1 a New Type of Museum? 6 Empathy and Its Limits in the Museum
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Notes 1 A New Type of Museum? 1. Ninety per cent of the world’s museums were established after 1945, ‘more than three-quarters of English museums were established after 1970, and the majority of new museums opened since 1960 have been independents’ (Fyfe 2011: 39). 2. ‘A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of soci- ety and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment’ (Statues of the International Council of Museums 2007. Cf. Desvallées/Mairesse 2010: 57). 6 Empathy and Its Limits in the Museum 1. The explanatory text in the museum provides the following background infromation: Identity papers, bracelets, tags, rings. In the armies of the First World War everyone received a new, additional identity number you always carried with you. There were various forms of identification; official, commis- sioned or home-made. Without a number a solider could find himself in trouble – in life he would be punished, dead he was anonymous, in remem- brance one of the missing. The bracelet you have received gives you that kind of extra identity during your visit to the Museum. 2. In the case of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, visitors are asked to choose an identification card from two boxes labelled ‘male’ and ‘female’: the curators obviously felt that visitors would be able to practise flexible identifications in terms of religion, nationality, age or ethnicity, but perceived sex to be an unbridgeable barrier (Reading 2002). 3. The exhibition was devised by an independent academic advisory council of 12 scholars, with no involvement from the army other than its financing. The museum does not, for example, hold back on the involvement of the German Wehrmacht in war crimes and genocide (Pieken and Rogg 2011: 35 and 45). 4. Whereas IWM North’s Annual Report 2009–2010 claims that one of the aims of the museum is to offer visitors ‘materials to see different perspectives, embrace uncertainties, to debate difficult issues, to ask new questions’, one year later this idea of defamiliarizing visitors from their initial assumptions is conspicuously absent in the Annual Report. 5. RFID (Radio Frequency Identity) technology is not just used for iCards. Visi- tors can dress up in historical emigrant clothing and have their picture taken 205 206 Notes at a photo station, then have it printed on their way out (Bremerhaven 2013b). 7 Nostalgia and Post-Nostalgia in Heritage Sites 1. Christ Church Oxford has still not adjusted its tower clock to GMT. 2. Against the charge that heritage is no more than reactionary nostalgia cf. Dicks (2004); Samuel (1994); Urry (1990); Huyssen (1995). 3. It is funded by a public–private partnership: Northern Ireland Tourist Board, Belfast City Council, Belfast Harbour Commissioners and Titanic Quarter Ltd., an independent charitable trust ‘whose primary objective is to educate people about Belfast’s maritime and industrial heritage’ (Doherty 2012: 5). 8 Sites of Trauma 1. Every evening at 8pm the Last Post ceremony is conducted at Menin Gate. 9 Icons of Trauma 1. There are some exceptions: one is the Belgian refugee Richard Wybouw, whose walking stick with the names of his family members and the places of their exile motivated the curators to trace his family and base the video on family recollections and some letters; another is Fritz Haber, whose monologue is based on biographies. I am indebted to the curator Dominiek Dendooven for this information. 10 The Politics of Empathy 1. The exhibition in the Merseyside Maritime Museum had mentioned the slave trade only in the context of general trading. In 1991, the museum was approached by the Peter Moores’ Foundation who proposed to part fund a permanent exhibition on the slave trade. In 1994 the Transatlantic Slavery Gallery (TSG) was opened. In December 1999 Liverpool City Council offered a formal apology for the city’s involvement in the slave trade which spoke of ‘shame and remorse’ and about ‘the continual effects of it on the community’ (Milne-Skinner 2010: 194). 2. The mission statement of the National Museums Liverpool contains the fol- lowing assertion: ‘We believe in the power of museums to promote good and active citizenship and to act as agents for social change’ (Liverpool 2013a). The International Slavery Museum takes its educational role very seriously and employs education officers who work with schools, colleges and universities. They do not only want to pass on historical knowledge on the transatlantic slave trade, but they want to create awareness of its contemporary legacies, racism and slave labour and want to promote human rights (Liverpool 2013a). Notes 207 3. The museum’s website lists a range of oral history projects (Holocaust 2013b), among others, USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Educa- tion, established by film director Steven Spielberg to document the accounts of survivors and eyewitnesses of the Holocaust. 4. According to Helen Coxhall, there are contexts outside white European main- stream discourse in which the term ‘holocaust’ is commonly used for the transatlantic slave trade (1997: 111). Toni Morrison dedicated her novel Beloved (1988) to the ‘sixty million and more’ who died through the slave trade, a dedication which clearly evokes the seven million Jews killed in the Holocaust. 11 Testimonial Video Installation 1. Daily life. The three stories in this section tell the story of the daily life of enslaved Africans on plantations in North America. The narrator is an enslaved African woman. The stories are from sunrise to sunset. ‘The Outdooring’, is based on the oral tradition of Jamaica and is a form of naming ceremony. It is an example of cultural retention, a fusion and con- tinuation of West African, Ghanaian custom and shows how culture and tradition were continued by enslaved Africans. ‘Separation of Families’ is based on the autobiography of Mary Prince, a former slave. It tells the story of the separation of an enslaved family and reveals that enslaved mothers had no right to their children who were born into slavery. ‘The Runaway’ is based on the narrative of Solomon Northup, a free Black of New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery for twelve years. The story demonstrates the determination of enslaved Africans to escape despite the threat of punishment. The stories were filmed on location on the Caribbean island of St Kitts. I would like to thank the curators at the International Slavery Museum for their helpful assistance and for providing me with this information. 2. This is a format which is also more and more used in historical documentaries and docudramas such as ‘Inside the Titanic’ (Channel 5, 22 March 2012), which simulates survivors’ testimonies: actors who play these characters in the dramatization of various scenes on the ship and during its sinking are shown to be giving testimony in the inquiries which were conducted after the catastrophe. The reenacted scenes are presented as if they were filmic representations of their accounts and memories. 3. The three stories are told in the morning, noon and evening and the changing quality of the light is meant to indicate the different times of day. 12 Middle Passage Installation 1. While stories of psychological and emotional cruelty focus on women and children, the experiences of extreme physical violence and suffering seem to be confined to men. 2. ‘The characteristic property of most mirror neurons is the congruence between their visual and motor properties. A neuron discharging during 208 Notes the execution of grasping also fires during observation of grasping done by another individual’ (Iacoboni 2005). 3. As Landsberg does in her distinction between ‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’: ‘Whereas sympathy presupposes an initial likeness between subjects, empathy starts from the position of difference. [...] Empathy [...] is not an emotional self-pitying identification with victims but a way of both feeling for and feeling different from the subject of inquiry’ (Landsberg 2004: 135). 13 The Big Picture in IWM (North) 1. These responses are at least partly drawn from the IWM’s artists in residence. In 1999 they had, with Mario Petrucci, their first poet in residence. 2. In ‘Children and War’ the main focus is on the Second World War and North- ern Ireland, the majority of voices are British, the only exceptions are a German woman, who explains that she only escaped indoctrination because of the political views of her mother, and child refugees who talk about their gratitude towards Britain for providing them with a new home and personal freedom. 3. Big Picture Show: Al-Mutanabbi Street: A Reaction, Q&A FOR IWM NORTH STAFF. The short film is directed by Jim Dawson, written and narrated by Chris Thorpe, produced by Soupcollective, Graham English and Co and Joanne Barker-Marsh, photography and visual FX by Jim Dawson and Alex Hindle, sound design by Jamie Finlay. 15 (Post-)Nostalgia for the Museum? The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford 1. The guide book also shows the image of a little bottle with the handwritten label: Silvered & stoppered bottle said to contain a witch. Obtained about 1915 from an old lady living in a village near Hove, Sussex. She remarked ‘and they do say there be a witch in it, and if you let un out there’ll be a peck o’ trouble’. Pres. by Miss M.A. Murray, 1926. This item could easily have featured in a cabinet of curiosities, but while its owner would have invested in its magic potential, its significance for the Pitt Rivers lies in the fact that it speaks of the superstitious beliefs of English country folks.