Cultural Ties
Constructing Communism: Experiences History in the Museum
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Samantha Vaughn
Exhibition creation is bounded by the political practice of knowledge production, yet despite this established understanding in scholarly circles, museums are still invested with an authority of truth thanks to intertwining and cyclical issues of historic elitism and visitor trust. Whitehead argues that we must uncover the “techniques and contingencies of that knowledge production” (2016: 2) so as to understand the positions taken by exhibition developers as political. This paper takes up Whitehead’s call through an analysis of two museums with opposing approaches to the history of Communism. The Museum of Communism in Prague, Czechia, and the Museum of Life Under Communism in Warsaw, Poland, are private institutions that produce a similar narrative but which do so through the differing themes of terror and nostalgia, respectively. In their own ways, they each push the boundaries of neutrality, exposing the political choices Whitehead – as well as many others – have addressed. A detailed analysis of their displays serves to reveal how these themes are constructed, exploring concepts such as object authenticity, witnessing, and the objectivity/subjectivity of language. In the final part, I introduce visitor experiences of these exhibitions, centring on the power of empathy and self-identification to affirm museum narratives.
Life in All Ages: Time, Design, and Inclusivity in the National Folk Museum of Korea View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alexander Calloway
How can national museums reconcile differing perspectives on national identity, especially when these differences interact with legacies of colonial institutions? In this study, I argue that museums can more effectively address intersections of intangible heritage by engaging more directly with time as an element of exhibition design. I examine this question through a case study of the Republic of Korea’s National Folk Museum, whose ethnological galleries self-reportedly represent “daily life and culture of Korea” – certainly an ambitious task. I consider the museum’s architecture, interior design, displays, and theming through the lens of philosopher Henri Bergson’s duration: a temporal framework that presents history as a subjective process of emotional making, rather than rational learning. NFM succeeds in depicting rural, urban, modern, and traditional visions of South Korea as complementary national narratives through duration-minded exhibitions, where broader cycles of time frame different objects and customs that visitors can experience simultaneously. By employing similar strategies, museum exhibitions can more fully embrace inclusivity in their collections while resisting a single “authentic” history. The resulting spaces champion a move in ethnological museums towards viewing culture as pluralistic and ever-changing.
New Practices of the National Museum of Cultures (Mexico): Required Intercultural Dialogue View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Iskra Rojo
Today there is the possibility of including creative forms of dialogue in museums with new tools and technologies with a view to having a transdisciplinary museology and museography, which respond to contemporary approaches and the previously described complexity of heritage. It is necessary to introduce a strong affective notion, of the sensitivities, corporalities, emotionalities and concerns of the socio-technical assemblies in the process of museological reconstruction of the world. This is unthinkable if the cultures of the world are reduced to objects alien to the sentiments of the human beings who conceive and live them. The objective is to show a necessary transition-updating process for the National Museum of Cultures (Mexico) and its musical collection towards intercultural dialogue from the foundations of the critical concept of heritage, the dialogue of knowledge and the new museology. The advances in this sense are: i) management, museology and museography are carried out with these new proposals of approaches, little by little from interdisciplinary and seeking transdiscipline and cultural understanding; ii) The documentation and cataloging of specific sub-collections, such as music and sound, makes it possible to incorporate, learn about and transmit to the world's cultures in the integral way of the dialogue of knowledge. In a novel way, key cultural actors (experts, builders, musicians, dancers, etc.) are being incorporated together with audiovisual materials that show their use, construction, mythology, among other aspects. New configurations of the museums will provide a vision of the multiple cultural realities, past and present.
