Russell Schloemer

Review of William J. Clinton Presidentia...

Short story: A poorly designed museum, lacking coh...

Short story: A poorly designed museum, lacking cohesive flow, narrative, or meaning to a collection of stuff from our former president. Several neat sections, and visually beautiful, but not what I expected.

I've been to a couple of other presidential libraries (namely Truman's, which is spectacular), and despite having tons of great material to work with, the library itself is... sad. I understand that presidential libraries mostly exist to glorify the former office holder, but there were plenty of contentious parts of Clinton's presidency that were glossed over or not mentioned. Credit for a number of things were taken that President Clinton had no part in.

Also, museums should probably have a flow or direction to them, and there was not a clear one here. My wife and often weren't sure where curators wanted us to go next, that it was unclear where things were and why certain parts of the museum were near one another. The materials themselves were of interest, but the way that they were presented either made them difficult to intellectually or physically access. If overhauled, this has the bones of a really interesting place, but between the cost and the lack of cohesion it has now, I wouldn't recommend it to a friend unless they were a huge Clinton fan.