According to the American Alliance of Museums, Americans believe museums are the most trustworthy source of information in the country: more than newspapers, televisions, the government, non-profit researchers, and academics.
There are many types of museums and people visit them for different reasons, but most visitors tend to trust what they see when they step through the doors.
As a museum curator, it is my job to provide the most accurate information possible to visitors. It is also important to tell the whole truth and not omit subjects that may be uncomfortable. But museums do not always provide factual information.
In Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, author James Loewen discusses misinformed historic sites as well as those that chose to ignore their own history.
Stone Mountain, a popular heritage tourist attraction in Georgia, does not discuss how it was founded and built by the second and third iterations of the Ku Klux Klan, the American white supremacist hate group.
Juan de Onate y Salazar (1550–1626) is celebrated as the Spanish conquistador who colonised New Mexico, but few, if any, of his monuments discuss how he enslaved the Acoma Natives, cut off one foot of every man and sent 60 small girls to convents in Mexico City.
Loewen takes readers across the country, exemplifying historic sites that must do better and add new perspectives to their institutions.
I think of this book whenever I am creating new displays, exhibitions or giving tours at my museum. It is extremely important to incorporate darker histories and give the groups that were persecuted a chance to tell their story.
Bartholomew Delcamp is the curator at Lake Wales Museum in Florida, US
There are many types of museums and people visit them for different reasons, but most visitors tend to trust what they see when they step through the doors.
As a museum curator, it is my job to provide the most accurate information possible to visitors. It is also important to tell the whole truth and not omit subjects that may be uncomfortable. But museums do not always provide factual information.
In Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, author James Loewen discusses misinformed historic sites as well as those that chose to ignore their own history.
Stone Mountain, a popular heritage tourist attraction in Georgia, does not discuss how it was founded and built by the second and third iterations of the Ku Klux Klan, the American white supremacist hate group.
Juan de Onate y Salazar (1550–1626) is celebrated as the Spanish conquistador who colonised New Mexico, but few, if any, of his monuments discuss how he enslaved the Acoma Natives, cut off one foot of every man and sent 60 small girls to convents in Mexico City.
Loewen takes readers across the country, exemplifying historic sites that must do better and add new perspectives to their institutions.
I think of this book whenever I am creating new displays, exhibitions or giving tours at my museum. It is extremely important to incorporate darker histories and give the groups that were persecuted a chance to tell their story.
Bartholomew Delcamp is the curator at Lake Wales Museum in Florida, US
