Exhibition Review

"We'll turn this into another Enola Gay," vowed Ilse Metchek, executive director of the California Fashion Association, when told of the plans by the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution, to create an exhibit on sweatshops (Jason Zengerle, "Exhibiting Bias," New Republic, Oct. 20, 1997, p. 18). In 1995 the National Air and Space Museum's plans to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima from the bomber Enola Gay via the exhibition "The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II" became the subject of intense controversy, and the exhibit was eventually cancelled after protests by veterans' groups and members of Congress. The "Last Act" was only one of several controversial museum shows in Washington in recent years, including "The West as America: Reinterpretations of Images of the Frontier" (1991), at the National Museum of American Art, also part of the Smithsonian, "Back of the Big House: The Cultural Landscape of the Plantation" (1995) and "Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture" (1998), both at the Library of Congress. As a national museum the Smithsonian, it had become clear, would either have to avoid mounting exhibits on controversial topics or find a way to present them without the bitter contention that terminated "The Last Act." Officials at the National Museum of American History were aware that a sweatshop exhibit would likely experience resistance from the clothing industry, so from the beginning "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" was designed to avoid the mistakes that left "The Last Act" vulnerable to criticism.	1
Industry representatives were closely consulted to try to allay any fears that the exhibit would present the mainstream clothing industry in a bad light. In addition, the curators tried to design the exhibit in a way that would head off controversy. A section on "Good Industry Practices" shows that most contemporary suppliers make garments in ways that do not call to mind the sorts of conditions that made the term "sweatshop" so infamous in the past. One section argues that American garment manufacturing is limited in its options by an increasingly global market; and a "Dialogue" section with videotapes showing on television sets offers varying perspectives on the clothing industry from fashion executives, labor leaders, and others. The final section contains tables where viewers can write comments about the show and read newspaper articles about the controversy surrounding the exhibit.	2
Nonetheless, there was controversy. The steps the museum took to avoid a dispute with the apparel industry were not enough. The problem was the decision to include a section on the infamous sweatshop in El Monte, California, uncovered by authorities in 1995, where seventy-two Thai immigrant workers were held in virtual slavery in a compound surrounded with a high fence. By incorporating the El Monte sweatshop, the exhibit connected the past to the present and emphasized the issue of sweatshops—which the exhibit correctly notes have multiplied in the United States in the last twenty years—as a contemporary concern. But the focus on El Monte outraged many apparel manufacturers who believed that the exhibit was spotlighting the very worst, most exploitative sweatshop uncovered in recent years as representative of the contemporary garment industry. "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" was thus different from "The Last Act." The controversy over "The Last Act" was about how the past lives on in the present—the controversy over "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" was strictly about the present. If the exhibit had focused only on past events such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire or the famous Uprising of the Twenty Thousand (a strike by shirtwaist workers in New York City in 1909), it would likely have attracted little controversy—including El Monte virtually guaranteed opposition.	. . .