Skeptics ask whether longer stays and higher revenue will help the other bottom line: appreciation of history. "There's a fear that the glitzy stuff will overcome the artifacts, which is what museums are supposed to be about," says Kym Rice, an assistant professor of museum studies at George Washington University. At Virginia's Colonial Williamsburg, for instance, virtually the entire historic area has become a Ye Olde Shopping Mall, where every restored shop is a point of sale for souvenirs, and the "pubs" sell premade sandwiches and postcolonial sodas. At Mount Vernon, visitors can buy Pizza Hut breadsticks in the food court, and -- we cannot tell a lie -- the gift shop sells plastic axes filled with cherry candy.
Gettysburg hasn't gone for the full symphony of bells and whistles, in part because it serves as a memorial to fallen soldiers. Most items in the new bookshop are indeed books. Visitors aren't funneled from the museum into the gift shop -- a luxury not offered at other historic sites. Museum consultant Janet Kamien, who worked on the National Constitution Center, believes tourists will punish any site that veers too far from its core product. "The public still cares about whether they're being told the truth," she says. "Are they getting the Universal Studios version of the truth, or just the technology without the veracity?"
History, you might say, will be the judge.
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