From another listserv. . . . EDWARD ROTHSTEIN | Exhibition Review The New York Times, Mar. 2, 2007 Captain Smith, the Tides Are Shifting on the James JAMESTOWN, Va. - At the banks of the James River here, not far from where an archaeological dig has found pottery shards and remains of settlers from 400 years ago, a proud Capt. John Smith faces the waters and the setting sun. A wooden stockade extends near the shoreline - the water has moved inland over the centuries - showing where his frail fort once stood. But Smith stands heroically tall, his bronze cape seeming to ripple in the brisk winter winds. Even the inscription proclaims his importance: "Governor of Virginia, 1608." Governor? Virginia? At the time Jamestown consisted of a paltry isolated settlement of several dozen souls, with disease, starvation and battles with local Indian tribes regularly claiming almost as many lives as Virginia Company could send in delayed relief ships from England, the funds raised from wary investors. But the Smith statue does give an accurate sense of the scale of the leadership, strategic thinking, ruthlessness and courage Smith demonstrated during the brief period (not even two years) he led that first English colony in the Americas - qualities reflected in his own memoirs and other accounts (many of which are about to be republished by the Library of America). Nearby, offering further testimony to Jamestown's grandeur, a giant obelisk stands, erected, like the statue, a century ago, as part of the tercentennial celebrations of the founding. But now, two months before the 400th anniversary festivities begin , the monumental hardly matters anymore, and neither, it seems, does John Smith. Other kinds of commemoration have been prepared. It isn't that Jamestown is being treated as less important: it is still regarded as the place where the DNA of a nation was first laid out, where, in 1607, England established an early beachhead against the expanding empires of Spain and Portugal and so determined the main language we speak and many of the ideas we share. But a different understanding is made explicit here in the two historical museums and outdoor facilities devoted to the Jamestown theme. Jamestown Settlement, run by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation (a state agency), was established in 1957 just before the 350th anniversary so the nearby historical site would not be disrupted with the Settlement's outdoor "living-history" demonstrations, costumed guides, period crafts and reproductions of the Jamestown fort, an Indian village and the three ships that brought the first group of 104 men and boys to these shores. In October, Jamestown Settlement added a major 30,000-square-foot exhibition hall to its new visitors' center, telling an unusually detailed history of the area through the 17th century. Meanwhile the original site, now called Historic Jamestowne, is part of the Colonial National Historical Park and jointly run by the National Park Service and the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. It incorporates the monuments of past tributes - the statue, the obelisk, a memorial church - but has just added a modest historical exhibition in its visitors' center, and, last spring, opened a 7,500-square-foot museum - the Archaearium - devoted to the Jamestown artifacts unearthed by the on-site excavations, ranging from cooking utensils and weapons to bones and coins. These exhibitions are ambitious and often informative, particularly the Settlement's, and provide much of the detail needed to begin to understand Jamestown. Yet a price is paid for the latest in museumware and historical thinking: One isn't quite sure what is being celebrated or why, or whether in fact a celebration is even occurring. The exhibition created by the Park Service, for example, repeats the classic tribute: "Jamestown's notable legacies include the introduction of representative government, English culture and heritage, and Protestant religion," all of which had an impact on the evolution of Virginia and the other colonies. But those legacies also include conflicts with Indians and the introduction of "race-based slavery." These matters, once considered secondary, have become central. Now Jamestown is seen as the precursor to "a multicultural society grappling with a legacy of slavery and racism." Another panel emphasizes the point: "Past Jamestown anniversaries were referred to as 'celebrations.' Because many facets of Jamestown's history are not cause for celebration, like human bondage and the displacement of Virginia Indians, the Jamestown 400th Anniversary is referred to as the Jamestown 2007 Commemoration." Throughout this introductory exhibition Jamestown is not the beleaguered settlement cheered on against all odds, but is a hothouse laboratory for conflict, oppression and perhaps accommodation. A similar, though slightly less polemical, vision suffuses the major Settlement exhibition, with its artifacts, textual panels, statues and dioramas. (Thomas E. Davidson was the curator and Gallagher & Associates the designers. ) When the institution was founded 50 years ago, accompanying exhibitions were about Virginia's British heritage and great achievements by Virginians. Now the theme is: "Three Cultures, One Century: America's Story." Jamestown becomes archetypal not because it laid the foundations for British influence on American political culture, eventually enshrining notions of rights and representation, but because it established a pattern of conflict with Indians and enslavement of Africans - something that is here homogenized into a more vague multicultural interaction. The first major galleries are devoted to the three cultures. They include descriptions of local Indian tribes (largely based on Smith's writings) accompanying a life-size diorama of a forest hunt; a depiction of West Central African ways of life with a diorama showing a man smoking outside a hut, a world from which the first blacks in Virginia had been wrested; and a depiction of an Elizabethan-era London street. The Indians, we read, were "in harmony with the land that sustained them" and formed an "advanced, complex society of families and tribes." English society - the society that gave us the King James Bible and Shakespeare along with stirrings of democratic argument - is described as offering "limited opportunity" in which a "small elite" were landowners; in London, we are told, "life was difficult," with social dislocation, low wages, unemployment, etc. True enough about England, except for the lack of perspective and the whiffs of implied equivalence between vastly different universes. Less true with its idea of an "advanced complex society" of Powhatans: all human societies, even agrarian ones, are complex in their methods of organization; in this case there is little information to suggest much more among these 30 warring tribes bound by a strong ruler's conquest. The overall impact of this three-culture mélange is only to diminish a visitor's sense of English culture. But finally the depiction of the three cultures begins to seem irrelevant, because it is never really shown that "it is from the interaction of these different cultural traditions that 17th century Virginia society was born." In what way, for example, apart from name places and types of food, was Powhatan culture a major influence on Virginia society? The continued state of conflict with the Indians was a major influence, in which negotiations, accommodations and episodes of trade were punctuated with battle. That conflict was not a simple matter. It was a confrontation between alien and opposing cultures possessing unequal powers, a conflict that has accompanied most cultures' migratory histories, from ancient times to our own. As for the influence of West Central African culture, with its described political hierarchies, and its own internal history of enslavement through conquest (referred to in the exhibition's text), it is also difficult to see just how Angolan or Kongo culture shaped early-17th-century Virginia. Even in later years the cultures created by American slaves are not replications of African cultures but distant echoes of it, something hinted at in one of the exhibition's later galleries. During the entire formative period of Jamestown - from 1607 through 1619, when the nature of the settlement was established and its economy finally began to find a footing with the growing of tobacco - there were no Africans in Virginia at all. The first black chattel servants were brought to Jamestown during that latter year almost by accident, just as representative democracy was also being established. These unfortunate 20-some prisoners were looted during a piratical English attack on a Portuguese slave ship. Systematic slavery doesn't appear to begin in Virginia for decades. So the idea of mutual interaction is not too convincing. Still, there is much to learn in the exhibition's unfolding: it touches on the European drive for colonial power, on sea navigation, the establishment of Jamestown, the story of Pocahontas, conflicts with Indians, the discovery of tobacco as a major source of income leading to the development of Virginia's gentlemen farmers (and the drive toward the importation of slaves), the evolution of Virginia's legislature. But John Smith's extraordinary interactions with the Powhatan chief - matching him as a wary warrior and negotiator - are not explored. The dominant statues in the exhibition galleries are of the Powhatan rulers, Wahunsonacock and Opechancanough, along with the African Ndongo ruler, Queen Njinga, who fought against the Portuguese and from whose lands the first blacks brought to America were pulled. So what exactly is being celebrated here? A closing gallery makes some suggestions: "Principles of Law and Justice," "Exploration and Discovery," "Representative Government." But also "Displacement of Indigenous People" and "Servitude and Injustice." What a change from the Tercentennial when Jamestown was the symbol of America's birth and President Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington spoke. On the 350th anniversary Queen Elizabeth II made her first royal trip to the United States, and she is expected to come this time as well. But what will she find? Not the triumph of British influence, but the triumph of ambiguity, discomfort and vague multiculturalism. Of course much has changed in 50 years; much had to. Those 1957 celebrations themselves provided evidence of the sins of the past: the Virginia Chamber of Commerce withdrew some invitations to festivities after it found out they were sent to distinguished Virginians who happened to be black. Clearly too it is impossible to understand Jamestown without understanding the fate of Indian tribes. And, despite its flaws, the Settlement's exhibition does much to spur a greater understanding of Jamestown. But the impulse to commemorate rather than celebrate is a sign of how rigidly the Jamestown affair and its aftermath are now being seen. And unfortunately an extraordinary culture unable to celebrate itself and its past, with all its imperfections and failings, is not likely to have a clear vision of the present and future. To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html