#shutdown
Dear readers, I am lucky enough to be back, yet again, in the good ol' US of A, this time visiting Washington to see a dear friend and planning to check out the national museums. That is until the federal government threw rather a large spanner into the workings of my plan as, at midnight on Monday, all non-essential government services shut down until the budget is agreed. That includes the museums. So, on Monday, I ran around the National Gallery of Art, and Smithsonian Air and Space and Natural History Museums in case they don't reopen before I leave. I also remembered the perils of being friends with a journalist, ending up discussing my disgruntlement on air.
Yet, in fact, the situation also proved thought-provoking as it led me to visit the Newseum, a privately run - and therefore open - museum dedicated to the story of the news. I rapidly realised what an eminently suitable day it was for a visit as I walked the length of the front pages display and read the range of headlines dealing with the shutdown. Inside, I found a large and beautifully-finished modern temple to the power of news. Galleries deal with the history of paper news and broadcast news, discuss the different levels of news freedom around the world, feature the history of comics, or the power of photography. The special exhibition Creating Camelot, showcasing Jacques Lowes' photographs of the Kennedys nicely discussed the political power of the media, and particularly images; while the display of Pullitzer Prize winning photographs certainly demonstrated the old adage that 'no news is good news' and therefore by extension most news is pretty horrible.
But, the two displays that really struck me deal with the Berlin Wall and 9/11. Most of the Newseum galleries are fairly sparse on objects, relying on reproduction images and text with perhaps the odd camera, pen or pad used by a reporter. These two galleries, by contrast, each revolve around a central striking object: a piece of the Berlin Wall and watch tower, or the mangled antenna that once topped the World Trade Center. Surrounding each is then a display of news reporting of the fall of the wall or of the 9/11 attacks combined with a discussion of the power of news and stories of reporters fighting to capture stories against the odds. Both, I thought, starkly show the gap between newsworthy/historical objects and how they are discussed, which is really at the core of all museum work. These are clearly incredibly emotive objects, and the displays argue strongly for the power of words in reporting their stories. Yet, they do so without seemingly any reflexivity on how much they also argue for the power of western-style news in making the world a better place. Language truth but also creates it.
I suspect that the wall fragment and antenna would actually be more effective if given more space to speak for themselves, to speak alongside the powerful news reporting that they undoubtedly spawned. But then at least they are able to speak, unlike the poor national collection displays closed off for the duration of the shutdown.