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Exhibition Review
The Gettysburg Museum of the American Civil War, Gettysburg, Pa. http://www.gettysburgfoundation.org/preserve/museum.html; and http://www.nps.gov/gett/planyourvisit/visitorcenters.htm.
Permanent exhibition, library and museum opened Sept. 26, 2008. 139,000 sq. ft. John Latschar, superintendent; lsc Design, architects; Gallagher and Associates, exhibit design.
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| The 2008 opening of the Gettysburg Museum of the American Civil War, a joint venture of the National Park Service and the Gettysburg Foundation, was the high-water mark of a profound and far-reaching interpretive transformation that began in 1998, when a group of National Park Service historians met to discuss how Civil War sites defined and pursued their interpretive mission. They were fearlessly self-critical about how they did business with the public, finding that the traditional, but popular military narrative did not give visitors the context necessary to understand why Americans slaughtered each other with impunity between 1861 and 1865. John Hennessy of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, who was the main architect of the resulting "Holding the High Ground" report, bluntly identified the problem: "We as a nation still use our battlefields to define the nation's Civil War experience in largely military terms—through the eyes of the participants of battle. We emphasize military outcomes, with little discussion of the relationship of those military events to the social, economic, and political evolution of the nation." Hennessy identified a critical challenge that many observers, both inside and outside the National Park Service, considered insurmountable: How can public historians convey the contextual significance of a battlefield without sacrificing the site-specific stories and tactical movements that visitors want and need to know? |
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The Gettysburg Museum of the American Civil War has responded brilliantly to the challenge raised by "Holding the High Ground." It has done so in ways, moreover, that defuse misguided claims of critics who have long denounced the broadening of battlefield interpretation as a plot to suppress military history in favor of social history. Quite simply, the new facility brilliantly integrates political, social, and military history, bringing more richness and coherence to its story line than any other Civil War museum. The many complicated narratives and interpretations are made accessible through a wide range of formats, including hands-on material culture, interactive computer terminals, video presentations, and a stunning array of flat-panel visuals. This design achievement does not come at the expense of the battle itself, however. Who moved where and why is covered in thorough detail, but troop movements are not studied in isolation, thanks to a museum experience that encourages visitors to see the battlefield not only as a sterile chessboard but also as a historical landscape, a place of political action where the convergence of powerful forces hurled men into a horrific bloodbath. The emphasis on context, however, does not turn soldiers into passive figures trapped in a torrent of incomprehensible events. Why they gave their lives to both cause and comrades is a question embedded in all the exhibits, spurring visitors to ask themselves, Was Lincoln right when he said that "these dead shall not have died in vain"? While scholars generally agree that the destruction of slavery and reunion justified the human cost of the war, many visitors tenaciously believe that the Civil War was a great tragedy in which American brothers were legally murdered by irresponsible and incapable politicians determined to go to war. |
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The so-called buffs, the men and women whose interests gravitate toward tactical details, will be frustrated by the new museum. It is not crammed with cases full of relics and rifles as was the old visitor center, which catered to those who insist that a visit to Gettysburg is not complete without viewing a bullet recovered from every corner of the battlefield. Superintendent John Latschar and his talented staff of historians, along with a board of historical advisors that included Gary W. Gallagher and James McPherson, overcame incredible public resistance to create an interpretive experience that broadly introduces the causes, course, and consequences of the Civil War to the 1.5 million annual visitors to the park. |
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