Museums and Narrative
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Edited by:
Kerstin Barndt
The book series Museums and Narrative approaches the museum as a narrative medium from a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. It includes scholarship in literary and cultural studies, museum memory, media, and design studies, as well as historiography and anthropology. Books in the series examine how museums and heritage sites depict time, history, and space, and how they engage in story-telling and story-making of the past, present, and future. The series provides a vibrant scholarly platform for the analysis of theoretical concepts on museum narrative and representation as well as specific case studies on a local, regional, national, transnational, and global scale, from the Middle Ages to the present. It is particularly interested in book projects that inquire into new forms of depicting time, history, and space in the wake of museum efforts regarding decolonization, Indigenization, social justice, and the reshaping of master narratives. Furthermore, the series aims to open a dialogue between museum scholars and museum practitioners to reflect on the theoretical and practical issues in museum narratives in an integrated way.
All volumes in the series are in English. Manuscripts undergo a double peer-review process.
Editors
- Kerstin Barndt, University of Michigan (USA)
- Stephan Jaeger, University of Manitoba (Canada)
Advisory Board
The Museums and Narrative board brings together a global, diverse group of scholars from numerous subject fields concerned with the analysis of museums and heritage institutions. It explicitly includes at least one member who is primarily a research practitioner in/for museums and heritage institutions. One three-year, term-limited board position is further reserved for a junior board member who can help broaden the range of expertise and professional status normally represented on book series' boards.
- Bruno Brulon Soares, University of St Andrews (United Kingdom)
- Jennifer J. Carter, Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada)
- Eric Gable, University of Mary Washington (USA)
- Jenny Kidd, Cardiff University (United Kingdom)
- Stefan Krankenhagen, University of Hildesheim (Germany)
- Erica Lehrer, Concordia University (Canada)
- Cristina Lleras, Institute of the Arts in Bogotá (Colombia)
- Suzanne MacLeod, University of Leicester (United Kingdom)
- Jesmael Mataga, Sol Plaatje University (Zimbabwe)
- Gaye Sculthorpe, Deakin University (Australia)
- Thomas Thiemeyer, University of Tübingen (Germany)
- Murielle Sandra Tiako Djomatchoua, Princeton University (USA)
Author / Editor information
Kerstin Barndt, University of Michigan, USA and Stephan Jaeger, University of Manitoba, Canada.
This bilingual book is the outcome of a research project undertaken between the Santo Domingo Centre of Excellence for Latin American Research at the British Museum and a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous archaeologists and activists from Mexico and Guatemala. The chapters include new interpretations of some written narratives in the Mesoamerican collection at the British Museum, as well as critical reflections on the politics of Indigenous participation in museum projects and collection research. The book includes new scholarly interpretations of the Tonindeye Codex, the Xiuhpohualli of Tenochtitlan and the Yaxchilan lintels and, seeking to read these Mesoamerican narratives in an embodied way, it hopes to foster temporal imagination in the museum. It also discusses Indigenous epistemologies while focusing on the relevance of mobilising this work strategically outside of the museum, among descendant communities. In this way, researchers and visitors might interrogate their political and emotional positions towards colonial collections.
In October 2021, Imperial War Museums (IWM) opened its new Holocaust Galleries in its London branch, replacing its first Holocaust Exhibition (from 2000) that had become a landmark in British Holocaust memory. Because of its comprehensive nature and intricate scenography, the new Holocaust Galleries are at the centre of almost all recent major narrative, political, and ethical debates about Holocaust representation in museums. The book provides an ideal global case-study understanding the possibilities and limitations of re-presenting trauma and violence in museums today and whether Holocaust exhibitions can promote democratic, civic, or human rights values, making it an important resource for museum practitioners, public history educators, and university researchers alike, interested in Historical, Museum, Memory, Holocaust, Genocide, or Cultural Studies. The volume brings together texts written by museum practitioners and academic scholars. It is divided in three parts: a long essay by James Bulgin, Head of Content for the new Holocaust Galleries, about the genesis and implementation of the exhibition, supplemented with briefer essays by educators and community members involved in the development of the exhibition, an extensive interview by Stephan Jaeger with IWM researchers James Bulgin and Suzanne Bardgett, and an extensive part with six critical essays by university scholars analysing the new Holocaust Galleries from numerous theoretical angles.
In response to systemic racism and institutions’ implications in histories of colonialism, nationalism, and exclusion, museum curators have embraced new ways of storytelling to face entangled memories and histories. Critical museum practices have consciously sought to unsettle established forms of representation, break with linear narratives of progress, and experiment with new modes of multivocal, multimedia, and subjective storytelling. The volume features analyses of narratives and narration in museums and heritage institutions today, as well as visions for future museum practices on a local, regional, national, transnational, and global scale. It is divided into three sections: Narrative Theory and Temporality, Ruptures and Repair, and Difficult Memories and Histories. Essays from a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences examine museum practices in history, memorial, anthropological, and art museums across six continents. They develop narratological categories, reflect on immersive and virtual narratives, challenge colonial violence and hegemonic forms of representation, query the performance of heritage, parse exhibition design, and unearth techniques to express narratives of social justice.
