The National World War II Museum’s US Pavilion: The Boeing Center (review)

If you have not been to New Orleans lately, go! The city is better than ever. It has been a laboratory of new ideas since Hurricane Katrina, and new construction projects are underway throughout town. At the heart of this transformation of the Big Easy has been the National World War II Museum located in the central business district. The museum, the brainchild of historian Stephen Ambrose, opened on June 6, 2000, and has grown at a frenetic pace over the past decade and a half.

Oral history has been at the center of the museum’s mission from the very start. Ambrose collected hundreds of interviews in the preparation of his many books, including Band of Brothers (1992) and Citizen Soldiers (1997). These interviews formed the core of the museum’s collection when it opened in 2000. Though the museum has collected many marquee items since then, such as a Sherman tank, a landing craft of the type used in the Normandy invasion, and a B17 bomber, the individual soldier’s story has always been at the heart of their exhibit displays. Keith Huxen, the Samuel Zemurry Stone Senior Director of Research and History at the museum, relates that “bringing to the public the personal stories of the men and women who endured the hardships and sacrifices of the greatest event of the twentieth century are at the heart of our mission. We seek to explain to people why the war was fought, how it was won, and what it means today—in terms that real individuals today can understand, and hopefully relate to.”

This emphasis on personal narrative is particularly evident in the design of their newest exhibit building, US Pavilion: The Boeing Center. Oral history listening areas form the intellectual and emotional core of the exhibit installations. Some of the interviews were conducted with the exhibit installation in mind, but the bulk were drawn from the museum’s vast collection of oral history interviews, estimated to be over seven thousand in various formats. They have been in a race for the past decade to capture as many voices as they can before the greatest generation passes on. Over a several-year period the museum conducted as many as five hundred interviews per year.

The interactive displays were produced by Atherton Pictures of Austin, Texas, and other private companies were involved in the design and fabrication of the listening areas. The National World War II Museum curators used what they called a matrix of diversity to select potential narrative segments for inclusion in the interactive displays. This selection matrix ensured that there would be a diversity of perspectives based on theater of war, branch of service, gender, race, and ethnicity. The result is a great sampling of individual narratives that give visitors a wide range of perspectives on the war, revealing not only the emotional resonance of the conflict, but also some of the commonplace activities that give humanity and warmth to this shared experience. The segments are accessed on large flat touch screens. Each interview segment is accompanied by a period photograph of the person and relevant facts about his or her military career.

There is plenty of room within the listening areas to accommodate a wheelchair or a family group experiencing the museum together. The same selection of interview segments is offered in each of the listening areas, enabling the high volume of visitors to linger and explore in their own time. The touch screens can also be lowered to enable a person in a wheelchair to better view and access them and, as each segment is played, a subtitled transcription appears on the screen for the benefit of the hearing impaired.

Despite its rapid growth this past decade, the museum still has more development on the drawing board. Huxan states that “the National World War II Museum will open the Road to Berlin galleries in December 2014 on the ground floor of the Campaigns...