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I'll begin at the end, as does Rothstein, with
the specially-commissioned dueling bronzes, one of Hamilton,
one of Aaron Burr. (Awkwardly placed, they confront visitors
on entering, though they're supposedly the denouement). I
agree that the statues are a highlight - not because they
inject a bit of (badly needed) drama, but because they're
life sized (roughly 5' 7"), and because they're placed
on the floor, not perched on pedestals. One can peer over
the combatants' respective shoulders to check the site lines
of their respective pistols. This endearingly human scale
is the more welcome as it provides a blessed relief from the
outsized giantism - and pedestalization - that dominates everything
else in the exhibit.
Starting with the immense, block-long ten dollar
bill blanketing the entire Central Park West facade of the
N-YHS building. When I first heard this was in the works,
it sounded like a wonderfully whimsical marketing device,
an encouragingly Barnumesque bit of barkerism. But in the
event, the gargantuan head and gigantic logo ("The Man
who Made Modern America") proved oppressively in tune
with the exhibit within: a hagiographical glorification of
Hamilton as Hero.
Hamilton is a significant figure in American history, and
eminently deserving of an exhibition, but "Modern America"
did not spring from his forehead. There's a more modest case
to be made for his role in the development of key U.S. financial
and political institutions - I admire some of Hamilton's accomplishments
- but outsized claims like these are deeply anachronistic.
Worse, to hammer them home, the Gilder-Lehrmanites have summoned
from the dead a 1950s-style filiopietistic museology that
historians and curators interred long ago.
The initial gallery - entitled His World - gets us off to
a problematic start. Two huge screens (one blazoned non-stop
with the History Channel's logo) display dueling quotations
from rival Founders - chiefly Hamilton and Washington versus
Jefferson and Adams. The juxtaposition of texts suggests that
Hamilton was a pioneering and progressive American (albeit
prey to a couple of humanizing peccadilloes) while his contemporary
opponents were racist hypocrites and "uncomprehending"
men of limited vision; foils for the Hero. This battle of
blurbs - Adams excoriates Hamilton's character, Washington
is wheeled in to defend him - is Founding Fatherology at its
worst, with history - reduced to biography - presented as
a zero sum catfight. Maybe shout-TV was the model here; it's
equally un-illuminating about the issues at hand.
An introductory gallery might more profitably have claimed
that Hamilton has been unjustly ignored by history, and invited
the audience to participate in a reevaluation. But this would
have required a full and honest engagement with Hamilton's
projects, and an equally thorough explanation of why so many
of his contemporaries (and subsequent generations), rightly
or wrongly, objected to them. This, the show is deeply reluctant
to do.
A secondary problem with His World is how circumscribed
that world appears to be. Two of the gallery walls are covered
by 32 portraits of Hamilton's contemporaries, some famous,
most long forgotten (Egbert Benson, Ambrose Spencer, et. al.);
each canvas is accompanied by the merest snippet of information
about who the subject is and how he or she relates to Hamilton.
This reticence might have been acceptable if the massed oils
served as a de facto playbill, introducing the cast of characters
of a forthcoming drama; but no drama ensues, and most are
never seen again. The assemblage also signals a focus on the
portrait-worthy, portending a drawing room history that will
ignore the far wider range of characters who actually peopled
Hamilton's World.
From His World the visitor segues through a doorway into His
Vision - a great rectangular hall constituting the show's
principal gallery space. Five giant video screens (each roughly
17'x17') stretch out ahead down the long left-hand wall. Each
screen endlessly-loops a sequence consisting of a title (RULE
OF LAW / FREE PRESS / THE ECONOMY / NATIONAL DEFENSE / THE
CITY); some quotations from Hamilton; and a few short film
clips. The screens are meant to represent the Present - the
America Hamilton Made. As the official guide puts it, they
offer "a series of filmed vignettes of modern American
life, fading in and out with projections of Hamilton's words:
a continuous alternation of 18th-century plans and 21st-century
fulfillment."
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