By merely gazing at the National Constitution Center from the outside, you can really get a sense of what it’s all about. Located in the heart of old city, near the Liberty Bell Center and U.S. mint, the NCC is a huge, grandiose building surrounded by a vast expanse of green space. There is a jumbo-sized American flag in its spectacular front window. The preamble to the constitution is artfully etched out on the building’s concrete façade, though the only words discernible from far away are “we the people.”
Upon entering the museum and observing the lobby’s super-high ceilings, visitors feel a combination of awe and comfort. The display of all 50 state flags immediately evokes a sense of national unity, and the quotes on the wall, such as Teddy Roosevelt’s “The people themselves must be the ultimate makers of their Constitution,” suggest to visitors that they belong here and that their presence is important.
The next stop is a high-tech theatre in which visitors watch a presentation called Freedom Rising. I found this part of the visit to be particularly interesting. This is not simply a film. The theatre is circular. In the center of it is a small stage where a very serious live narrator stands. Everywhere you turn your head, iconic and highly emotional images and video clips flash before your eyes: Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech, Women’s Suffrage activists, footage from 9/11, Vietnam, World War II—the list goes on and on. For me, it was honestly quite overwhelming. I personally felt that this bordered on emotional manipulation; to have all those powerful and historically significant images just simultaneously thrown at you with only a broad, sweeping general explanation. I kept wondering to myself, exactly how short of an attention span is this museum assuming we have?
Next, visitors walk up a staircase and out into the main exhibit hall, which is also circular, suggesting a kind of democratic freedom to choose your own path. There are lots of exhibits to choose from, ranging from the super-interactive and high-tech to the more traditional look-at-the-stuff-and-read-the-poster sort of displays. It was very apparent to me that the NCC is trying to appeal to all different age groups, and I honestly think they are pulling it off as best as they can. The truth is that it’s difficult to create a heritage museum, especially one that celebrates the collective past of 300 million people, which can easily appeal to a wide range of demographics. I may have personally felt that Freedom Rising was a bit much, but I speculate that for most visitors, especially schoolchildren, it is probably an appropriate and effective attraction.
Although I sensed a conservative bias at times, I also recognized the museum’s efforts to maintain an appeal to diversity and free speech. The overall message of the museum, as I read it, is that our definition of who exactly “we the people” includes has expanded and evolved over time, and the well-crafted, open-to-interpretation nature of our constitution has allowed for these great societal revisions. It’s definitely a nice message, and one that most Americans, including myself, agree with. I think that the NCC successfully achieves its goal as a heritage museum, and that the view of heritage it has constructed is a broadly appealing one. Sure, it is blatantly nationalistic, but I think it also does a decent job at acknowledging the darker parts of our nation’s past. I may not have agreed with all of its methods, but I still felt welcome there despite the fact.
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