realcleverscience:

Incredible and chilling quote from the book “A Companion to Museum Studies” (pgs 502-503):

A case in point, as stunning to me as it seems typical: “Petroleum Planet,” the display about petroleum at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The exhibit serves as a thinly veiled celebration of the black gold and and of its centrality to the modern world… Nowhere in the exhibit do we learn about oil spills, about the air pollution that results from burning fossil fuels, or about climate change. Oil fuels our world. Its discovery, recovery, and refining are necessary for life as we know it. Put simply: “Petroleum isn’t just a material - it’s a way of life.” The exhibit has been sponsored by BP-Amoco. Exhibits like these have popped up in Europe as well, including a BP-sponsored “Ecology” display at the London’s Natural History Museum, and in each case the museum gallery has simply been turned into an extension of the corporation’s public relations apparatus.

One of the major issues I’m learning about in my museum studies program is the role of ethics in shaping a museum - and how it quickly it leads to controversies or disaster if ethics are not taken into account. Well, something seems fairly wrong with this picture. Instead of Republicans figureheads hating on free speech at one of the first lgbt exhibitions (here) or arguing that to second guess dropping the atomic bomb and displaying that issue is somehow unpatriotic (pg 503) etc. etc. etc., let’s stir up some controversy when we see propaganda like this. Believe me, museums notice real quick when people are unhappy with what they’ve done. And as a source of authoritative information for the public, which it is typically meant to serve as 501(c)3 non-profits, we should demand that such super-simplistic and one-sided outlooks (aka marketing) not be considered a form of scholarship for a museum. Period.