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Exhibition Review
The George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, College Station, Tex. http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu.
Permanent exhibition, reopened Nov. 2007. 26,000 sq. ft. Warren Finch, museum director; Universal Exhibits, design, production, and installation.
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| In November 2007 the George Bush Presidential Museum, originally dedicated in 1997, reopened to the public after a seven-month renovation undertaken at a planned cost of $8.3 million. The goal of the extensive renovation—with a rededication timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the George Bush Presidential Library complex and the George Bush School of Government and Public Service—was to bring the museum exhibits into the twenty-first century, telling the story of this president's life and times through interactive media and user-friendly technology whenever possible. (This reviewer teaches at Texas A&M University's Bush School of Government and Public Service, but has no affiliation with the Bush Library and Museum.) |
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This technological and interactive upgrade has most surely been accomplished. The museum is indeed more user-friendly than before. It is more usable by non-English-speaking visitors, more child-friendly, more easily navigated by the physically challenged, and now offers visitors an audio tour narrated by Barbara Bush and her daughter, Dorothy Bush Koch. In a word, the museum is more fun. |
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The new technological emphasis complements authentic and period artifacts of the former president's life. Artifacts, including the baseball glove Bush used in the first College World Series, stand beside period objects such as a bomber of the type Bush flew during World War II—Bush's own plane having been shot down—and a vintage 1947 Studebaker of the kind Bush drove from Connecticut to the west Texas oil fields following the war. Video and computer screens abound. They show, for example, footage of a youthful and exhausted Bush being fished out of the Pacific Ocean following the downing of his bomber and the death of his two crewmen, and highway scenes reminiscent of his Studebaker ride to the new American frontier of oil. Indeed, the museum's renditions of those events were no less informative in their previous incarnations, but the influx of interactivity now gives the exhibits a far louder and busier audio and visual imprint. |
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In other words, this is no longer a quiet museum, and as such it better reflects the man for whom it is named. Bush's signature virtues included boundless energy and a desire for frenetic competition, and a heartfelt desire to win influence through the acquisition of professional and personal friends. The new museum exhibits also show a tender side of the man largely absent in the original museum design. Highlighted from Bush's first letter home after his near-death combat experience are passages in which the young pilot admitted to openly weeping for his lost comrades. Duty called him to fly again, Bush explained, but he had less enthusiasm for combat than before. Before the Bill Clinton era, when this museum was first conceived, we did not often expect our presidents to hug or to cry. We now demand such sensitivity from them, even if only in retrospect. |
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