The
New York Times,
in a wire story, is not impressed with the quality of history offered by the self-styled "impeccable scholars" of the
newly opened Lincoln Museum:
The museum literature points out that its goal "is not to fully explain all of the issues that confronted Lincoln but to inspire in the visitor a deep sense of personal connection and empathy with the man."
This means that,
Complications are shunted aside for a series of psychodramas. [...] The personal is the political: That seems to be the motto of this life "experience."
I was surprised to learn that "The soundtrack of the assassination of Lincoln omits John Wilkes Booth's declaration from the stage after the shooting -
Sic semper tyrannis... because there was concern about whether it would be understood." This reporter also noticed that "The words of the insults hurled at Lincoln and the arguments by his opponents [in exhibits] are almost all paraphrased or invented." And Lincoln's own language gives way to something synthetic but more digestible.
The problem is that some of the museum is history, and some of it is not. [...] The new museum, because of technological power alone, risks making invention seem like fact. It also enshrines a notion that the best way to know anything about politics and history is to understand personality, and even then only in a simplified fashion.
