Memory Cultures 2.0 and Museums (J. Elsner and M. Brusius) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Cultural memory in the museum and its dialogue with collective and individual memory
Nordisk Museologi, 1970
This article analyses the forms of cultural memory (storage and functio- nal memory) relying on the work of Aleida Assmann and the German cultural memory school (Assmann, 1999; 2004), and their changes in memory institutions in connection with the institution’s dialogue with individual and collective memory. Assmann’s theory is supplemented with museological communication schemes (Hooper-Grenhill, 1996) and a definition of the medium of collective memory (Erll, 2004). The aim of this article is to discuss the effect of functional memory in the context of the mediation work of a modern museum. The article will deal more thoroughly with the functionalizing process of cultural memory in the museum based on a specific pedagogical programme at the Estonian Open Air Museum.
Germany's Changing Memoryscape. Postsocialist, Postmigrant, and Postcolonial Dynamics , 2024
The founding of the Museum of European Cultures (Museum Europäischer Kulturen, MEK) is the product of a complex process of fusion and transformation. In 1992, in the aftermath of German unification, the state folklore museums of East and West Berlin-Museum für Volkskunde and Museum für Deutsche Volkskunde respectively-were merged to form a united Museum of Folklore (Museum für Volkskunde). In 1999, the latter merged with the European Department of the Museum of Ethnology (Abteilung Europa des Museums für Völkerkunde) and was named the Museum of European Cultures. This article addresses the tension between the continuous marginalization of the MEK with its »difficult heritage« (Macdonald 2009) in the shadow of the German Historical Museum (Deutsches Historisches Museum) and the Humboldt Forum, and the political history of its founding process after 1989. Looking at the history of this museum's transformation in light of Michael Rothberg's (2021 [2009]) multidirectional memory-political dynamics, it becomes clear how different vectors of memory have overlapped and influenced each other in the process, including memories of the Second World War, East-West division of Germany, and the country's subsequent unification. At the same time, a fundamental change in museum practice can be observed in the course of the museum's ›European‹ transformation, which is inscribed in the memorycultural dynamics of a (post)migrant society.
Museum and Society
This article explores memory studies from the audience’s perspective, focusing on the perception of Holocaust narratives in two museums in Berlin. This research builds on and contributes to a number of emerging issues on memory studies, tourism perception and museum design: the debate on experiential authenticity, Dark Tourism, as well as the analysis of memory studies from the perspective of the user. The main data facilitating the analysis is based on responses shared on TripAdvisor; the case studies being the Otto Weidt Workshop for the Blind Museum and the Jewish Museum Berlin. The analysis of these museums, focusing on their narratives, design features and comments from visitors, will highlight a potential shift from the traditional object-focused museum, to a phenomenological subject-focused one. It will be argued, then, that the understanding and consumption of authenticity encompasses a very flexible definition, not only based on the nature of the objects exhibited, but on t...
“Selective memory”: A Museum and Its Past
Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art, XII, 2022
“Selective memory” of the past, borrowing the definition from cognitive psychology and neuro- science, represents a phenomenon closely tied to the history of classical archaeology and the antiquarian, specif- ically within Italian museum studies, as a cultural-ideological result of 19th and 20th century historical events. A research recently undertaken into the current situation of museums pertaining to a subregional district of south- ern Latium, the region of central western Italy of which Rome is the county seat, constituted an opportunity for comparison based on the analysis of some indicators, both aesthetical and technical: museological and museo- graphical approaches, management issues, exhibition design, and communication strategies. A common thread is a perpetuation of bygone ideological and propaganda symbols as nostalgia for the past and the reactivation of historical, political, and anthropological phenomena. As a case study the Archaeological Civic Museum of Terracina, a city 100 kilometers south of Rome, has been chosen, in consideration of its long history and the possibility to assist to the evolution of the fittings and locations from 1894, the year of foundation, until today, by dint of photos, inventories, and period letters. The central theme of criterion for selecting the archaeological material to be exhibited has been, since the beginning, the past that we choose to tell. This “selective memory” is identifiable in the different treatment reserved to single objects: some have been collected and preserved, some have been scattered, some have been perceived as unrepresentative, and thus deemed unworthy of display or narration, and stored in depots. The museum has consequently selected only certain aspects of the past of its community, which is almost entirely related to its Late Roman Republican and Imperial period, an attitude which in the literature is frequently referred to as “Romanolatry”. The cult of the “white archaeology” removes from consideration the material culture of everyday life, of prehistoric, protohistoric, late antique, medieval, and Renaissance phases, even when well documented. Is the museum a place of oblivion or a place of memory? Keywords: classical archaeology, museum studies, antiquarian, nostalgia, propaganda, memory
Berlin's Changing Memory Landscape: New Scholarship in German and English
German Politics & Society, 2006
Claus Leggewie and Erik Meyer, “Ein Ort, an den man gerne geht” Das Holocaust-Mahnmal und die deutsche Geschichtspolitik nach 1989 (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2005)Karen E. Till, The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005)Peter Carrier, Holocaust Monuments and National Memory Cultures in France and Germany since 1989: The Origins and Political Function of the Vél’ d’Hiv’ in Paris and the Holocaust Monument in Berlin (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005)