As we work to recover histories of marginalized people and subjects for a more inclusive national history presented in our museums, we must also change how the Grand Narrative is told in a museum that purports to cover all of American history.
Rather than viewing memory as a passive process of recalling lived experiences as objective truths, historians have begun to view memory as an active ordering of the past.
Abraham Lincoln repeatedly tops polls as our greatest and most revered president. But few people thought so on March 4, 1865, when he took the oath of office for the second time.
To compare anything that has transpired in the past few years to this cataclysmic upheaval represents a spectacular lack of understanding about American history.
