From: Lincoln Cushing (lcushing@library.berkeley.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 21 2004 - 13:41:40 PDT
Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20040921132240.00b40ce0@library.berkeley.edu> Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 13:41:40 -0700 From: Lincoln Cushing <lcushing@library.berkeley.edu> Subject: Oakland Museum show
SLAyers-
Follows are some links to articles on the Vietnam show controversy.
Regarding Peg's comments, I'm glad the museum did the show too - my
concerns are not about their practice, but rather about the larger issue of
institutional objectivity. As someone who does a lot of work on a similarly
controversial topic (Cuban political posters) I know that I could NEVER
find an exhibit space in south Florida that would be willing to host a
"neutral" show on my subject. The local community would shut it down. I've
been on the other side of this too - a few years ago the Lawrence Hall of
Science held an exhibit on papermaking that was wholly produced by the
industry. I screamed bloody murder, chastised them for lack of scientific
review, and got them to allow me to mount a parallel exhibit with
information not mentioned in the official one. The documentation is called
"Pulp Fiction," I have it posted at
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/~lcushing/addpages/pulpfiction.html
humbly yours, Lincoln Cushing
From the "ethnic media" NCM-
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=f76cb8494d029124fa24b0949f656af2
and the NY Times
(full text pasted here for those of you without access)
September 7, 2004 Tuesday
Section A; Column 1; National Desk; Pg. 16
In Imperfect Compromise, Exhibit Tells of Vietnam Era
By CAROL POGASH
OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 5
Even as the presidential campaign remains steeped in a debate about John
Kerry's military service in Vietnam, another highly charged dispute over
the Vietnam War has been resolved -- albeit imperfectly -- between
Vietnamese-Americans and a prominent museum here.
An exhibit, ''What's Going On? California in the Era of Vietnam,'' opened
late last month at the Oakland Museum of California and is scheduled to run
through February before traveling to Los Angeles and Chicago. Five years in
the making, it tells the wartime story of California during the 1960's and
70's, ripping at wounds among the state's swelling Vietnamese-American
population.
The exhibit's content was significantly changed to reflect the complaints
and sensitivities of Vietnamese living in California, particularly those
from the war's losing side in the south, who feared the displays would give
their viewpoint and experiences short shrift. Some 80 percent of the more
than one million Vietnamese in the United States came from South Vietnam,
the United States' ally.
''For museums, this is very unusual,'' Dennis Power, the Oakland museum's
executive director, said of the long and often difficult negotiations over
the exhibit.
The two sides debated things like space allotments, terminology and how
much attention to give Ho Chi Minh, the leader of Communist North Vietnam.
Under pressure from the Vietnamese-Americans, the museum left out his picture.
The exhibit, which cost $1.9 million and encompasses 7,000 square feet,
presents a kaleidoscopic view of California during the Vietnam era. It
covers topics like the free speech and antiwar movements of the 1960's and
the arrival of the first Vietnamese refugees in 1975 at the end of the war.
Marcia Eymann, the museum's curator, first thought of the exhibit after
noticing scrawled messages from American soldiers on walls at Oakland's
Army base, where artifacts from the museum are stored.
Last year, the museum hired Mimi Nguyen, its first Vietnamese researcher,
whose abbreviated tenure at the museum reflected the deep emotions and
often tumultuous negotiations that surrounded the exhibit.
Ms. Nguyen lobbied to include artifacts from the re-education camps, where
hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese were imprisoned after the war.
''It's about historical accuracy and just giving voice to primary
sources,'' she said, ''to people who have lived and survived.''
She pushed for displays that depict the fall of Saigon in 1975 and the
thousands of Vietnamese maimed in the war. When she learned that the museum
was buying a Vietcong uniform through eBay, Ms. Nguyen argued for the
display of a South Vietnamese uniform as well.
She became a persistent critic. Last October, she wrote a scathing
memorandum, accusing the museum of simplifying and sanitizing the war. One
week later, Ms. Nguyen, who had earlier received e-mail messages from
superiors praising her work, was fired.
Mr. Power said Ms. Nguyen had not been fired because of her views, but he
declined to discuss the reasons. An online petition, signed by about 500
Vietnamese worldwide, protested the firing but failed to have her
reinstated. A Vietnamese-American graduate student hired to replace Ms.
Nguyen quit after six months, telling The San Francisco Chronicle at the
time that he would be uncomfortable taking his parents to the exhibit as it
was then planned.
Ms. Eymann, the curator, said Ms. Nguyen's memo reflected ''the frustration
of a broader community that feels it's been ignored.'' In January, Ms.
Eymann sought out the leaders of the petition drive and asked for their
help, eventually creating an advisory group of Southeast Asians.
''They had been arrogant, insensitive and elitist,'' said Joseph Dovinh, a
Vietnamese-American who wrote the online petition and became the head of
the advisory group.
In the ensuing months, the museum's outreach efforts included paying for
leaders among Vietnamese in Southern California to fly to Oakland for meetings.
The advisory group members insisted that the exhibit refer to
Vietnamese-Americans as refugees, not immigrants, because they fled their
country for political, not economic, reasons. The museum agreed.
They also wanted their story to be threaded through the exhibit, not
isolated in one display. The museum agreed to post written accounts in the
exhibit's 11 display areas.
The group also requested a display depicting the suffering of the
Vietnamese people with graphic images, like a photograph of a pile of
skulls. The museum refused to display the photos, but placed them in a
binder in an alcove next to the exhibit.
''We were pushing for about 30 percent of the space,'' Mr. Dovinh said.
''We were satisfied with something closer to 20 percent. Ultimately, we got
about 15 percent.''
Not everyone is happy with the exhibit. For example, some complain about a
display of baby clothes from Operation Babylift, in which 2,600 ''orphans''
were flown out of Vietnam and placed with American families. Nothing is
said about the Vietnamese mothers who sought the return of their children
but were blocked by American courts.
Sonny Le, a consultant to the museum and the communications director of the
East Meets West Foundation, which provides humanitarian assistance to
Vietnam, said the exhibit was the best compromise possible.
''This is as good as it can get,'' he said. ''The inhumanity and
destruction of war should have been shoved down our throat. But if you do
that, people won't go to see it.''
But Richard Griffoul, the museum's director of marketing and
communications, acknowledged that the final result was not good enough for
many Vietnamese-Americans.
He said, ''This is not the exhibit they want and need''
Cataloging and Electronic Outreach Librarian
U.C. Berkeley Bancroft Library
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