When this topic first came up, the first thing I thought of was
The Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va. From the
Encyclopedia Virginia comes this opening statement:
The Museum of the Confederacy opened in the former Confederate capital of Richmond in 1896 as the Confederate Museum. One of Richmond's oldest museums, it is the only institution in Virginia that began as a Confederate shrine and transformed itself into a modern history museum. The museum was a preservation effort on two levels: it rescued from destruction the former Confederate executive mansion and displayed in the mansion's rooms the artifacts—"relics" as they were called in the 1890s—of Confederate soldiers and civilians from the American Civil War (1861–1865) and the postwar
Lost Cause era
The Washington Post adds this:
By the centennial anniversary of the Civil War, the museum's governing board determined that it wanted to see the museum evolve from a shrine to a more modern museum. In 1963, the CMLS hired its first museum professional as the executive director, and in 1970, changed the name of the institution to "The Museum of the Confederacy." Visitors peaked at 91,000 per year in the early 1990s but were down to around 51,000 in the early 2000s.Tucker.
"Swept Away By History". Washington Post.
I thought it clever to make a comparison to how the Museum of the Confederacy began its life, to how it exists today with the proposal of the new SCV museum. Indeed, whatever artifacts that will go into the new museum will thankfully be preserved and perhaps it will undergo the same growth, evolutions, and reflections as time goes by, so that ultimately, it will accomplish what any museum hopes to do: preserve the relics of the past and represent history.
EDIT: it seems that my idea is not original: Kevin Levin has submitted a full-length article on this very topic for The Daily Beast. Stay tuned.