Vietnam Exhibit, Oakland: A Consultant's View
From MGilbert@ngcsu.edu Thu Sep 9 12:17:20 2004
Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2004 15:15:25 -0400
From: Gilbert <MGilbert@ngcsu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Vietnam Exhibit, Oakland: A Consultant's view
The academic book published to illuminate the exhibit and its
controversy is Marcia Eyman and Charles Wollenberg, eds, What's Going
On: California and the Vietnam Era (University of California Press,
2004) with articles by the editors, Andrew Lam and many others,
including myself. I was asked to write an essay on the economic impact
of the Second Indochina War on California. I was a consultant on the
project and from that POV I can say
only a little light can be shed on the exhibit in public discourse as
this discourse is not about the actual exhibit which after all, was not
even a '_Vietnam_" exhibit!
I was brought on as an occasional consultant five years ago My first
words on the job were "there needs to be greater treatment of Southeast
Asians."
It was then most appropriately and clearly explained to me that the
exhibit was not about the Second Indochina War, or Indochinese
communities. It was about the impact of the war on California and
through it the rest of the US. (i.e. American troops leaving from
Oakland, the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, refugees arriving at Camp
Pendleton, Hollywood and the war, the training of RVN"s Air force in
California, etc.). Southeast Asians would be a part of the exhibit, but
as refugee communities relating to and contributing to California and US
history This, it was explained, was what they had been funded for after
a long controversy over whether an exhibit on one state could be funded
by the national NEH, and that was what their grant contract specified.
Cuts in funding and space allocation made it much more difficult to
address Southeast communities in any other way. Believe me, I tried and
the staff did their best to indulge me.
This was a very professional, rational. realistic approach to so big
an issue and entirely appropriate to the "Museum of California's"
educational mission. It has neither the staff nor the expertise to do
otherwise: we are talking three young women as curator/asst curators,
and a small staff of education professionals. At the kick-off academic
conference heralding the exhibit's coming four years ago, there was,
nonetheless, massive community participation. There never was any
arrogance shown, only patient appeals for understanding the limits of
the scope of the exhibit.
My role thereafter was one consultant on "Vietnam War" issues,
i.e.should the first use of napalm be noted in the exhibit. etc. The
babylift display was not on my agenda, and when I heard of it, I offered
the appropriate cautions, so I, too, am shocked by the treatment
afforded it and will act to try see it changed when the exhibit moves on
its route across the country. However, the baby lift may have had
resonance for local women's groups: Southeast Asians were apparently not
the only ones who were to demand their voice be heard whatever the
professionals said.
I was unhappy at my limited "war" role, but who could complain when the
prime duty for bringing the communities aboard fell to someone with the
skills of Mimi Nguyen? Sadly, from my first brief meeting with her, it
was apparent to me that she wished the Museum to recast the exhibit to
be an exhibit on the Vietnamese people. This was demonstrated to me
graphically when I happened to be in the museum and was able to attend
an unscheduled meeting called by Mimi who brought not one or two people
she said she was bringing in to the Museum for a for a chat, but a dozen
Vietnamese intellectuals who required a full briefing, which the staff
had to scramble to provide. It was immediately apparent that, because
of her _work_, all these individuals believed that this exhibit _on the
Vietnam War_ (sic) was short-changing the Vietnamese. One professor
asked angrily, _Where is the room about ARVN?_ Ah, so many US vets
would have loved that, of course, but what had that to do with the
planned exhibit? Absolutely nothing, of course..
Mimi seemed to have turned her job into a means of turning the exhibit
into something it was not by undermining its narrative. She did so
perhaps out of very high motives, but the staff felt dumbstruck and
betrayed. Since Mimi was the point-person with the Vietnamese community,
the Museum staff was then in a public relations hole from which they
could never entirely extract themselves. They could recite the
exhibit's clear statement of limited purpose and intent until they were
blue in the face, but because of Mimi, it all sounded like a cover-up or
excuse. Of course, they pressed on with their program as they had little
choice to do otherwise. They also employed another Vietnamese, who
ultimately left because, from what he wrote, he, too, wanted a different
exhibit, though he found this one blameless (his positive views are
included in the UC press book on the exhibit) The pressure on both from
their communities was no doubt great. Andrew Lam was told not to
participate by his family because he would be serving the cause of the
communists: if you are not for an exhibit whose main purpose is to
expose communist villainy, then you are a communist, etc. He
participated anyway, because, well, he is Andrew Lam, a fully realized
human being and nice guy.
That Mimi was fired for her work as community liaison seems hardly a
surprise, but her impassioned taking of her case--albeit only as she saw
it-- to the press certainly insured that the Museum gave 110% to meet
community needs. It created a new board of Southeast Asian community
representatives (which Mimi as liaison was supposed to have made
irrelevant] who got a good grasp of what had happened and what the
museum had initially tried to do. Some said they felt betrayed by Mimi
for being misinformed; all were of immense help in creating a more
golden mean between what was wanted by the community and what could be
done. But even so, some were not satisfied that there was no coverage of
Vietnamese internal politics since 1975, a topic unimaginably far from
the exhibit's purpose! Only privately would the new board members admit
that there was no question that what was really needed and on point was
representation in the exhibit of differences between the waves of
refugees and between generations, but this they knew the "war relic" .
as they called them, senior leaders of the Vietnamese community would
never let happen. Even I was intimidated to the point that I suggested,
rather than redlined for the New York Times reporter, that the Museum
had to negotiate "many Vietnamese [and Southeast Asian) communities" not
one." (I have not read the article; I have no idea what she made of
that).
Caught between their own self-imposed academic and grant-funded view of
the subject, Vietnamese-American internal politics etc.. the Oakland
staff did their best. What was the result?
At the press briefing an uninvited quest, an ARVN Col. 13 years in a
re-education camp, asked to speak and was welcomed to the podium. Given
the storm of protest from that corner that had dogged the exhibit, it
would have been a huge risk for the organizers to recognize him, but
they did, because their hearts had, in fact, always been open to the
community. He took the microphone and spoke of his sacrifice and praised
the museum for keeping the Vietnam experience alive.
I came out to that press briefing merely because other local historian
consultants could not make it, or, I think, were afraid to face the
music. I greeted the Vietnamese guests in Vietnamese and asked them to
meet me after their tour of the exhibit and let me know their feelings.
When I met them afterward, they all confessed to be depressed. When I
asked why, they said it recalled bad memories. When I asked what they
thought of the exhibit content, they spontaneously said it would be
wonderful for children to see. So I asked, 'Vietnamese children?" And
they said, Oh, yes."
In an earlier post to VSG it was noted that the communications officer
for the museum said "This was not the exhibit the Vietnamese wished to
have." Since I was there when he said that, I can confirm that what he
meant was that the community wanted a different exhibit than this
purpose-built museum for California history could mount; it did not
mean that the museum was too arrogant to try to meet their needs.
I am not 100% happy with the exhibit. I spent time with Galen Beery
going over the Hmong and Lao cases finding errors, but one of these was
made as a result of a community representative's insistence. The
exhibit is also too Right-wing for my taste: the very Left-wing Oakland
staff created a pretty Right-wing exhibit in their efforts to achieve
balance.
Since I encouraged them to rise above their own political views, as
well as mine, mea culpa!
And I was asked to review the room cards/case/picture captions after it
was too late for me (bound for India) to do so, and I have some bones to
pick there.
But as virtually all local reviewers have noted, the exhibit has been
generally praised by local leaders, who say they wanted more of what
they wanted, but are satisfied with what they got.
The audience response cards leave no doubt that the exhibition is
informative and moving.In the cullture wars. exhibitions can be belitled
by intelligencias who know only what they know and who fault others for
finding any value in it. So it goes.
To put the event in perspective, one need only look to an exhibit in
Vienna entitled '700 years of the Jews in Vienna." The museum staff
there was obsessed with their task, recovering a lost community's long
contributions to the making of Austrian life. What the museum staff
missed was that no matter how good the exhibit was, unless it was all
about the holocaust, it was going to be panned. Critics jumped on the
fact that there was only a panel on the holocaust! Why was it not
several rooms! And of course, they were right, just as the Vietnamese
community was right, but critics were wrong in attributing, at least in
the case of Oakland, rampant arrogance or closedmindedness among the
staff. They were just trying to do their jobs as best they could. I wish
I had this analogy in my head when I first came on board, and so better
conveyed my concerns, but the fact is that the Southeast Asian
commuities wanted an entirely different exhibit than that the museum
could or was funded to deliver. They deserve it. Someone should fund and
host it!
All in all, I think it worked out pretty well. We seemed trapped in
amber by the Second Indochina War's events and legacies. Why should not
this exhibit? We are daily blinded-sided by realities thought long
buried, as in the Presidential race. Why not the Oakland staff? This is
d*am*ed good history in itself, as exhibits so often are. Ah, another
dissertation topic born!
Mimi lost a part-time job but gained a lot of experience. I, once
again, saw that all is dukkah, but I also learned that I am getting
pretty good at that noble truth. at least enough that I am not crying in
my pho. And the exhibit is still deeply moving and not without
reasonace for a nation at war, again, in Asia. I hope everyone caught
the PBS interview with Vietnamese along the banks where Kerry operated
his Swift boat. Priceless.
Marc
Professor Marc Jason Gilbert
Department of History
North Georgia College and State University
Dahlonega, Georgia 30597
Phone: (706) 864-1911
Fax: (706) 864-1873
E-mail: mgilbert@ngcsu.edu