History Goes Hollywood

Most innovative is the first room of the exhibit, a CSI-inspired forensics lab complete with spare body parts left over from the manufacture of the Washington models, joined by a short film about how the models were made. Think of it as the ultimate museum label. Instead of a simple placard that reads something like WASHINGTON ATOP A STUFFED HORSE, the new Mount Vernon center will use its CSI room to grab visitors with a narrative backstory about the displays they see.

Money is the major obstacle keeping more museums from going the Mount Vernon route. Government funding for arts institutions has dried up, and a migration in philanthropy from historic preservation to social causes is leaving museums behind. Colonial Williamsburg was born as a historical site in 1926 with funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. But when a modern Rockefeller equivalent, Warren Buffett, recently made his big gift, it was to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's disease hunters, not to museums.

Financial pressures can be a double-edged sword. While they keep some museums from updating, they may push others into going too far in catering to the customer, trying to boost attendance by dumbing down the history, ripping out intellectually challenging exhibits to make room for vapid video presentations. "While it's important to give the visitor what they want," says Lonnie Bunch, founding director of the planned National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, "we also have to give the visitor what they need."

Bunch is right, of course. But increasingly what visitors really need may be the same as what they want: less in-depth education and more seduction. After all, if people really wanted to dig into Washington's life, they could check out one of the fine new Washington biographies. Or they could just Google the guy. When it comes to history, Americans don't lack information; they lack the attention span to wade through the dusty collections of the old history museums. And that's where the new museums, using technology to make themselves savvier storytellers, can do their part to preserve the future of history.