The Reopening of the Truman Museum, Part 1; Unknown

today on k pr presents it's a trip to the newly renovated and reopened truman presidential library and museum i'm kay macintyre in july twenty nineteen the truman presidential library and museum in independence missouri closed its doors for a major renovation two years and twenty nine million dollars later they reopened their doors this past week on today's keep your prisons were visiting the museum and talking to chief curator clay barsky klay thank you so much for hosting us today education welcome take us back to two thousand nineteen what was there that needed to be renovated well i i think i need to start out by saying that we were even back then recognized as as probably the best or one of the best presidential every museums because our exhibits work they were they were balanced well we tried to present harry truman warts and all this is harry truman never wanted to have this place be a memorial to him he just wanted people to

learn about their government and so forth and so we were not unhappy all with our previous exhibits but back in two thousand when we designed those exhibits we have a lot of audio visual materials and computer driven things and they were driven on really old computer platform stand things you know over the years were breaking down and so it started out as an idea of well let's just let's replace the audio visual components of the computer components but ironically at about the same time were working on that we got a new director here occurred graham and he came in and we will do it and i talked about this and he said and loan no one has time let's just let's try to see if we can read the whole thing and so that's really what started it and from there we went on hand

you know really kept the whole project up a notch to to really read you rethink the entire museum i think the thing that is really most transformative about are new exhibits is we have totally rethought how we use our experience from the very moment part of their current come into the building and that was one of the things that we worked on early on in the design and it's something i think girl is is kind we're talking about a little bit years absolutely so i'll just start by saying when i parked the car my car in the parking lot from an outside presidential museum looks very much the same but once you walk in the door what is different cash well early on in our design process we're talking about ok we will give it for every dude do the whole museum what is it that water are problems that we have now it's visitation with the visitor experience

how can we help fix those things and it became clear very odd very early on in the project is that our entire visitor experience is sort of awkward we had visitors parking on a park in a parking lot on the east side of the building but in order to come into the building i have to walk around to the original main entrance on the south side oh long long and when they came into the lobby area they encounter this gorgeous mural by thomas hart benton called independence in the opening of the west which is a really dynamic wonderful preacher the building but if you're a visitor who's just travel you know three hundred miles and he just parked her car yet to walk all around to get in the building and as soon as you walk in that space you're looking for your wallet so you can pay your admission fee and you're also needing to go

arrest room and from that old main entrance the restroom was down on the lower level so that that mural was not being exposed to the kind of attention are are quiet contemplation that you like a visitor to have there so that was one main problems then we decided you know if we move if we actually reversed the exhibits the museum of go the opposite direction from the way that they previously gone we could with the us small extension of the building on the east side create a grand new lobby where people could come in and they can do all of their transactions right their get all of their information and so that's that's something we designed to gorgeous new entrants on the side of the building and located in there is any information

dusk the ticket counter also the gift shop and it also has immediate access to not only are new exhibits but also we have a series of meeting room set can be rented out for people who want to have meetings or a school programs we have a program called the white house decision center which is very popular among particularly middle school and high school kids are three of my kids have participated in that and have loved that experience and it's a really excellent program but to try to find a previously it was sort of tucked away and hard to get it right now it's accessible off our army grand lobby so all our visitor services are located in one location now a much more convenient to the parking lot and the spaces also designs we can do especially fancy dinners and public programs and so forth in that

space so that was sort of the key to unlocking how we were going to do the entire rest of the renovation so we basically from that lobbied we reversed the direction of our exhibits and started the exhibits right from that spot the second thing we did was our previous exhibit's head the story of truman's presidency on the main floor and then you had to go downstairs to our lore galleries to see the story of harry truman's wife at times for the personal story of harry truman's life well we combined all of that so you see entire truman story from birth to death on the presidency and everything all on the main floor now so it's it's all part of the same story and what we've done with our lower level is we actually created it new second temporary exhibition space down there so that you know we

we mount a couple of temporary exhibitions a year here but previously we only had one space for those so we get them all in there but if but between exhibits people didn't have anything to see down there now into galleries weekend mount two different exhibits and so if we have to close wonder to change out the other one is still open it also provided us the opportunity to create a space where we can technically joining those galleries together on weekend in the future to larger temporary exhibition on the lower level so we we we really need the lower level it's still very much part of the museum it's going to be very active when we start putting temporary exhibit senate will be something for people to come back and see often not but the flow of the main exhibit on harry truman it's all on one level and visit you have clay barsky he's the chief curator at the truman presidential library

and museum in independence missouri clay as you're describing the gold trim and museum i'm remembering when i'd come here and have to walk around to what was then the main entrance and feeling like it's am i in the right place i'm not sure you know where's the restrooms i you know we're sort of the things you have to that you expect to see at the opening of the museum and i'm also remembering kind of finding my way down to those lower level rooms and thinking oh we almost didn't even make it down here because you know we've spent so much time upstairs this sounds like such a better use of the space that it certainly is a better use of the space and one part of that that i worked at the approach to the entire museum is much more dramatic when you walk into our grand entrance there's an axis running directly if you run a nexus right down the middle of our brand new entrants it continues our end of the court

yard and right to the gravesite wary and that's drummer barry so from the moment you walk into the building you have a list of the courtyard in the truman graves and you have your oriented to where you are in the building so you can walk out in the courtyard from there and explore the grave sites and and also we have an exhibit on that but you see harry truman's office that he actually used here at the library from nineteen fifty seven to nineteen sixty six at about assaults usually available as soon as you walk in the main entrance so it all really makes a lot of sense organizationally and then and then we moved on to the task of ok we've got we sort of know our normal organized the space but how we won until truman story and that became the second and really important thing you know how these tell a story

about harry truman and that that challenge there was well you could begin at the beginning you could begin with his birth and talk about his childhood and work up but the problem with doing that he used that by the time you actually get to the presidency people already tired there is a real thing called museum for tea and if you walk through a museum you know at some point as my even if you're really interested in what you're saying you're going to get tired so we sort of follow the pattern of a lot of old movies and tv shows and books use and that's ok what's the hawk what's the thing the thing that's going to grab the attention of a visitor and tell them in a nutshell what is the important takeaway from this whole thing and so we came up with the

idea well what most significant day and harry truman's life was the day that franklin roosevelt died and he has suddenly thrust into the presidency in the middle a world war two years chaos all over the world and here's this guy from missouri who who people outside misery don't really know who this guy is and he's trying to he's stepping into the job that franklin roosevelt you know this i can who has served more than three four terms as president has been big basically the president says a lot of people were children and now suddenly there's this well known guys trying to step into jobs in the middle of a war so what is what's going to happen so we have this this immersive introductory theater first when you walk into in the new exhibits this this

space were you're seeing all this on fulton front of you the war you see you see scenes of war scenes of you know the things going on in the world and then all of sudden now there's an announcement that franklin roosevelt has died and harry truman and suddenly president and you're left with this question you know ok who is this guy is he capable of being president and what might their own been in his background that might have prepared him to take on the challenges of the presidency and then we do a flashback and then you're put back into harry truman's childhood growing up you know on the farm in an independence and what things that encounter that sort of ford told his future or our medium what characteristics do they have to learn that might have prepared him to step

into the job so we go through his childhood and his world war one experiences his courtship and marriage to the us his early failures as a businessman with the haberdashery he is early political career as a county judge in jackson county missouri his association with the pendergast machine is his elevation to the center and a senate years and how he had to earn the respect of other senators who thought he was simply the senator from pendergast but through his work in the senate they came to really understand that this was somebody who had a work ethic wasn't a showboat are true was really trying to do serious public service and that and then to the point where he's filing

selected as the next as a vice president and then and then then we're back to the same point we started the exhibit at the moment when he becomes president and that a mass tort or a whole new wave of challenge so it it sort of the way you tell a story is very important thinking how we set those orders craig brusky he's the chief curator at the truman presidential library and museum in independence missouri newly reopened after a two year twenty nine million dollar renovation claim this is not the first time that the truman presidential museum has seen a renovation illustrated with the back in the room between the early nineteen nineties and two thousand and one we didn't a renovation of art galleries back then and we learned a lot of lessons from that project or the first well the first thing we did was

we we recognized that that in order to tell the story of anyone you can't just do the positive thank you in order to make it real in order make it believable eleanor give it a genuine historical quality you can't be afraid to tell the story of a person or an event without all the warts included and we want to sort of what i would call a pioneering thing we did back then was to do that in our excitement when we did when we renovated the museums we tried to stop tell harry truman story warts and all back then so and it was tremendously successful and it gave us a lot of recognition about the quality what what presidential library museums could be it in terms of quality and you know it really you know ironically them more work you bring

out the more the story you're telling is believable because you're not afraid to say and that there were faults and this person we're also extremely fortunate which show by being one of the older presidential i worries many of the original participants in the events we're no longer around and are no longer around today and the truman sham way to the descendants of harry truman have been extremely hands off in terms of trying to provide any advice or anything so we were just extraordinarily lucky lucky to essentially be given free reign to tell the story as it was that's harry truman sulfide written a little note at the end of his presidency that when he was actually starting to consider setting up a presidential library and in his

handwritten note he said the truth is all i want for history and we really used that as a guideline because we knew that harry truman didn't want this place to be a memorial to himself he wanted to be a teaching institution to help visitors understand more about that the american government and american history so we do those were all great success stories of our previous exhibit but we see also didn't involve a lot of people in the design of that exhibit so this time around we we took a new approach and we really got the involvement of the library staff these are in our diverse and audio visual marketers and museum staff another's people who've been around for quite awhile nor

collections in and out you know what new collections we've gotten in the last twenty years and saw really able to dig deep into our collections of original material sand and tell a much much richer story this time so are new exhibits have basically something for everyone in it that has sort of the outline truman's life and times in the main issues so if your hearing is more breeze through and its products sort of a sense of the story you can do that in an hour but it also has a lot more detail in a day you can dive in and spend six seven hours here at least and reading everything and really diving into the many many documents and rather than at material so we got on display so this is a much much richer more complex story than we told before but it's still adheres to the same guidelines that we want to show harry truman warts and all i'm visiting with

craig brusky he's the chief curator at the truman presidential library and museum crackles talk about some of the themes that you explore in this newly and visions museum start out with one in particular i think one of the most in during things about president trim man is his relationship with his wife that's how did you explore that in this museum well truman's relationship with the us is something that we literally could not have done as well twenty years ago and we did our previous renovation because you we have in our collection about thirteen hundred original handwritten letters that harry truman wrote that's from nineteen ten to nineteen fifty nine fifteen hundred about thirteen hundred of them and four twenty years ago you know letters that best road

to harry and you know the story goes that she actually earned those letters because she didn't want for them to be public and that's because the good news houston in the intervening years we've uncovered a hundred and eighty nine ers letters that we know that she wrote him almost one for one that we can tell from his letters that she had written back to a previous flood or so we assume that she was writing letters and almost the same place he was so we're still you know we may only have i know fifteen percent of her letters that she wrote to him but it's still tells a much richer story we get the back and forth and we try to include that in this exhibit some of the back and forth correspondents now of many presidential libraries have a gallery devoted to the first lady and we this is one of the issues we talked about a lot during our design process

you know do we do have a gallery devoted to the us and we just came down on the thought that well no it really doesn't make much sense because bass's role in harry truman's life was as a life long confidant someone that he could bounce ideas off and she did and she clearly did not like the whole role as first lady so she did not like that dinner dance shaking hands on public office or the public persona of the first lady she was sort of the anti eleanor roosevelt total opposite of eleanor roosevelt and so how do we best deal with best throughout this exhibit and it seemed clear that we want to bring her into the story throughout the entire

exhibit that we are doing as this person who is influencing harry truman always along and i think so we did not do a separate restroom and khoury there are but their relationship was very gendered genuine very long term she is very much behind the scenes not so much else an advisor advisor but more as a sounding board we know that he ran it as pastor all the time and evaluating her opinion and so she's there but she's like she was as first lady she's always there in the background she doesn't want to step out and says public person she hated she tracked but early on in indiana are

very early on in his presidency he was asked the commission needs to go a hospital transport planes of my christening mom with champagne bottles and we have a clip of the video in our exhibits were the bottles refused to break and she's just bashing the nose of this one airplane or oregon and when she was done with that she got back in the limousine and you told the naval lady who lives with her at the time that that was the last public event she was going to do the wire self and i was pretty much what she did she became very private the end that's really you know we want to show that this is their we wanna know we want to show her importance to harry truman but the fact is that she just did not want people that person and so it made very little sense respective a separate

gallery i related to that i heard a story about harry truman and this may be apocryphal but i once heard that even in the white house that harry truman watched his own socks and underwear there his mother had taught him that no one should ever be responsible for washing one's socks or underwear other than oneself this is true were you know you use the rules very perceptibly about that now in the white house all things might have been a little different but he was certainly a he certainly was self contained and when he was out on the road you know campaigning for senate and so for them it was he'd hit you know him carry mines me that his mother is is someone else who

is really a very fascinating subject to look at and hand you know that's just one example of the ways that she even very small ways but in that particular way was one of her influences and she was a very strong person extremely strong person felt very self reliant and what you see throughout her truman's life is to really strong role that women had in his life and guiding know it's something i think really deserves more examination but he really admired women in his life and yet it was sort of an age where you didn't really socialize with women so harry truman is joining every fraternal organization on earth practically he's very much a joiner believing in fraternity you know if it comes true and as national guard

service the masons but these are all organizations of man but in his own life that the people that he tended to really listen to tend to be women he'd he really admired his teachers that he had one was young when he was a boy growing up he many times referred back to them and they were all women course best he put that's up on a pedestal his mother was an assistant very strong person self reliant and i think these are half this is a characteristic of truman that i think really it would really begs for a little more examination somebody to do a book on the air and this year craig brusky he's the chief curator at the term in presidential library and museum just reopened this week

after being closed for two years for a twenty nine million dollar renovation president truman is rightly associated with for his role in ending world war to how was that part of his life are dressed in the new newly invasion museum oh thing to remember is you know harry truman suddenly and unexpectedly becomes president in april nineteen forty five and what has he faced twenty twenty first becomes president the war is its winding down in europe we know we're going to win the war in europe it's not actually over but the whole pacific war is still raging and so immediately his role is ok how we prosecute the end of the war and also keep in mind he does not know about the atomic bomb he does not know any of the details about the manhattan project as a senator he knew that there was something going

on but he didn't know exactly what it was and it really wasn't only it was it was still more than a week later a camera bit like ten twelve days after he was sworn in that his secretary of war ask for a special meeting with him and i was the meeting in which she was fully briefed on the atomic bomb project so truman is a man who steps into office he had only been vice president brady today's president roosevelt had only met with them alone twice in those at today's so this is literally even though harry truman was a senator and new catapult knew how washington works he had absolutely no injury or knowledge of what the president was doing so he had to step into this role and and while a war is still going on to have a section of the exhibit which

literally as sort of a timeline of his first four months in office from the time he took office until the time the atomic bomb was dropped and were war to end it the victory over japan and it's literally you walk through this gallery and it's just one event in april he becomes president in early may the german surrenders or your hands on the day before that he moves into the white house for the first time in june he he goes to be a separate says go to site to work cto at the end of the conference that set up the united nations but in july he goes to the potsdam conference in germany to plot or plan the post war status of the world

amendment and at the same time the atomic bomb was tested in july and it works and then in august a course the atomic bombs used on hiroshima nagasaki and the war is over so for four months of just the most incredible data day trauma and decision making and difficult issues it had to deal with from the moment he at the beginning when the day he was he became president so we deal with that very much it's a very small part of the galleries like a whole a hallway but along the side of the hallway we got markers of literally almost every day what's going on around the world and if you can really walk through that gallery slowly and look at everything that's happening all at once you get you just marvel at how he could have lived through that without going crazy because it's just

an incredible number of things that happened it really was a trial by fire it really was an end and we it was a trial by fire the first four months and then even after the japanese surrender the next part of her exhibit you turn a corner so that the bomb has been dropped but japan surrenders you turn a corner and you see sort of the centerpiece for new exhibit which is this big fourteen foot a model of the globe with lighted cracks all over the globe and it's symbolic of the shattered world the truman then had to deal with coming immediately out forward to unite the united states was really the only country that emerge from more war to richer than i was when i went in and so it had by default it had a leadership the leadership role in the world and there were problems everywhere there was

famine jurors destruction from the war other words there were displaced persons would suffer during the holocaust there were really the european colonial empires were had run out of money and they were all collapse and so you have all of these countries and especially in asia africa and asia writer there's political vacuums and journalist now deal with all of this stuff just after he's come up to four months oh or were too loud so it's like there's no rest for this president wants so once he goes into office good from one word to the other war people often refer to the korean war as america's forgotten war how are you you are using the korean war to tell the story of the truman presidency or maybe i should say how to use the truman presidency to tell the story of the korean war for korean war is

who's of course truman thought the korean war post most difficult issues for him and a lot of people think that was the atomic bomb but truman always said that no no no there were more difficult issues and the korean war was won and the way the hook for this story we use to interpret the korean war is that it is the first test of the united nations truman was a great believer in international organizations in cooperation which is a whole other story that is learned is following world has experienced more want that he believed in using the united nations to get nations to not only work together but also protect each other and the korean war was the first time the united nations forces were actually

used in a combat and so thats one thing is that we use the korean war for us it's a way it was his decision to go and into it with the united nations it became united nations complex and was very important in the second part of that is that it was the first war that was not officially declared by congress so truman as first president to actually use it war powers without the approval of congress and ironically it's a a president for all future presidents because there's never been since then there's never been a head officially get clear up or declared by congress because presidents abused or powers to enter into military engagements ever since then so that's you know that's part of commons legacy that that gives you a chance to

sort of think well is this did they do the right thing or the wrong thing here is trying to get is trying to solve a conflict he's trying to prevent one nation a north korea from invading another nation on the other hand it's being done without formal congressional declaration or arm truman always felt at the korean war should be a limited war of the goals of which were too roll back the north korean invasion of south korea but the other issue that comes up is once the united nations forces gain a foothold and start fighting back and then are our role and lust are rolling back the north koreans then there's the decision of whether to continue and sending the troops in north korea to reunite north and south korea

and that is also an issue that so that people are debating very much and was that the right decision was was that something the truman show and i regret it what would it maybe another president have done in that situation and finally the korean war was also the closest a truman came to a war or three in that you know by sending the troops into north korea than that i got the the chinese to counterattack by sending chinese troops over the border and came very close to a situation that could have a trigger or three so there are a lot of issues don't pack in the korean war is in fact that probably the forgotten war that's it's justified neighmond korean war veterans were never really recognized for the service that they

they showed about it also as a lot of other issues relating to presidential decision making that i think are important for people to understand craig brusky he's the chief curator at the harry s truman presidential library and museum in independence missouri clay aiken not august of coincidences today on my drive over to independence i heard an interview on npr about say the alexander the african american women of appointed by president truman to the president's committee on civil rights talk about truman's role in promoting civil rights and how that defined his presidency that truman a tremendous really sort of recognized as the first president to really advance civil rights but it's but it's a complicated situation and what many people don't really understand nowadays says that interim it's time and

before that there were democratic congresspeople and senators from the south who were gathered segregationists and they tended to get re elected and re elected reelected meaning that built up a lot of seniority men meaning that they have lots of power in congress and that these segregation us were primarily almost all for primarily by democrats and so the democratic party was a party that now under franklin roosevelt so he wanted to do good things for the common people but an entire group of common people were left out of that because of their race and that was primarily because you couldn't get anything through congress regarding racial equality because southern congressman or a democratic congressman were the ones who control

of or walk when i congress so truman wellspring much stymied with what he could do legislatively so what he ended up doing is he issued to mix actual for somalia pointed this committee on civil rights to write a report every detail report about segregation and the the problems that black people were having getting equal rights in the united states and then following up on that he issued two executive orders one that the segregated the armed forces the other dc are getting the federal government so he did by executive order you know in recent years we've heard a lot about presidents having to use executive orders to accomplish things because they can't get things through congress that's exactly what

truman was facing dangerous time is that the only way he could do anything would be to issue an executive order so you should these two executive orders relating to civil rights all truman himself of course was from a basically a border state judas his ancestors have believed in the confederacy and and truman himself as a young man used a disparaging language about black people and also other ethnic groups so truman as a young man was not necessarily an avid civil rights advocate but many people think what really finally turned head and turn the corner was the way he saw black veterans treated after war two when i came home from

serving in the war overseas and they were not able to be we're often brutalized but they also were not afforded rights at home these are these are veterans who fought in more war to them that really really rich truman and so many people think that's one of their main reasons that he really loved we became very vocal about civil rights he spoke to the end up lacy p convention made a moving speech about civil rights saying that all americans should have rights as equal rights and so some people think the the truman really was the first modern president to really start an active put the democrats in the corner of being active the active civil rights

advocate and then of course you know falling on with other like for example john kennedy and lyndon johnson who of lyndon johnson who managed to get civil rights act and the voting rights act passed through congress but that but in the process the democratic party was dramatically transformed from a party that had been dominated by southern democrats to a party that was that no longer had the support of the southern democrats so i visit with clay barsky he's the chief curator of a trim and presidential library and museum in independence missouri it's just reopened this week after a two year twenty nine million dollar renovation will walk through the museum as keep your prisons continues right after this