{"id":3030,"date":"2017-01-09T14:22:04","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T14:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/primolevicenter.org\/printed-matter\/?p=3030"},"modified":"2017-01-09T14:55:14","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T14:55:14","slug":"under-glass-museums-and-the-display-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/primolevicenter.org\/printed-matter\/under-glass-museums-and-the-display-of-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Under Glass: Museums and the Display of History."},"content":{"rendered":"
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This year, together with its\u00a0academic partners,\u00a0Centro Primo Levi invites scholars and the public to\u00a0discuss the idea of displaying history in\u00a0museums and the alternate waves\u00a0of\u00a0museum projects (realized and not) focusing on the events of the first half of the 20th century. The program will include\u00a0an academic session and a public session. Please visit our website for details<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On January 24, a\u00a0group of scholars from different countries\u00a0will explore this\u00a0specific aspect of European efforts to foster a shared historical landscape: museums of memory and history. Speakers will take into consideration various museums, analyzing the circumstances in which each was planned and realized, derailed, abandoned or kept in a limbo. Is there a common thread in the rush to portray history as museum display and the crisis that have affected various museums?<\/p>\n

Can museums, traditionally meant as monuments to nationhood, tied to the history and memories of particular locations, effectively display the different lenses through which to see a shared past, divided memories, the developments of an increasingly transnational historical research?<\/p>\n

How do they shape their narratives in relation to an unprecedented diversity of audiences; to the lingering effects of a history dominated by nationalism and conflict; to large masses of tourists? Are museums, that increasingly rely on communication technology, virtual reality, and the offer of \u201cadventures\u201d, shaping a new concept of \u201cpublic history\u201d?<\/p>\n

Does the generally stated purpose to carry the \u201clesson of history\u201d and be relevant to contemporary human tragedies that resonate with those of the Nazi-Fascist past, still hold its meaning in relation to the masses of migrants who do not necessarily share the culture and history nor partake in the privileges of citizenship?<\/p>\n

As the place of the Holocaust in European memory is increasingly coming under challenge, elements of fascism are becoming politically and socially acceptable, political events signal the difficulty of democratic nation states to sustain the notion of diversity and equality they produced, the very notion of \u201chistory\u201d is confronted on grounds as diverse as communication and the law, can the controversies over history museums provide a lens to discuss the implications and background of the political use of memory and the role of history and historical research in our society?<\/p>\n

Background<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 1990s and early 2000s saw a \u201crush of memorial museums\u201d leading to the creation of museums and memorials dedicated the remembrance of the Nazi-Fascist era and the Shoah in many European capitals. \u00a0This wave juxtaposed to\u00a0existing national remembrance sites and museums such as Dachau Memorial Site, the Museo di Via Tasso, the\u00a0Jasenovac Memorial Site, the Auschwitz Museum, only to mention a few.<\/p>\n

However, a recent\u00a0wave of history\/memory museum projects is encountering challenges of various kinds and nature.<\/p>\n

Commitment from government agencies to continue working on historical museum projects within a European agenda has waned. Reasons are possibly connected with the broader political crisis of the Union, but also motivated by local debates.<\/p>\n

Some projects, including the Museum of World War II in Gda\u0144sk, Poland and the Holocaust Museum in Budapest, were derailed or halted over ideological controversies; some, as in the case of the Museum of Righteous Poles in Markowa, came under fire due to conflicts of memory as well as historiographical questions;\u00a0the Maison de l\u2019Histoire de France was abandoned altogether, while the Museo della Shoah in Rome, a monumental project with overarching historiographical ambitions to be built on the site of Mussolini\u2019s residence, has been indefinitely delayed amidst academic and public disagreements. At the same time, a\u00a0national museum of\u00a0Italian Jewry and the Shoah is in the works in Ferrara.\u00a0Parallel to this, the Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism opened in Munich in 2015, while a debate over the establishment of an official project of the Museum of Fascism in Mussolini\u2019s hometown has divided pundits and public opinion alike.<\/p>\n

Twenty years have passed since the establishment of January 27th in Germany as day of commemoration of the victims of Nazi-Fascism which would subsequently be adopted as first shared European commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance.<\/p>\n

The European Union\u2019s efforts to help weave a common historical ground have taken many directions, encouraging academic projects, facilitating student and faculty exchanges and creating a variety of systems to share national heritages digitally. The best known is Europeana, a digital platform of European archives, libraries and museums. Scholarship has began to address this history, and\u00a0 its intellectual and ideological ground\u00a0 bringing about a new field of study and prompting a new\u00a0 wave of research on the Nazi-Fascist era and a new generation of comparative studies.<\/p>\n

The designation of January 27th\u00a0as International Holocaust Remembrance Day occurred over time, spearheaded by the the Task\u00a0Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research and some of the countries where Nazi-Fascist totalitarianism came forth: Germany in 1996,\u00a0France 1997, Italy 2000, followed by the rest of Europe.\u00a0It assumed an international dimension in 2005 when the United\u00a0Nations officially marked an annual commemoration establishing their Holocaust Education\u00a0Programme.<\/p>\n

In early debates on memory and the historical past, Totalitarianism, anti-Fascism and the persecution of the Jews became central to the process of definition of a shared historical\u00a0landscape. This process took time and raised conflicts.<\/p>\n

As the European Union expanded, the consensus over the definitions of totalitarianism, dissent, resistance and the Holocaust came again under question and new sets of conflicts were brought to the fore. For instance, in 2011 the Platform for European Memory and Conscience was created, mostly by Eastern European countries with the participation of the United States and Canada. In its mission statement anti-Fascism and the Holocaust do not appear while many of the elements of public discourse that developed since the establishment of January 27th and before, are included: the platform is meant to \u201cincrease public awareness about European history and the crimes committed by totalitarian regimes and to encourage a broad, European-wide discussion about the causes and consequences of totalitarian rule, as well as about common European values, with the aim of promoting human dignity and human rights\u201d.<\/p>\n

Within this background, museums intended to\u00a0display historical events\u00a0play a conspicuous role due to\u00a0their\u00a0unique public visibility, their physical ties to places of memory, and their traditional function as political tools.<\/p>\n

Suggested readings<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aline Sierp, History, Memory and Trans-European Identity<\/em>, Routledge<\/a><\/p>\n

Timothy Snyder, Poland vs. History<\/em>, The New York Review of Books<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Ofer Aderet, Polish Museum Honoring Poles Who Saved Jews Arouses Controversy,\u00a0Haaretz<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Vincent Duclert, Pour un mus\u00e9e de l’histoire en France, Le Monde<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Dominique Poulot, Museums and History in Contemporary France<\/em><\/a>, Link\u00f6ping University Electronic Press<\/p>\n

Mama de la Baume, France Confronts an Ignoble Chapter<\/em>, The New York Times, 2014<\/a><\/p>\n

Michael Kimmelman, In France, a War of Memories Over Memories of War, The\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Ljiljana Radonic, Croatia \u2013 Exhibiting Memory and History at the \u201cShores of Europe\u201d<\/em>, Culture Unbound<\/a><\/p>\n

Christine Cadot, Can Museums Help Build a European Memory? The Example of the Mus\u00e9e de l\u2019Europe in Brussels in the Light of \u201cNew World\u201d Museums\u2019 Experience<\/em>, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Articles on the Museum of Fascism in Predappio<\/a><\/p>\n

Anna Mueller, Objects have the power to tell history<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Simona Mitroiu,\u00a0Considerations on Cultural Memory and its Institutionalization Process<\/em>, IJSSHS<\/a><\/p>\n

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This year, together with its\u00a0academic partners,\u00a0Centro Primo Levi invites scholars and the public to\u00a0discuss the idea of displaying history in\u00a0museums and the alternate waves\u00a0of\u00a0museum projects (realized and not) focusing on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3031,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academia"],"yoast_head":"\nUnder Glass: Museums and the Display of History. - Printed_Matter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/primolevicenter.org\/printed-matter\/under-glass-museums-and-the-display-of-history\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Under Glass: Museums and the Display of History. - 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