Published: 2008-07-16
ISBN:
ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)
This article is about modes of exhibition in museums of cultural history in western Europe from the second half of the 20th century to today. I begin by considering some of the challenges national museums are facing today and then go briefly back in time to the evolutionary mode and what I call the didactic descriptive museology with its galleries of objects-witnesses and trophies that was prevalent until the end of the 1970s. Next; I discuss the polyphonic narrative turn and the museology of intersecting gazes that developed during the 1980s and which is still applied in European museums today. Thereafter; I probe the aesthetic mode which is a favourite strategy of display when treating themes pertaining to cultural diversity and otherness since the 1990s. To conclude; I present some thoughts about what I describe as the nomadic turn and the aesthetics of transience that have become the trend since the turn of our millennium. Before going on I want to emphasize that these different museological approaches do not follow a strict chronology. Their paths are often juxtaposed and overlapping.
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List of Illustrations
Photo 1: Palestinian dresses. Exhibition held at Museum of Cultural History of the University of Oslo. Copyright: Museum of Cultural History; University of Oslo.
Photo 2: Showcase with African headdresses (1999). Copyright: Museum of Cultural History; University of Oslo.
Photo 3: “La Mémoire du Congo.”; Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale; Tervuren (2005). Photograph: the autor.
Photo 4: Repères. Permanent exhibition; Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration; Paris (2007). Photograph: the author.
Photo 5: Climbing Down. Installation by Barthélémy Toguo. Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration; Paris (2007). Photograph: the author.
