Enola Gay

During these past few weeks we have discussed in class museums and how they display certain subjects, which sometimes create an “official story” instead of the “unofficial story”. One such subject matter is the Enola Gay exhibit. When an exhibit goes on display at a museum, it becomes subject to the bias of curator and the museum setting. In the Enola Gay controversy, the problem with this exhibit is that the subject surrounding this one aircraft is too large for the actual museum, thus the curators had to decide on very specific pieces of information to display with the Enola Gay aircraft. The exhibit shows the restored Enola Gay, a brief overview of its construction and what it is capable of, and one historical fact about it being the first aircraft to use nuclear weapons. The problem with this is that the exhibit is more in situ and less in context. This is a problem because protesters argued that just by looking at this aircraft one cannot understand the devastation it helped cause and its part in World history. The other side of the argument is that there isn’t enough text to go with it, which leaves room for debate, which veterans and other political figures don’t want. The exhibit hides too much of the history behind this aircraft, but at the same time has no choice. A simple solution would be to get the Enola Gay its own area that would provide the space needed, but there is no way to solve the way in which the protesters want it seen be the people, because a museum is suppose to be neutral area in which the facts are giving and the observers make their own opinions on the subject.