Paper short abstract:

This paper will re-examine the aesthetics of presenting various historical artifacts, cultural documents, and ideological narratives at three museums tied to the African-American experience, the Confederate States of America, and the Old West. It asks how these exhibits echo or fabricate the myths that cast the Civil War and its aftermath as a second founding of the USA.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will evaluate the aesthetics of presenting historical artifacts, cultural documents, and ideological narratives at three regional museums in the USA as efforts to "reconstruct" the nation after the Era of National Reconstruction (1865-1877) following the War Between the States. That war and this historical turn of events often are seen as a "second founding" of the USA, and this interpretation is reflected directly in the museum exhibits analyzed in this study. The three museums under analysis here will be the National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center in Dayton, Ohio, the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, and the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. While allegedly about the past, each of them also embody very contemporary cultural, economic, and political tensions in the USA during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.