For a country that created a special holiday just to remember those who have fought for our freedoms in war, we do a lot of forgetting the rest of the year. 2011 marks the sesquicentennial of the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861. As a recent article by Helen Stoilas and Javier Pes in The Art Newspaper points out, whereas the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth in 2009 spawned a slew of special museum exhibitions across the country, this year’s special event has inspired not a single major exhibition in the United States for 2011. What does it say about the American psyche and, perhaps more importantly, how culture-shapers perceive that mindset that the Civil War remains a taboo topic? Are we still fighting that war on some level? What kind of civil action—or cultural civil action—will it take to end the Civil War so that we can remember it? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Civil Action."
