Whatever Happened to Polio? (review)

On 12 April 1955 the Salk polio vaccine was pronounced safe and effective. Fifty years later, the National Museum of American History launched a yearlong exhibition entitled "Whatever Happened to Polio?" to commemorate the event. Jonas Salk received great public recognition for his inactivated-virus vaccine—but scientists and historians continue to debate his methods and the precise significance of his contribution, and Albert Sabin's live-virus version became the primary choice for use in the United States. In 2000, however, after several live-virus vaccinations caused cases of polio, Sabin's vaccine was superseded by Salk's. While the sponsors of the anniversary exhibition include the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Salk and Sabin receive comparable coverage in the section on the development of polio vaccines. In fact, Whatever Happened to Polio? offers an interpretation that should appeal to both camps—namely, that "the global end to polio transmission would have been inconceivable without both the 'killed' (Salk) and 'live' (Sabin) vaccines."

The exhibition touches upon other controversial issues in the history of polio, including trials of the vaccine on incarcerated prisoners, the quarantining of polio patients, and charitable fund-raising campaigns featuring young polio survivors as "poster children." For the exhibition team, one of the main challenges was to present each issue in all its complexity, incorporating competing interpretations. Lead curator Katherine Ott was mindful of the need to include the voices of polio survivors and their families, who have often been excluded from histories that focus instead on researchers and their discoveries. Whatever Happened to Polio? juxtaposes the experiences of parents, scientists, polio survivors, activists, and policymakers to present the history of polio from a broad range of viewpoints. The experts describing medical procedures, for example, are as likely to be people who underwent the treatment as those who administered it. With so much to include, the final product is sometimes lacking in depth and the kind of detailed analysis that many aspects of this history deserve. Nonetheless, the exhibition was very well attended, and visitors responded positively in their discussions with museum staff and on comment cards left in the gallery.

The two main audiences for the exhibition were older visitors who lived through polio epidemics, and school-age children who know very little about the disease or the development of vaccines. The result is groundbreaking in many ways, reflecting a concerted effort to better include people with disabilities in the history of polio and as visitors to the museum. The layout of the exhibition gallery was based upon the seven principles of Universal Design ¹ (Equitable Use, Flexibility in Use, Simple and Intuitive Use, Perceptible Information, Tolerance for Error, Low Physical Effort, Size and Space for Approach and Use), and Braille and sight maps were located at the entrances. They contained a key to a series of "listening stations" placed throughout the exhibition, where audio recordings described the artifacts and visual materials on display and gave directions to the other sections. The look and feel of the gallery appeared to have been designed to appeal primarily to a young audience, with each themed section displaying bright colors and bold graphics. Information was presented in a variety of formats to accommodate different learning styles, with "Factoids" and "Tough Choices" slotted in alongside narrative text. "Tough Choices" addresses problem issues, like the quarantining of people infected with polio during epidemics, in the format of an either/or dilemma; competing for attention alongside all the other elements, and reduced to "Individual Rights versus the Public's Health," for example, these sections seemed to trivialize the issues and lead the visitor toward simplistic "right or wrong" conclusions. On the Web site, however, where the streamlined design means that visitors are more likely to read all the different portions of text, these sections are better integrated with the narrative and are much more effective.

Overall, the exhibition provides an interesting look at a complex subject. At the museum, the fast...