what will the museum of the future be like?

Nationalism & Museums: How nationalism is differently reflected and represented in (and by) museums in different countries?

I am interested in the topic "nationalism & museums" and would like to know how this issue is differentiated from country to country. In the case of China where my research is targeting at, the creating of common memories, of which museum is one of the approaches, so as to promote various forms of nationalism and national identity is very much part of the State's role. so museums in China are very much influenced by governmental policy and strategy, which of course is interacted with the social changes of China. But obviously it is not always the case in other countries. then, how?

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rhiannon Mason on October 16, 2009 at 8:04pm

Hello

This sounds like a really interesting and topical project.

I work on national museums and am interested in the relationship between political/constitutional contexts and museums both now and in the 19th century. I have written two things which might be of help with your query. One is an article about digital media, Englishness/Britishness and current government policy relating to identity and diversity in the UK. The other is a book about the National Museums of Wales which looks at how museums and national collections figure in public and political debates around definitions and representations of national distinctiveness, with particular reference to the case of stateless nations (as developed by David McCrone) and devolution. It covers folk culture, industrial and maritime heritage and art. Although this book is primarily about Wales and the UK context there is an overview chapter (chap.1) which reviews as much of the anglophone, international literature on national museums that I could find at the time.

More broadly speaking I am interested in how the idea of the national museum today is being reshaped by factors like postnationalism, globalisation, postcolonialism, cultural diversity, devolution and new regionalism. For details of these publications see: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sacs/staff/profile/rhiannon.mason

Other places to look - I don't know if you are aware of the NAMU network. This is a European network set up to bring together PhD students interested in national museums. The papers from each meeting are online and contain lots of interesting references. The main organiser Peter Aronsson (from Sweden) has written some very interesting overview papers - see:
http://www.namu.se/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

On China specifically - in the UK Edward Vickers has written extensively about China and its museums.See: http://www.ioe.ac.uk/study/LCEN_44.html

Hope this is useful to you. Good luck with your project!

Rhiannon Mason

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by WH on October 18, 2009 at 10:01pm

Hi Rhiannon,

Thank you very much for your reply! I will have a look at your suggested resources. I will have a read at your book (Museums, Nations, Identities: Wales and its National Museums, right?). The article you wrote, is it available online?

My project is mainly about the regional museums (museums of the region or province) in China. They are not the traditional national museums however play a similar role in terms of nation building etc. I am also particularly interested in issues such as cultural diversity and regionalism (the regionalism I mean here is that the regional museums now are more involved in the local government's policy making with regards to regional development. So the representation of regional identity in the museum is more cared than before when the representation of national identity was more focused. It will be interesting to look at the balance between.)

Thanks for your sharing!
Best,
WH

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Scott Guerin on October 17, 2009 at 1:28am

I was the lead designer for the National Museum of Australia which opened in 2001. I'm American but believe my outsiders view point was an advantage. I'm not telling tales of of school by saying the museum was extremely controversial during it's long development. There were frequent calls that the museum potrayed a "black armband" view of the nation's history and was "too apologetic" in tone, not "celebratory enough."

Almost any interpretive project has to deal with both facts and myths and I suspect that "national identity" is found more in the myths. It'd be interesting to see a listing of these, someone must have done this research.

At the NMA, identity is explored using different strategies. Three themes were introduced in the Circa theater: Land, Nation, People. While in another gallery, "Eternities", ten emotional themes such as joy, luck, mystery, separation, etc are used to organize objects. Throughout the museum, identity is explored through sport, food, land use, conflicts, environment, immigrants etc. Each object was selected because it had a personal story associated with it.

One last thought: the building's architecture is of vital symbolism. The NMA building, designed by Melboune's Ashton-Raggat-McDougal, brilliantly expressed the inherent contradictions of Australian society. The theoretical knot, Australia's Tangled Destiny, seemed to me to both hold the country together but also divide it into separate strands. The skin, covered in raised braille dots, suggested to me, a nation feeling their way into the future.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by WH on October 18, 2009 at 10:16pm

Hi Scott,
Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. It's very interesting and inspiring to see a designer's view. Interesting that you suspect that national identity is found more in the myths. I totally agree with you that the building's architecture is of vital symbolism. I actually also have included museums building architectures into my analysis.
Thank you very much and best,
WH

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Scott Guerin on October 20, 2009 at 1:30am

Also quite relevant to this discussion is NAME's Exhibitionist issue and the article "The Unexhibitable"

http://name-aam.org/uploads/downloadables/EXH.fall_08/The%20Unexhibitable.pdf