ONE FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS
John Overton's 17th century map of America is on view at the Huntington. (The Huntington)
On July 4th, the White House Domestic Policy Council dropped a 162-page report attacking the Smithsonian Institution — principally the National Museum of American History and its director, Anthea Hartig. I read the report so you don’t have to. And it’s everything you might imagine, accusing the museum of “Illegal Alien Activism,” “Transgender Activism,” and “Anti-White Activism.” It states that the Smithsonian has “improperly deviated from scholarship” and is attempting to “target youth with their radical ideology.”
The attack touches all the usual MAGA talking points. Throughout, quotes are cherry-picked and history is rendered in broad strokes. A lot of word count is devoted to the Founding Fathers, who the report claims do not receive enough attention in the halls of the Smithsonian. In one section, for example, the unidentified authors state that it was the ideas of the founders that “helped spark a worldwide movement that ultimately ended slavery.” Never mind that Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay was agitating against slavery when George Washington was six, and the end of slavery came as the result of the efforts (and deaths) of many, not simply the ideas of the few.
It’s a tedious yet chilling read — the White House sticking its nose into the work of independent historians to demand a propagandistic presentation of historical events. The country’s largest group of history scholars has denounced it, and the secretary of the Smithsonian, Lonnie G. Bunch III, issued a memo stating that the report was “not a fair characterization of the work and totality of the National Museum of American History.”
Paris Photographic Studio, Flower Field in Los Angeles-Hollywood, California, United States, Operated by the Kuromi Family of Shimane Prefecture, 1928. (The Huntington)
All of which makes a couple of shows on view here in LA quite meaningful: This Land Is… at the Huntington in San Marino and Life, Liberty, and Los Angeles, at the Autry Museum of the American West, both of which take the 250th anniversary of US independence as a jumping-off point to explore civic themes.
At the Huntington, these are framed around questions of land — how it is viewed, how it is controlled, who has historically worked it, and who claims it as theirs. The show’s title is drawn from Woody Guthrie’s famous song, This Land is Your Land, and its curation is inspired by the structure of trees, organized around concepts like “roots,” “uprootings,” “amendments,” and “regeneration.” The opening object is a cross-section of a Pasadena oak tree that bore witness to hundreds of years of LA history. From there, the exhibition takes us through a remarkable collection of objects: annotated copies of the Declaration of Independence, maps of the 1760s survey for the Mason-Dixon Line, farmworker newspapers, an astonishing printed map of a Japanese American incarceration center, and Guthrie’s guitar.
The hand-painted Mexican flag from the mid-19th century that was used to celebrate Mexican Independence when LA was under Mexican rule — on view at the Autry. (Mitokino)
The Autry’s exhibition keeps the focus more local — exploring 250 years of local LA history from the city’s Tongva roots to the present. (This area did not become LA until 1781 and part of the US until 1850.) Among the artifacts on view are a hand-painted Mexican flag, ephemera connected to pioneering land owner and midwife Biddy Mason, a section on car culture that includes a 1967 mini-car from Disneyland’s Autopia ride, and a display devoted to the deportation of Mexicans during the Great Depression that includes a pair of 1930s-era handcuffs.
The Huntington’s show has the stronger curatorial framework and is better installed. (The Autry feels like it’s trying to stuff too many ideas and objects into too little space.) But together these shows present some wondrous artifacts that offer keen insights into the nature of history.
The White House Domestic Policy Council sees history as the deeds of great men. These two exhibitions show that history has indeed been shaped by renowned leaders, but also by people whose names you may have never heard. Obscure events can lie in wait to be resuscitated, their reverberations felt years after they took place. Lasting aspects of culture have a way of bubbling up from unexpected corners. There is triumph as well as tragedy. And rather than be dictated from on high, the best historical accounts are the ones that embrace messy contradiction in clear-eyed ways. History is never a single story, it is many. History is you and me.
🗺️🗺️🗺️
This Land Is… is on view at the Huntington through January 11th; huntington.org.
Life, Liberty, and Los Angeles is on view at the Autry Museum of the American West through January 31st; theautry.org.
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