scholarly journals Museum Collections as a Reflection of Cultural Landscape: the Interpretation of Collective Memory

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oskar Habjanič ◽  
Verena Perko

The article deals with the relationship between the local community, museum collections, collective memory and the cultural landscape. The ICOM Code of Museum Ethics defines a museum collection as a cultural and natural heritage of the communities from which they have been derived. The collections, especially in regional museums, are inextricably linked to the community. The cultural landscape can be read also as a bridge between the society and natural environment. The cultural landscape is vitally connected with a national, regional, local, ethnic, religious or political identity. Furthermore, the cultural landscape is a reflection of the community's activities. Therefore, private collections are the foundation of the collective memory and empower museums for important social tasks. They offer an opportunity for multilayered interpretation of the past and give a possibility for museums to work on the inclusion of vulnerable groups. The collections could be a mediator and unique tool for recovering of the “broken” memory. In this way certain tragic past events, ignored or only bigotedly mentioned by history, can be re-evaluated.

TURBA ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-70

The relationship between performance and curation has shift ed. A new attitude of fluid and pragmatic alliance has evolved as the sense of an essential antagonism between performance and curation recedes and the two fields discover a shared focus on aspects of social engagement and agency. This article considers an Australian socially engaged art project, the Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation (KSCA), which meshes curatorial and artistic practices in its efforts to reimagine and reanimate the future of a small country town. Employing a wide range of strategies, KSCA works closely with the local community to facilitate collective memory, reflection and social and environmental transformation. Deliberately avoiding traditional lines of artistic and institutional tension, KSCA employs an impure and inclusive approach that is emblematic of emerging forms of activist contemporary art.


Sociology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Simko

Collective memory encompasses both the shared frameworks that shape and filter ostensibly “individual” or “personal” memories and representations of the past sui generis, including official texts, commemorative ceremonies, and physical symbols such as monuments and memorials. Sociological work on collective memory traces its origins to Émile Durkheim and his student, Maurice Halbwachs. In the United States, the contemporary sociology of memory coalesced in the 1980s and 1990s, after Barry Schwartz brought renewed attention to Durkheim’s focus on commemoration as well as Halbwachs’s interest in how the past is reconstructed in the present, in the service of present needs, interests, and desires. Though this line of research initially emphasized heroic pasts—particularly national commemorations that bolstered state legitimacy with reference to triumphant episodes—scholars quickly began to address the ways that collectivities grapple with “difficult pasts,” or episodes that evoke shame, regret, and/or dissensus, and that threaten to “spoil” national identity. What is the relationship between memory and forgetting, and related concepts such as silence and denial? Can the increasingly pervasive language of “trauma” help us understand the current preoccupation with difficult pasts in both scholarly literature and public culture? More recently, scholars have critiqued the field’s overwhelming focus on national memory from two angles. First, studies of micro-level memories have revived Halbwachs’s initial interest in the social frameworks that structure (seemingly) individual memories. Second, globalization facilitates connectedness and identification beyond and/or outside of national frames of reference, and thus scholars have pointed to the emergence of “cosmopolitan” memories that create community and solidarity beyond and outside formal political borders.


Heritage ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 511-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kasey Diserens Morgan ◽  
Richard M. Leventhal

This paper examines the relationship between the past, present, and future of Maya heritage and archaeology. We trace some of the background of Maya archaeology and Maya heritage studies in order to understand the state of the field today. We examine and demonstrate how an integrated and collaborative community heritage project, based in Tihosuco, Quintana Roo, Mexico, has developed and changed over time in reaction to perceptions about heritage and identity within the local community. We also describe the many sub-programs of the Tihosuco Heritage and Community Development Project, showcasing our methods and outcomes, with the aim of presenting this as a model to be used by other anthropologists interested in collaborative heritage practice.


2000 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-106
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Crowell

Researching museum collections and associated field data, in addition to consulting modern scientific studies, can provide a great deal of information about the presence and nature of archaeological sites in a locale. This article was developed based upon collections research conducted for prehistoric archaeological sites in Washington, D.C., using the collections of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and other repositories. The state of collections varies widely. Some collectors gathered only perfect completed tools and other objects, while others collected these materials and debitage. The state of documentation ranges from complete and exacting with precision rivaling modern-day to non-existent. The importance of examining museum collections and private collections, where available, cannot be downplayed. Sometimes they possess the only clues remaining regarding certain practices which occurred in the past and can provide information not otherwise available to the researcher.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis LF Lee ◽  
Joseph Man Chan ◽  
Dennis KK Leung

Collective memory studies have emphasized how people can utilize important historical events as analogies to make sense of current happenings. This article argues that the invocation of historical analogies may, under certain circumstances, become an occasion for people to negotiate and contest the significance of the historical events. Focusing on Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in 2014, this article analyzes how references to the 1989 Tiananmen Incident emerged in the news as a dominant historical analogy when the movement began, foregrounding the possibility of state violence. But when state violence did not materialize, the authorities, young protesters, and radical activists started to contest the relevance of Tiananmen. The analogy was largely abandoned by the movement’s end. The analysis illustrates the recursive character of the relationship between past and present events: after the past is invoked to aid interpretations of the present, present developments may urge people to reevaluate the past.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Aneta Ostaszewska

30 years have passed since the events of 1989 that led to the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. In the paper the themes of social memory of political transformation in Poland in 1989 are discussed. The content of online statements collected from popular Polish news portals are analysed. When asking the question what events and experiences do Poles bring back when they think of 1989, I am interested in the relationship between the individual (biographical) memory and collective memory – the socially reconstructed knowledge of the past.


Author(s):  
Tanja Bosch

The relationship between the practice and field of journalism and the interdisciplinary field of memory studies is complex and multifaceted. There is a strong link between collective memory production and journalistic practice, based on the proposition that journalists produce first drafts of history by using the past in their reportage. Moreover, the practice of journalism is a key agent of memory work because it serves as one of society’s main mechanisms for recording and remembering, and in doing so helps shape collective memory. Journalism can be seen as a memory text, with journalists constructing news within cultural-interpretive frames according to the cultural environment. Journalism also plays a key role in the production of visual memory and new media, including social media. Journalism is thus a key agent of memory work, providing a space for commentary on institutional and cultural sites of memory construction.


2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Light ◽  
Craig Young

This paper explores the relationship between the urban cultural landscape of Bucharest and the making of post-socialist Romanian national identity. As the capital of socialist Romania, central Bucharest was extensively remodelled by Nicolae Ceauşescu into the Centru Civic in order to materialize Romania's socialist identity. After the Romanian “Revolution” of 1989, the national and local state had to deal with a significant “leftover” socialist urban landscape which was highly discordant with the orientation of post-socialist Romania and its search for a new identity. Ceauşescu's vast socialist showpiece left a difficult legacy which challenges the material and representational reshaping of Bucharest and constructions of post-socialist Romanian national identity more broadly. The paper analyzes four attempts to deal with the Centru Civic: developments in the immediate post-1989 period; the international architectural competition Bucureşti 2000; proposals for building a Cathedral of National Salvation; and the Esplanada project. Despite over 20 years of proposals central Bucharest remains largely unchanged. The paper thus deals with a failed attempt to re-shape the built environment in support of national goals.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Kuhn ◽  
Daniel Biltereyst ◽  
Philippe Meers

Over the past two decades, the relationship between cinema and memory has been the object of increasing academic attention, with growing interest in film and cinema as repositories for representing, shaping, (re)creating or indexing forms of individual and collective memory. This Special Issue on memory and the experience of cinemagoing centres on the perspective of cinema users and audiences, focusing on memories of films, cinema and cinemagoing from three continents and over five decades of the twentieth century. This introduction considers the relationship between memory studies and film studies, sets out an overview of the origins of, and recent and current shifts and trends within, research and scholarship at the interface between historical film audiences, the cinemagoing experience and memory; and presents the articles and reviews which follow within this frame. It considers some of the methodological issues raised by research in these areas and concludes by looking at some of the challenges facing future work in the field.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-101
Author(s):  
Rūta Šermukšnytė

The goal of this paper is to reveal how and why the circulation of the same historical images takes place; whose values and, simultaneously, memory are conveyed through these images; what is the relationship between the audiovisual representation of the past and collective memory? The article states that manifestations of the visual stereotypes of Lithuania history in post-communist transformation period (1988–2004) are mainly based on certain cinematic tendencies. Historical films that are considered to be an adaptation of the national narrative cinematography have been predominant since 1988. This kind of narration is characterized by validation of history as a national value, formation of national identity and its stabilization rather than diversification and correction of the collective memory or the development of critical thinking. The current documentary material that is based on the understanding of history as a myth of the nation’s history is not aimed at creating a new visual and verbal narration about the realities of the past, but rather at recognizing what has been said and made in the previous works.


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