Abstract
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.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Knowledge production, Visitor engagement, Collections, Authenticity, Neutrality, Communist history museums
