About this item
In 1994, when the National Air and Space Museum announced plans to display the Enola Gay, the B-29 sent to destroy Hiroshima with an atomic bomb, the ensuing political uproar left the museum's parent Smithsonian Institution entirely unprepared. As the largest such complex in the world, the Smithsonian cares for millions of objects and has displayed everything from George Washington's sword to moon rocks to Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. Why did this particular object arouse such controversy? From an insider’s perspective, Robert C. Post’s Who Owns America’s Past? offers insight into the politics of display and the interpretation of history.Never before has a book about the Smithsonian detailed the recent and dramatic shift from collection-driven shows, with artifacts meant to speak for themselves, to concept-driven exhibitions, in which objects aim to tell a story, displayed like illustrations in a book.
About the Author
Bob Post is a historian whose primary concerns lie at the intersection of technology and culture, in particular the politics of popular display and technology's animating passions. While pursuing his UCLA Ph.D. in American and modern European history and the history of technology and science, beginning in 1967, he was employed as editorial assistant for the Pacific Historical Review and principal investigator for the Metropolitan Los Angeles History Project. He spent the academic year 1971-72 as a predoctoral resident fellow in the Division of Electricity at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of History and Technology (NMHT) and 1972-73 as a historian for the Park Service's National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings. After receiving his degree in 1973, he was hired as a technician in NMHT's Division of Mechanical and Civil Engineering, then, for the next 23 years, moved through a succession of jobs at the Smithsonian: special assistant to the NMHT Director, supervising historian for the Exhibits Task Force, senior editor for Smithsonian Books, senior management council and curator in the Division of Transportation at the National Museum of American History (NMAH) , curator at large, and, finally, associate director of the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.Since 1977 Post has been was a content provider for Post Scripts, a firm specializing in the design, production, and packaging of popular and scholarly books and periodicals, and from 1981 until 1996 he was editor-in-chief of Technology and Culture, the quarterly journal of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) . He also served as chief advisory editor for IA: Journal of the Society of Industrial Archeology and as a contributing editor for American Heritage of Invention and Technology. Between 1980 and 1988 he edited Railroad History, a biannual periodical sponsored by the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society (R&LHS) , and was the publisher from 1989 until 2000. Post is the author of approximately 150 articles, essays, and reviews, and has written or edited 15 books, the most recent being Who Owns America's Past? The Smithsonian and the Problem of History (2013) , Urban Mass Transit: The Life Story of A Technology (rev. ed. 2010) , The SAE Story: One Hundred Years of Mobility (2005) , Technology, Transport, and Travel in American History (2003) , and High Performance: The Culture and Technology of Drag Racing (rev. ed. 2001) . Since 2000 he has been co-editor of Historical Perspectives on Technology, Society, and Culture, a booklet series published jointly by SHOT and the American Historical Association.In addition to his publications, Post has been involved in approximately 40 museum exhibitions, several of them in a lead curatorial role, including "A Material World" for NMAH, "American Maritime Enterprise" and "1876: A Centennial Exhibition" for NMHT, "American Enterprise: Nineteent
