A few months ago, I wrote about my trip in July 2008 to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. As I noted in my posts, the trip was a formative one for me in the way it was the first time I’d ever looked at a moment from the past and realized that so much of what the museum insisted had happened was indeed still happening.
In other words, ten years ago I was reading about the past in a museum when I was overcome with a nauseating realization that I was reading about the present. It forced me to consider a new question - when does the past become The Past? Places like the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum have a way of insisting the past is always The Past, of dismissing the possibility of a distant present by memorializing every element of the past as The Past. I can’t fault a history museum for this – by definition, any history museum must be about The Past.
But if the past were such an easy thing to isolate from the present, I have to wonder why so much effort is made by history museums to prevent a visitor from making any association with the present while they are in the exhibit halls. In a good history museum, visitors are made to feel like they’ve stepped into a time machine and gone back to the specific period of time in question. They walk into the space, have a look around, and feel cultured as they learn about The Past. When they walk out, they leave the museum grounds knowing that the trip was a worthwhile one, that those who learn from The Past are not doomed to repeat it, and so on.
The very best history museums take this experience a step further and make The Past into something a visitor can experience, somehow, in person. This seemingly impossible sensation is made possible by the very best museums, places where visitors feel compelled to start rebuilding as they gaze at the ruined rubble of a bombed-out building or feel the urge to form a search party as they read handwritten notes from desperate family members begging for information about a missing person.
The history museum draws its power from its capacity to transport a visitor to a time that can no longer be. With this power, the history museum confidently anoints the past as definitively The Past. This is a great gift and an invaluable learning tool for all of us privileged to visit these exhibits.
However, the museum’s gift also comes with a significant drawback in how it brings premature closure to the yet ongoing story of our failures in humanity. It invites visitors inside to take a walk through time and emerge on the other side under the impression that all the work required to leave the past behind has been completed already.
When I was in Hiroshima ten years ago, I felt this drawback for the first time. Through the focused lens of nuclear weaponry, of course, the museum remains an important marker of the progress made since the end of World War II and stands as a warning against a specific kind of mistake we are unlikely to make again. But a visitor who leaves the museum under the impression that countries no longer bomb civilians for the sake of achieving a military or political goal would be very much mistaken indeed.
