THE LIBRARY is a public reading room on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the recent controversy over the Smithsonian Institution's Enola Gay exhibition. Our intention is not to simply engage ourselves in a political debate about the bomb or the exhibition, but to create a site for education that offers a variety of perspectives in order to engender a broader public dialog than is currently available. Each of us carries distinct opinions on this period in history; opinions that are as diverse as our ages, education, ethnicity, and experiences. Our goal is to provide a place to share these viewpoints in an attempt to grasp the complexity of this era and its impact on our individual and collective identities.

We contacted as many different community groups and institutions that we were capable of reaching in the two short months since THE LIBRARY's inception. Our archive is constructed through individual research and numerous contributions of historians, veterans groups, libraries, cultural centers, and others. The archive will expand over the course of the exhibition. To ensure we avail ourselves to the broadest viewpoints, we invite you to become a research participant in the project. You may bring your own printed materials to add to the archive or participate in our on-line search for information. You may also use this site to host a teach-in or meeting. [Please ask desk staff for more information.] When the exhibition closes, the binders will remain in circulation at other institutions who are themselves organizing events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb.

The painters in this exhibition have each uniquely responded to the task of creating temporary murals in the space. In tradition and style they represent a spectrum of narrative mural painting that spans the fifty years since the bomb was dropped. The commissioning of these murals to illuminate the space evolved from three separate strategies. First, we wanted to recreate a research center setting evocative of public institutions at the time of the end of the war. Between the mid-thirties and mid-forties, the government commissioned artists to create murals for court houses, schools, hospitals, libraries and other communal sites under the New Deal. [San Francisco's Coit Tower (1934) and Rincon Annex (1947) murals are remarkably the first and last projects nationwide in this program.] Secondly, the subjects of war and its horrors are difficult to freely address in a permanent outdoor setting where public protest can alter a challenging design. THE LIBRARY is a unique opportunity to give these artists full reign to explore their personal perspectives without censorship. And finally, the narrative quality of mural art makes this artform ideal for addressing the multi-layered and highly complex history of the bomb and its legacy.

THE LIBRARY was inspired by a call from the Historians' Committee for an Open Debate on Hiroshima in reaction to the radical overhaul of the Smithsonian's Enola Gay Exhibition. At the time of this writing, the exhibition consists of the fuselage of the plane and a videotape of interviews with the crew. Its opening, originally scheduled in May, has been postponed to mid June or July. Martin Harwit, director of the Air and Space Museum has resigned. On May 19, 1995, a New York Times article reports that Michael Heyman, director of the Smithsonian, and Tom Crouch, curator of the exhibit, offered this apology, "...the original display did not take into account the views and feelings of the American veterans and should have offered more information about the conduct of the Japanese military during the war." Heyman adds, "The institution has an obligation to be historically accurate in all of its exhibits."

---- Susan Miller, Executive Director May 1995

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