NARA's Exhibits: A Different Side to the Access Business

Allen Weinstein

The National Archives, as you know, is in the “access” business. That word conveys different meanings, however, to different individuals. A well-prepared scholar can sit in a research room poring over boxes of files. Veterans seeking benefits can obtain copies of their military records from NARA’s records center in St. Louis. An avid genealogist can browse through recently-digitized documents on the Internet. These are just three examples of the variety of access provided by the National Archives.

There is also a long list of customers/visitors who do not have specific questions, but who do have general interest and keen curiosity about our nation’s history and civic life.  And this is where our exhibits—permanent and temporary, large and small—play an important role.

Many Americans visit the National Archives Building in Washington, of course, to see the documents that they have always heard and read about: the Charters of Freedom—the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Additionally, there is now the extensive Public Vaults, a permanent exhibition rich in thousands of records and artifacts that document the history of the United States and its people.

There are other temporary—and very special—exhibits on display in the Archives headquarters building’s Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery, in our Presidential libraries and regional archives, or traveling to other public and private facilities around the country.  For example, in less than a three-week span this fall, four major National Archives exhibits, all involving partnerships, opened in four different locations.

In Washington, the O’Brien Gallery has opened 1783: Subject or Citizen?, the first joint venture between NARA and Library and Archives Canada. What we have done in this exhibit is to employ a binational perspective to put records pertaining to the Treaty of Paris, from both U.S. archives and Canada’s archives, in a new context. This exhibit runs through January 2009.

We also just opened at the Durham Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, Eyewitness, which ran in Washington in 2005.  This is its final venue of a five-city national tour.  Eyewitness, a product of a partnership between the Foundation for the National Archives and NARA, offers moving first-person accounts of historic events that have shaped our nation. It runs through January 4, 2009.

The Carter Library in Atlanta is now hosting School House to White House, a joint project of the National Archives Experience and the Presidential libraries. The stars of this show are the report cards and essays of Presidents when they were students. It runs through January 4, 2009.

Also open now in Texas are exhibits in observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. An exhibit at the Johnson Library focuses on NASA’s early years, while one at the Bush Library focuses on the agency’s later years. They will run until July 20, 2009, and August 23, 2009, respectively.

Even as these exhibits open, there are others on the drawing board that we believe may pique visitor interest even further. To celebrate the National Archives’ seventy-fifth anniversary in 2009, an exhibit which we call simply “BIG” will feature some of our most interesting ‘mammoth’ records, such as the full scroll of the Articles of Confederation (never yet displayed in its entirety) and a giant map of the Gettysburg battlefield from 1863. BIG opens at our Washington building on March 13, 2009.

The Central Plains Regional Archives will host It’s Big, drawing on records in its own holdings, when it moves next year to its new location in the Union Station complex in downtown Kansas City. The Southeast Regional Archives in Atlanta  will present an exhibit on civil rights, Documented Rights, as a companion to a major 2009 symposium.

Looking ahead, we are planning, in partnership with the Foundation for the National Archives, a major two-part exhibit beginning in 2010 to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, called Discovering the Civil War.

This exhibit will combine displays of great original documents with engaging interactive experiences. It will be organized thematically rather than chronologically, and will give visitors the chance to walk in the shoes of researchers, unlock secrets, and uncover unexpected events. The records selected for Discovering the Civil War have been chosen for their capacity to surprise and excite visitors, as well as to illustrate the variety of Civil War materials in the National Archives.

Like our widely acclaimed Public Vaults exhibit, Discovering the Civil War will make use of the latest multimedia tools to let visitors take a fresh look at a conflict that still touches our lives. There are, of course, many other exhibits now in NARA facilities around the country and others in the planning stage.

High quality exhibits, big and small, often require the collaboration and cooperation of staff from many parts of NARA. I have always been impressed by what it takes to put these exhibits together. Curators, designers, and registrars, as well as conservators and fabricators, work as a team. And they count on contributions from other members of the Archives staff, such as archivists, technicians, writers, and editors.

As diverse as they are, NARA’s exhibits have a common thread: They stimulate visitors to ask questions about the stories of our democracy and require us to provide answers to those questions.  Providing these answers helps us achieve one of  the goals in our mission statement:  Lifting the level of civic literacy in this country by increasing interest in the study of history, social studies, and government; thereby making these subjects more entertaining and engaging for both students and teachers.  Only when citizens have a basic level of civic literacy can they fully appreciate and use the records we hold and make accessible to them. The work continues.