Between Fences Museum on Main Street

The Between Fences exhibition is in the Hoover Auditorium Lobby of Lakeside, Ohio from June 20 - July 10. A friend and I spent about 30 minutes viewing it yesterday afternoon. We concluded it is quite political--leftward leaning if you get my drift. By that I don't mean the current administration. Based on the copyright, this one had a Republican Congress for funding, although the guide for discussion may be locally prepared and a more recent date.

From Teacher's Guide (c2005): "Between Fences is a Museum on Main Street project organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and brought to you by your state humanities council. Funded by the U.S. Congress Museum on Main Street is a partnership of the Smithsonian Institution and state humanities councils nationwide that serves small-town museums and citizens.

This innovative project brings rural America one-of-a-kind access to prestigious Smithsonian exhibitions and first-rate educational humanities programs. Most importantly, Museum on Main Street enables rural museums to demonstrate their enormous talents and their meaningful contributions to smalltown life."

The Guide we received was not this one--ours had much more politically charged questions like "Why are the U.S. boundaries with Canada and Mexico treated so differently? Well, doh! How many Canadians are sneaking into the U.S.? That may come; we may have to step up the patrol of that border too as many terrorists infiltrate the Canadian population and start crossing. It's been beefed up on Lake Erie since 9/11. Americans now need to show a passport to enter Canada.

But the real irony is this display is inside a gated community, completely fenced with "patroled" gates open only certain hours. It has rules about smoking and drinking (definitely an offensive fence to some); you can't dock your boat here if you're coming from a marina on Lake Erie, let alone Canada; there are rules about noise and parking (these are fences for some teen-agers); there need to be a certain number of Methodists on the board that controls the association; and so on.

As the 2010 Guide for this exhibit says: "Some fences are not physical, but cultural. Think about racial divisions and separations by income, gender, religious culture and ethnic differences. Separations can be created without actually having a 'real' fence." Yes, indeed. Think about those cultural boundaries in a simple name for a political organization like "La Raza," (The People, or The Race in Latin American Spanish; or Spanish for someone of European Christian heritage in Spain).

The good thing is that most people won't pay any attention to the questions--they'll just look at the photos and remember the Frost poem.