Special Recognition

Exhibition: Enola Gay (June, 1995-May, 1998)

Institution: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
       
Writer: David Romanowski, Exhibits Writer-Editor, National Air and Space Museum


Brief Description: Enola Gay opened in 1995 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II.  The exhibition featured the forward fuselage of the B-29 Enola Gay, the airplane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  Written by a team of writers, the exhibition touched upon the history of the Boeing B-29, the restoration of the Enola Gay, and the story of the airplane’s mission of August 6, 1945, presented with minimal historical interpretation.  This cautious approach was in reaction to the controversy that had led Smithsonian Secretary I. Michael Heyman to cancel The Last Act, the exhibition the Museum had originally planned to open.  The label displayed here was written to address Secretary Heyman’s request for a “transition label” to serve as a bridge between the initial technology-oriented sections of the gallery and the exhibition’s emotional core: the airplane itself.  Mounted just around the corner from the fuselage, the label was meant to prepare visitors for their first glimpse of the Enola Gay.

The "Enola Gay"
Something More than an Airplane

    It was an airplane like so many others that rolled off the wartime assembly lines by the thousands; an advanced bomber for its day, but only one among many of its breed.  It never sported the distinctive nose art that adorned many airplanes. Not until the night before its most important mission did it even bear a name. Its pilot, honoring his mother, had painted on one side in bold letters, ENOLA GAY.
    As it lifted off on that mission, it carried within it a weapon of unprecedented power that would bring both death and deliverance.  When the airplane released its heavy load, banked sharply, and turned toward home, history turned with it.  By the time its tires touched the earth again, the world had entered a new age.
    Fifty years later it seems almost larger than life; as much an icon, now, as an airplane.  After all this time it still evokes intense emotions, from gratitude to grief, its polished surface reflecting the myriad feelings and meanings and memories we bring before it.

Jurors' Comments:

This is a beautiful text on an extraordinarily loaded topic! It is written like a miniature essay, with beginning/middle/end, and moves us as readers on a rising spiral through time: from the ordinary beginnings of the object that is the nominal subject of the show, through the moment when the bomb was dropped and history changed, and back to our contemporary vision of that same object. Each sentence of the second paragraph is perfect. The overall sobriety of the text respects the profound feelings that some visitors may bring to the show. Joshua Dudley

I give Romanowski extra credit for distinguished performance under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, but the label for the Enola Gay is outstanding in any case. It does a very nice job of working the contrast of the mundane physical object (one of thousands) with the unique emotional freight that it carries. It reminds me of Auden's poem Musee des Beaux Arts, about the "human position" of suffering:

    "....how it takes place
    While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking
dully along."

After all the fighting over that exhibit, Romanowski succeeds in a very few understated words in evoking the duality of "just going to work" and "changing the world." His label leaves the door open for whatever meaning the visitor chooses to assign, but it hits us hard with the reminder of why we can't just ignore this remarkable artifact. Three short paragraphs sum up not only the drama of the dropping of the bomb, but the battle over the exhibit as well – a wonderfully succinct and powerful "object biography." Jay Rounds