ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 19, 1996 TAG: 9601190033
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WINSTON TABB
IN YOUR Dec. 27 editorial (``Invertebrates on exhibit'') criticizing the Library of Congress for postponing its exhibition on Sigmund Freud, we are accused of trying to dodge a controversy about Freud's legacy. This is not so.
The fact is that, as has happened with other exhibitions, we were short $350,000 in private money to mount the exhibit in 1996 as planned.
We have now rescheduled the show, ``Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture,'' for the fall of 2000, which should give us enough time to raise sufficient funds. In addition, 2000 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Freud's ``Interpretation of Dreams,'' and the year when donor restrictions will be lifted from the papers of his daughter, Anna. These papers are also in the library's collections.
We are pleased that many professional groups have applauded this decision and offered their support in our fund-raising efforts.
As for the removal of our small traveling exhibition, ``Back of the Big House: the Cultural Landscape of the Plantation,'' with which you also took issue, library managers took it down because it opened, without adequate preparation or explanation, in an area used principally by our staff. Its ambiguous title and inappropriate location offended numerous employees of all races.
This exhibit was designed to travel, not to be installed at the Library of Congress.
We are pleased that it is now being shown at the Martin Luther King Memorial Library (in Washington, D.C.) and will continue on to other venues as scheduled, and with its content unchanged, in 1996.
Intellectual integrity is not in jeopardy at the Library of Congress. These two actions were unrelated to each other, and unrelated to political correctness.
Winston Tabb is associate librarian for library services at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
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