A Non-Truthful Museum

Museums can be a reliable resource for learning new information or seeing famous works of art. When securing a new piece of art for a museum, several factors must be considered. Among these are morality, truthfulness, and cost of the piece. They must all be considered together to have a successful piece of art for a museum.
The truthfulness of a piece must be taken into account when acquiring it for a museum. The art should be an accurate representation of what actually happened, or at least what happened from someone’s point of view. For example, Source E gives Colonial Williamsburg as an example of a non-truthful museum. The author states that although successful, Williamsburg wipes out a large portion of history (such as slavery and disease) in favour of an “elegant, harmonious past.” This should not be the case in museums, as they are meant to be informative, and cleaning up history does not reveal the truth so that we can learn from it. Building a successful exhibit can rely heavily on truth. The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum built on showing the truth about …show more content…
Stolen art or art unethically acquired should not be in a museum. Source F states that art that was stolen by Nazis during WWII was acquired but was being returned. It was not right to keep art that had been stolen. Colonial Williamsburg is another example of a controversial historical site in terms of ethics. The village of Colonial Williamsburg erases many parts of the past including diseases and slavery, instead creating this picture of a clean past. However, this is not ethical because slavery was a big part of history, and to erase it is to erase the slaves’ personal history. Because of this, it can be said that Colonial Williamsburg is not a moral historical site because it erases specific history instead of being true to the