Curating America's Painful Past: Memory, Museums, and the National Imagination

During the global Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, many called upon the United States to finally face its painful past. Tim Gruenewald’s new book is an in-depth investigation of how that past is currently remembered at the national museums in Washington, DC. Curating America’s Painful Past reveals how the tragic past is either minimized or framed in a way that does not threaten dominant national ideologies. Gruenewald analyzes the National Museum of American History (NMAH), the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), and the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).

The NMAH, the nation’s most popular history museum, serves as the benchmark for the imagination of US history and identity. The USHMM opened in 1993 as the United States’ official Holocaust memorial and stands adjacent to the National Mall. Gruenewald makes a persuasive case that the USHMM established a successful blueprint for narrating horrific and traumatic histories.

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