If you want to talk about difficult stories being told in museums, then the museums we visited today fit the bill: National Museum of the American Indian and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

National Museum of the American Indian has the difficult task of telling the story of a culture that is still around today. They need to take into consideration the feelings, thoughts, traditions, and cultural values of the native peoples. With so many different tribes, each with their own culture and traditions, it can be difficult to find the balance when telling those stories.

The latest exhibit, Americans, shows how Native Americans have been represented in pop culture throughout American history, be it in advertisements, sports teams, postcards, ect. In the photo below, there is a screen on the far end of the gallery with holes in it, representative of the holes in the stories and representations of Native Americans in pop culture.

The Holocaust Museum faces a different kind of difficult. Instead of telling the story of a culture that is still around today, that museum is tasked with remembering the grim, heart-wrenching story of the Holocaust. The museum was able to do a lot with a little. There aren’t very many artifacts on display, but the ones that are are very powerful, very personal pieces. It’s very hard to walk through the museum without feeling a connection to the people through the objects on display.