New Museology

Looking beyond Poland's internationally lauded new Jewish museums, this article asks how Jews are represented in longer-standing folk and ethnographic mu seums whose mandates have been to represent the historical culture of the Polish nation. How have such museums navigated growing internal pressures to incorporate Jews and reconsider the boundaries of "Polishness" alongside external pressures to rethink the function and approach of ethnographic museology? Based on three museums that have taken three different approaches to Jewishness-what we call cabinet of Jewish curiosities, two solitudes, and ambivalent externalization-we assess the roles played by inherited discourses and structures as well as human agents within and beyond the museum. We illuminate how social debate about the character of the nation (and Jews' place in it) plays out in museums at a moment in their transition from nineteenth-to twenty-first-century paradigms and how a distinctively Polish path toward a "new mu-seology" is emerging in conversation with and resistance to its Western counterparts. n KEYWORDS: critical curating, ethnographic exhibitions, heritage, Jews, multiculturalism, Poland Postsocialist Poland has seen a boom in new museum activity-including the opening of new institutions and the renovation and expansion of existing ones-in a trend particularly visible since the accession of the country to the European Union (EU) in 2004 (Jagodzińska 2019). 1 This moment of growth in the Polish museum sector is taking place at a time when new museological paradigms are developing internationally. A pluralistic trend emanating from the West emphasizes the "European" values of supranational integration and minority inclusion, as well as deeply critical postcolonial rethinkings of museums' fundamental raison d'être. In Poland we see the confrontation of two political tendencies that map onto two divergent conceptions of national heritage: one that celebrates Polish ethno-nationalism and attempts to reclaim heroic Polish history , and another favouring discourses of pluralism and multiculturalism (and addressing darker historical chapters); both formulations were in different ways and at different times marginalized and appropriated by the postwar communist state.

This essay was originally published in 2002 in Hungarian about the House of Terror in Budapest, which was established by the (first) right-wing government of Viktor Orbán (1998–2002). The set objective of the House of Terror was to portray the state terror of both the fascist (1944–1945) and the communist regime in Hungary (1945–1956/1957–1989).[1] The site of the House of Terror in Budapest, at Andrássy Avenue 60, is a building that was used by the Hungarian Nazi Party, where they kept and tortured their detainees. Then the building was used by the Communist Party’s secret police between 1945 and 1956 to detain, torture, and kill the enemies of the regime.

Este texto es parte de un proyecto más amplio de investigación sobre memoria, museos y patrimonio comunitario en México. A partir de la invitación de las coordinadoras de este libro me propuse
pensar en cuáles eran las relaciones entre museo comunitario y escuela
pública, entre el uso de imágenes, figuraciones, recursos visuales y estereotipos. El esfuerzo de construir museos comunitarios a lo largo de todo México,  que de algún modo “reconozcan” y exhiban aquello que el Estado “falló en dar voz” en sus discursos hegemónicos, origina mis preguntas para este texto: ¿quién habla, por cuáles comunidades y para qué? ¿Qué imágenes —en el sentido amplio de amalgama visual con sentido— de pueblo, tradición, cultura y comunidad aparecen ligadas a museo y escuela y qué nociones de historia, memoria y patrimonio se ponen en tensión en ellas?

This is a presentation done at Sandnessjoen, 18 April 2018 at the occasion of the Norwegian Museums Association meeting. Neither the theme nor the title are entirely mine. As ever I readily allow my hosts to propose both because, when being invited and even remunerated, it only make sense to respond to their needs not the own.
I declared this slide presentation as "published" work because it has been published by the Norwegian hosts on Internet. As it is always the case the Pdf versions offer neither original comments nor the animations. 
Some other public lectures are available at:
www.mnemosophy.com

When, spontaneously, my Chinese relations bore the idea of contributing an article, I was aware that I could be of be of little use if referring strictly to Chinese situation which I know only superficially. So I decided to give an independent view and offer a list of general advice.  As an experienced professional in the field of heritage I am painfully aware of the illusions we suffer by knowing little about the world around us and by being immersed in our specialist area of expertise. Therefore, I risk certain irrelevance with such readers, by offering a contextual view and a broad-brush picture. My opinion of Chinese museums is high but I still know only the general situation. So, I cannot propose a list of advices. Handbooks offer seemingly easy solutions as they often reduce the problems upon managerial knowledge and handling new technologies of communication.
The article was published in a museum magazine in China, but having been given it in Chinese for authorization I take it for granted that my worlds and ideas were there.
It would make sense for a reader to have a look at: www.mnemosophy.com The texts of the slides there will be published in a book, but the site offers more. As ever, my weakest side is form and the globish (English), but I have equal resentment for perfect formal qualities of scientific texts containing useless or hardly understandable ideas.

Partiendo del conocimiento de la existencia de dificultades que presentan actualmente los museos históricos municipales en poder generar un acercamiento de públicos se presenta a continuación las memorias sobre la gestión que he podido llevar a cabo bajo el cargo directivo en un museo, con el objetivo de mostrar que mediante la educación patrimonial se pueden vislumbrar alternativas para lograr revertir la tendencia antes mencionada.
El caso abordado será el de Coronel Suárez, Museo Histórico Municipal y Centro de Investigaciones Histórica. Es una institución pública, dependencia de la Dirección de Cultura y Educación del Municipio de Coronel Suárez, perteneciente a la Provincia de Buenos Aires, República Argentina.

La revista ANTI reúne trabajos relacionados con las sociedades andinas peruanas precolombinas y estudios particularizados sobre la cultura y el patrimonio cultural en el marco de las disyuntivas educativas de nuestro tiempo

Fuertemente vinculada a la consolidación de los Estados nacionales modernos y al colonialismo, la configuración del museo fue central para la clasificación de identidades y "culturas nacionales" homogéneas, así como para la exclusión de "otros" (externos e internos). En contraposición, y en consonancia con los nuevos contextos multiculturalistas, de reivindicaciones y demandas en términos de etnicidad y luchas de distintas minorías sociales por sus derechos, se espera que los museos actuales puedan dar lugar a una diversidad de identidades silenciadas y/o representadas históricamente desde cánones hegemónicos. Este artículo propone un recorrido sobre la bibliografía crítica de los museos de las últimas décadas, distinguiendo aportes desde la Antropología que dan cuenta de la transformación de estas instituciones en arenas altamente politizadas, donde grupos subalternizados cuestionan las relaciones de poder históricas y dirimen su inclusión y auto-representación. El trabajo finaliza enfocando las representaciones afrodescendientes en Argentina como un terreno particularmente relevante para reflexionar sobre la supuesta transparencia de las relaciones entre cultura, identidad y museos.

Anthropology of museums and representations of African descent: theoretical perspectives, debates and proposals.

Central to the classification of homogenous national identities and cultures and the exclusion of "others" (external and internal), the museum was strongly linked to the consolidation of modern national states and colonialism. In contrast, and in line with new multiculturalist contexts, demands in terms of ethnicity and struggles of different social minorities for their rights, it is expected that current museums may give rise to a diversity of identities silenced and / or historically represented from hegemonic canons. This article proposes a journey through the critical bibliography of the museums of the last decades, distinguishing some contributions of the Anthropology that give account of the transformation of these institutions in highly politicized arenas, where subalternized groups question the power relations and decide their inclusion and self-representation. Finally, it focuses on Afro-descendant representations in Argentina as a particularly relevant ground for reflecting on and discussing the supposed transparency of the relationships between "culture", "identity" and museum.

There is a long tradition to see museums and similar cultural displays as sites of knowing and selfeducation; and also as tools of political and ideological tuition, indoctrination indeed. The critical approach of new museology in the late 20th century launched a systematic revision of the social and epistemological role museums play in contemporary culture. New museology highly increased, or at least required, the self-reflexivity
of cultural displays, however, an increase in reflexivity does not involve, in a self-evident way, an increase of intensified experience, which became crucial to our contemporary life, especially in the perspective of
somaesthetics. Thus, more recent museological and curatorial approaches, oriented according to the corporeal turn in philosophy and social sciences,
emphasize the effects and consequences of the sensorial range in use within cultural displays. The historically developed and therefore questionable social consctructions, political status quos and epistemological presuppositions underlying museum displays are encoded
already at the level of the sensorial modalities. Hence, a new critique of the cultural displays and representations will consider the sensorial spectrum available and targeted.
The museum was once considered a church, later a school, then a stage. Today, in accordance with somaesthetics, cultural displays can be conceived as physical sites of intersubjectivity and models of human
environment relationship, in other words: social and ecological agoras. Mentalistic and educational tactics (like identity politics, national heritage issues, intercultural relations, etc.) are not passé at all, but the somatic dimensions of human existence need to be revealed through tactile tactics in the most important cultural institutions.

With chapters sharing themes, questions and resources on topics including the Middle Eastern origin of museums, disability and access as a creative tool, celebrating queer lives and contributions in museums, Indigenous science, decolonization, and more, the book suggests an array of ways to use museums to teach for social justice.

This article summarises a study about Sami related research and collecting at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, with focus on curator Ernst Manker and the period between 1930 and 1970, however, in a slightly broader time context. Manker was a productive and influential actor in the sociomaterial network that comprised a broad range of people and phenomena connected to Sami issues. His legacy (objects, photographs, exhibitions, scientific research, popular travelogues) is analysed both in its historical context and as a complex contemporary heritage, starting from questions about its possible essentialising or emancipating effects. Although based on an asymmetric power relationship between the Sami and the museum, the research and collections are characterised as culturally intertwined constructions. A postcolonial perspective is used to discuss ways of strengthening the Sami dimension of such heritage: physical transfers (repatriation) and promoting Sami knowledge and meaning related to the collections.

How have actors discussed theory of science and research activities in museology and heritology as well as in museum studies and heritage studies from the 1850s to the 2010s? From the viewpoint of this international context, how is it possible to understand and describe Nordic museology and to contextualise the newly launched Network for Critical Heritage and Museum Studies at the Mid Sweden University? Based on these broad questions, I will give an overview of the international scholarly field with its diversity of research activities and many perspectives in the theory of science. The keynote themes are: 1) Conceptual definitions and distinctions from the 1880s to the 2010s; 2) The history of museums and science, i.e. the main historical periods of museums and museology from the 1850s to the 2010s; 3) Traditions in the theory of science of museology and heritology, and of museum studies and heritage studies in an international context.

El giro educativo del arte como herramienta para la transformación social en los nuevos museos del siglo XXI Resumen. Durante la última década, asistimos a una serie de situaciones que posicionan a lo educativo como un asunto central que atañe directamente al mundo del arte, lo cual podemos constatar al revisar estrategias de comisariado de algunas exposiciones, propuestas de actividades en talleres o foros de debate. Este testigo es recogido por el nuevo modelo de museo que propone el hipermediatizado siglo XXI, abierto a la atención de las demandas del público, así como al compromiso con la comunidad y a la interacción social. Estas nuevas aplicaciones hacen al público partícipe de una actual experiencia transversal del arte que deja atrás la vieja concepción del museo como contenedor de una colección. El museo actual, en cambio, es pensado para ser dinámico.

How can galleries, libraries, archives and museums conduct research with the help of exhibitions? How can different kinds of knowledge processes be linked together in and by means of these exhibition productions? Based on my scholarly monograph, I will discuss these issues in depth at the opening workshop of the project ‘MIUN Research Exhibition’ at the Mid Sweden University in Östersund. In my monograph, I examine the exhibition as idea and process from historical, theoretical and practical perspectives. I will highlight these perspectives in the workshop by presenting a sketch of a new kind of research activity that takes place in exhibition productions: exhibition-specific research. Hence, I will discuss how knowledge processes may be put into practice in and by means of exhibition productions. For further information, please see the English summary of the scholarly monograph in the present website, Academia: ‘To build content with exhibitions. Exhibition production as a research process’ (Nordic Academic Press, print book in 2016, e-book in 2017; MTM Swedish Agency for Accessible Media, audio book in 2018).