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FeaturesMay 1997 Revisionist lust: the Smithsonian today On the politicized tendencies of the “new museology” at the Smithsonian Recent visitors to the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum were greeted with some unpleasant news: the museum was contaminated. Not by asbestos or toxic chemicals, mind you, but by far more noxious substances: racism, sexism, and anthrocentrism. To protect the unwary, warning labels throughout the halls identified which of the museum’s venerable dioramas were infected by which ideological error. “Female animals are being portrayed in ways that make them appear deviant or substandard to male animals,” warned a label next to an exhibit of American hartebeests. A beloved family of lions at a watering hole was also branded for sexism, because the standing male and reclining female suggested to the museum’s gender police a pre-feminist division of labor. A leaping Bengalese tiger was dismissed as too predatory, a violation of the communitarian animal ethic. The Natural History Museum is not ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 15 May 1997, on page 17 Copyright © 2008 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/revisionistlust-macdonald-3331
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