Curating America's Painful Past: Memory, Museums, and the National Imagination

Abstract

This book argues that acknowledgment of painful pasts at the geographic and ideological center of American national identity is crucial for addressing inequities in the present. The study analyzes four major museums on the National Mall that are dedicated to traumatic histories: the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the new National Museum of African American History and Culture. Paying close attention to museum narratives and visual displays, Gruenewald explains how even some of the most harrowing and disturbing aspects of America's history have been and are still framed to support core American ideologies.