, and this gives his occasional reservations
particular weight and force.
A final prefatory note: my goal in undertaking this lengthy
(eighteenth-century pamphlet length!) exegesis goes beyond
reviewing a particular exhibit. I also want to assess the
implications - or, hopefully, irrelevance - of the show's
failings for the future of the New-York Historical Society,
an institution in whose success I and many other New Yorkers
are deeply invested. I hope my critique will spur readers
to post their own commentaries on the Gotham Center's discussion
board - about the exhibit, about the merits and demerits
of my take on it, about the future of the N-YHS and the future
of New York City's past.
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