NaMu Making National Museums: Comparing institutional arrangements, narrative scope and cultural integration (NaMu) NaMu IV Comparing: National Museums, Territories, Nation-Building and Change Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden 18–20 February 2008 Conference Proceedings Editors Peter Aronsson and Andreas Nyblom Financed by the European Union Marie Curie Conferences and Training Courses http://cordis.europa.eu/mariecurie-actions/ NaMu. Contract number (MSCF-CT-2006 - 046067) Copyright The publishers will keep this document online on the Internet – or its possible replacement – for a period of 25 years starting from the date of publication barring exceptional circumstances. The online availability of the document implies permanent permission for anyone to read, to download, or to print out single copies for his/her own use and to use it unchanged for non- commercial research and educational purposes. Subsequent transfers of copyright cannot revoke this permission. 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Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings, 30 Linköping University Electronic Press Linköping, Sweden, 2008 http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/030/ ISSN 1650-3740 (online) ISSN 1650-3686 (print) © 2008, The Authors ii Table of Contents Keynotes Comparing National Museums: Methodological Reflections Peter Aronsson .......................................................................................................................5 Comparing Cultures of Citizenship and Changing Concepts of Nation and Community in the EU and USA Kylie Message ........................................................................................................................21 Session 1: Comparing Narratives Private and Public Memories of Expo 67: A Case Study of Recollections of Montreal’s World Fair, 40 Years After the Event Viviane Gosselin and David Andersson.................................................................................41 On Maps, Abused Virgins and Nations: Anti Communist Memorial Museums in Hungary and Romania Gabriela Nicolescu Cristea....................................................................................................59 Propaganda in the Museum: Past and Present Representations of Communism in Eastern Europe Radostina Sharenkova............................................................................................................71 Past and Present – Multimodal Constructions of Identity in Two Exhibitions Eva Insulander and Fredrik Lindstrand.................................................................................83 Steps Toward An Analysis of “Sápmi: Becoming A Nation” Exhibition at Tromsø University Museum Rossella Ragazzi.....................................................................................................................99 Session 2: Comparing National Transfers Conflicting Visualities on Display: National Museums from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic Pelin Gürol.............................................................................................................................121 Session 3: Defining the National Archaeology and Museums in the Nation Building Process in Greece Anastasia Sakellariadi............................................................................................................129 Representing “Greek” Prehistory: Some Remarks Alexandra Tranta-Nikoli ........................................................................................................143 National Museums of Architecture: The Creation and Re-Creation of a New Model of National Museum in the 19th Century, London and Paris Isabelle Flour .........................................................................................................................151 Session 4: Comparing Objects and Contexts Reading the Official and the Unofficial: On the Practice of a Historical Investigation of the “Folk-Memory” at the Scandinavian folk Museums and Open-Air Museums during the Late 19th Century Mattias Bäckström..................................................................................................................167 iii Museum Narration and the Collection Machine: Or How Collections Make Collectors Fredrik Svanberg....................................................................................................................175 Session 5: Comparing Institutional Formation The Hidden Narrative of Manor Houses and Their Cultural History in Norwegian Museums Aina Aske................................................................................................................................183 Session 6: Comparing Disciplinary Traditions The Cabinet of Naturalia of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences at the End of the 18th Century Inga Elmqvist Söderlund ........................................................................................................197 Appropriations of Antiquity – A Diachronic Comparison of Museums and Scholarship Johannes Siapkas and Lena Sjögren......................................................................................205 Session 7: Comparing for Development Comparing Strategic Approaches between National and Private Museums in Athens Eleni Mavragani.....................................................................................................................225 A Tale of Two Nations: A Comparative Study into the Evolution of National Museums in the UK and Taiwan Shin-chieh Tzeng ....................................................................................................................233 The Processes of Contemporary Museum Constructions: Designing Public Space and Engaging Audiences Margaret Tali and Laura Pierantoni .....................................................................................243 Session 8: Comparing the Other Thinking through the ‘Other’: Comparing Representations of Cultural Alterity at the British Museum and the Shanghai Museum Marzia Varutti........................................................................................................................263 National Museums and the Legacies of Exclusion. Issues and Challenges Around Change in the 21st Century Cristina Lleras........................................................................................................................279 Institutionalizing Photography: Cultural Pluralism and National Institutions Iro Katsaridou........................................................................................................................301 Staging the Sámi – Narrative and Display at the Nordiska Museet in Stockholm Eva Silvén...............................................................................................................................311 iv NaMu IV Comparing National Museums: Methodological Reflections Peter Aronsson, professor Tema Q (Culture Studies), Linköping University [email protected] The article sets out to define the need for comparing national museums as complex cultural processes. To do this questions are developed that concern the workings of institutions as arenas for cultural policy and identity politics in relation to central fields of knowledge. Methodological considerations for designing a comparative project are presented, and finally four fields of comparative endeavours related to different sets of state-making processes are presented: An all-encompassing European comparison (including colonial endeavours) on the path taken by various nations to establish the place of national museums and the role they play in the creation of community. An in-depth study of how the national display in a selection of countries creates visions of cultural community. How do they deal with differences and belongings on a super-national level and how do they relate to regional differences? From a citizens’ perspective the intentions of cultural policy or institutional ambitions might be of little importance. This part will simulate visitor experience of national narratives in a comparative selection of capitals from project one, in order to develop an understanding of how citizen experience relates to the more structural findings in the other sub-projects and hence map in what directions citizenship and community are moving through contemporary displays of national community. The place of national museums in changing knowledge regimes. 5 National Cultural Heritage Rather surprisingly, reflections on public historical culture have not been de-nationalized by comparative approaches to the same extent as research on nationalism. Partly this is due to the fact that Cultural Heritage, as a field, is one of the complex responses to contemporary challenges producing more or less open constructions of collective identity with a new frenzy from the 1990s onwards. Furthermore, the competence for analysing public history culture is multidisciplinary, yet fragmented. Therefore, the need for and benefit of trans-national, trans- disciplinary action to