Dear SAA colleagues,
You may have seen
the statement released today from SAA asking to put a hold on a new policy change to the relationship between NARA and the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
If you wish to add your individual voice to this cause, colleagues of mine at the University of Maryland have started a 'coalition letter' opposing the new arrangement (as announced in
NARA Notice 2022-125). In the letter, we oppose this precedent-setting shift that would continue a Federal presence at the G.W. Bush Presidential Library facility, while at the same time giving control of the Museum and its interpretation** into private hands under the Bush Foundation. We feel strongly that this new arrangement will deteriorate public trust in museums--a major blow given that museums are one of the last institutions that hold such trust (see the new AAM study here).
We created this petition after a fruitful meeting with staff at the House Committee on Oversight and Reform who encouraged us to "seek a broader group of individuals from the archives and museum communities to sign a coalition letter." We may only have a matter of days to get back to them, so please sign and share immediately if you feel the below represents your views. We hope that we can add more fodder to the cause SAA and other organizations are furthering.
Many thanks,
Diana Marsh (on behalf of Jason Baron, Travis Wagner, Victoria Van Hyning, & Katrina Fenlon, UMD iSchool)
**We acknowledge that this letter uses words like "objective" when describing interpretation. While all of us in this field have shown for many decades that museums & archives-as settler-colonial, white inventions with largely white staffs-have not at all been 'objective,' current curatorial best practice attempts to reveal rather than obscure potential bias. We fear exactly the opposite here: that most future visitors will be under a mistaken assumption that the exhibits on display have the "stamp of approval" of NARA, when what is presented may significantly diverge from the historical narrative historians, archivists, and museum curators would wish to portray.
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Diana Marsh
Assistant Professor of Archives & Digital Curation
University of Maryland College of Information Studies
Washington DC
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