Who's Telling the Story at the Museum of Suburbia?

by Jack Cashill

History isn’t always written by winners. Sometimes, those with the most jaded views of today’s economic and societal underpinnings get to create the narrative—even if it doesn’t mesh with reality.

Johnson County’s planned National Museum of Suburbia (NMOS, pronounced “no mas”) is not necessarily the horrible idea that most pundits think it is. It does, however, have the potential to be just that.

To be sure, NMOS has a good deal going against it. This includes an outraged citizenry, a leaky, overpriced building—the old King Louie West—and a location, 8788 Metcalf Avenue, that has not seen foot traffic since the closing days of the Santa Fe Trail. These are not exactly marketing plusses.

On the opportunity side of the equation, NMOS has little competition in this market niche. Done well, it has the potential to become the suburban Smithsonian, a sui generis Louvre of the here and now. “No museum in the country is telling this critical story,” says the county master plan, and who better to tell the story than the proud citizens of Johnson County?

Where NMOS could go truly awry, however, where it could transcend mere boondoggle and scar the soul of suburbanites everywhere, is if the wrong story is told. Apparently, not a whole lot of thought has gone into this. I have yet to hear a county official attempt to voice what the “critical story” actually is.

Reason to Reconsider

Those officials need to be careful. As with all non-profit enterprises, iconoclasts rush in where the orthodox are slow to tread. The likely story-tellers take particular delight in shocking the bourgeoisie, a class of people in which Johnson County suffers no shortage.

As a case in point, a year and a half ago the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery presented a Christmas season exhibition. What did it feature? But of course—images of male genitalia, men in chains, and an ant-covered Jesus. Ho! Ho! Ho! This stuff happens all the time.

A few weeks ago, I visited Independence Hall. Not the banquet facility on West Maple, but the real deal in Philadelphia. Our tour guide, a pony-tailed Indian wannabe of the Elizabeth Warren tribe, told a tight story, loudly and concisely, before asking the audience who it was the U.S. Constitution protected.

“White men with property,” responded a self-satisfied young man who had unfortunately paid attention to his high school teachers. “Exactly,” said the Chief, adding that the Constitution further demeaned slaves by defining them as 3/5 of a person. He then asked for questions.

“Isn’t it true,” I asked, “that constitutional protections were extended to all free people, black or white, male or female?” I continued, “Was it not just the voting franchise that was limited, and that by the individual states? Did not women actually vote in some states in the very first presidential election?”

I was just warming up, “And was it not the slave-holding states that wanted the slaves to be counted as whole people in order to increase their representation and thus their power to keep these poor souls enslaved?” If I do say so myself, I should have been running this tour.

Yes, a “story” told badly is worse than no story at all, and my tour guide at least half-liked America. No museum person anywhere likes suburbia, and the non-profit types who dominate the conversation about urban sprawl hate the whole idea of it.

A few years ago, during his political interregnum, Emanuel Cleaver asked me on to this radio show, “Under the Clock,” to debate a visiting Ohio State professor. The prof had written a book denouncing sprawl as fundamentally racist. I asked him to explain St. Joseph, a city that sprawls even more than Kansas City, despite a population that is less than one-half of 1 percent black. “Who,” I asked, “are these people fleeing from?”

Folks like the OSU prof and the pseudo-Indian tour guide don’t need facts, because they have larger truths on their side. Put them in charge of NMOS, and visitors will hear not just about white flight but about restrictive covenants, greenhouse gasses, soulless marriages, spoiled children, segregated schools, Stepford wives, and the reck-less exploitation of corn fields. Who wants to hear this stuff?

To work, the museum has to be fun. To be fun, the museum has to celebrate suburbia’s virtues. To understand those virtues, the visitor needs to hear why the people who moved to suburbia are happy they did: the wonder of homes with central air, the glory of the big backyard, the thrill of the barbecue, the security of a safe neighborhood, the cool efficiency of the drive-through, the convenience of the attached garage, the freedom that comes with having cars to put in them.

OK, we can tease suburbanites a little, but we cannot patronize them. If Johnson County officials are looking for a model, they might profitably—if ironically—check out New York City’s Tenement Museum. My friends who have visited swear by it. The curators there, like the ones who run Kansas City’s best museum, the Steamboat Arabia Museum in the City Market, understand that what interests visitors most are stories about people—positive, inspiring stories, at that.

In reading the museum’s promotional material, I see nary an ill word spoken about the people who inhabited these places.

“Explore how immigrants balanced work, family and religion at a time of great change,” reads one posting. “Tour a German saloon and see how generations of immigrant entrepreneurs brought their dreams for economic success to 97 Orchard Street’s basement storefronts,” reads another.

There is a reason people move to suburbs. Johnson County officials have to figure that reason out, package it, promote it, and then put that package on display where people might actually go see it. Village West comes to mind, but—oops!—that is not in Johnson County.

If the officials do all of this, they might be able to rescue what has the potential to be the worst idea to come out of Johnson County since the proposed $771 million Oz theme park. Remember that?

Return to Ingram's August 2012

Jack Cashill is Ingram's Executive Editor and has been affiliated with the magazine for 28 years. He can be reached at jackcashill@yahoo.com. The views expressed in this column are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Ingram's Magazine.