Famous museum consultant and advisor Elaine Heumann Gurian has been assisting the staff at the soon-to-open Museum of Resistance. The museum is dedicated to the victims of political violence since the US Occupation in 1916, with a special emphasis on life under dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo from 1930-1961. Heumann recently told Hoy that getting people to come forward and tell their stories, leaving aside their anger at the events, is the most difficult task for a memorial museum. ?If there can be an institution for reconciliation, where everyone can come and learn in an open way about this, without forgetting the real horrors that happened, then you will have succeeded in building individual responsibility among citizens,? she said. She commented that something unusual has occurred in the Memorial Museum of Dominican Resistance in terms of the willingness of the victims to cooperate. ?What we are achieving in the DR is something extraordinary,? she commented.
See www.museodelaresistencia.org
Elaine Heumann Gurian is a consultant/advisor for a number of museums and visitor centers that are beginning, building, or reinventing themselves. Her current clients include the Nassau County Government museum systems, Museum of London (UK), National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institute, National Children?s Museum (Washington DC), and the Pew Foundation (Philadelphia, PA).