Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Shoah: intro & concl.
- debate about context,
objects and display
- How context is actively shaped
in museums and memorials to
help express core ideas
- appalling Nazi violence
communicated through
museums, monuments and
counter-monuments
- how spaces are organised with
purpose of generating
particular reactions and
effects
- eg Jewish Museum in
Berlin
- brutal archit. used to
unsettle visitors
- so-called counter-monuments designed for
visceral discomfort rather than conventional
educational or museographic purposes
- emotive issues
- involve questions about
power and authority
- ask who has the right to represent
the past & whose meaning should
be given precedence
- how meanings may be
produced, changed and
challenged when a broader
range of voices, texts and obj.
are brought into the debate
- understanding context by showing
how the mvt, dislocation &
disruption of people, settings and
things can change the meaning and
significance of objects
- how different contexts can coexist
(peacefully or in conflict), as different
interests, beliefs and experiences are
brought together in museums...
- Museums are
archeological
- display fragments
of lost civilisations
- through juxtaposition with
other obj + info = attempt to
reconstruct smthg of human
experience of these cultures
- whole communities of
Jewish people wiped out
HOLOCAUST
- how to represent this loss?
CONVEYING THE HORROR
OF THE SHOAH
- what objects can be
found or created to
represent this loss?
- lge nb of museums in
recent years
- wide range of strategies for
representing this absence, of
people, things and culture
- influenced by context of
time and place where the
displays are located
- sometimes
because
- emotions triggered
by obj. too strong
- or considered best to
allow visitor's imagination
to fill in the gaps
- absence
represented by
other means,
without obj. TO
STIMULATE
EMOTIONS
- Museums: 3 aims - often conflicting
- conservation and
preservation of obj
- curators how prof.
values often based on
aesthetic and
perceived rarity of obj
- under pressure from
visitors to 'tell a
story': creations of
obj & displays
- don't have authentic
value but great at
explaining things
- need to educate
- political aims of
those funding,
oft gov.
- inc. social cohesion,
celebration of
national history
and myths & desire
to increase tourism
- need to attract
public in lg nbs
- context = other
important factor
in way obj. can
be used to
communicate
ideas
- location
- how objects
shown
together
- Shoes on banks of
River Danube
- commemorating
shooting from Jewish
Ghetto
- bronze: created = no
'authenticy'
- but CONTEXT all
important: sited where
atrocity took place
- difficulty of showing absence of human
beings and circumventing code of
conduct about not displaying body
parts
- confiscated shoes
from Majdanek
concent. camp in US
Holocaust memo. in
Washington DC
- shrivelled with
age:
disturbing
'decay'
- CONTEXT gives power as
displayed in lg photo in museum
dedicated to murder of 6M jews
- museums/memor. Shoah
exist within almost
irreconcilable tensions
- be explicit & need for some
contexts to be ambiguous
- wish to forget &
determination not to forget
- contradictory impulses to
mourn, accuse, justify & learn
- terrible ABSENCE
of Jewish p.,
buildings, things
& cultures in
former
German-occupied
territories
- + post-war
anti-Semitic
persecution in
many eastern
bloc countries
- + contemporary
racial prejudice
- = evidence of
need for museum
and memorials
- but
- pedagogic role
not effective
unless emotional
understanding
built first
- = mus. &
mem
biggest
challenge
- doubters + unreasonable
fanatics + sceptical
historians = pressure for
statistical documentation
- perpetuation of maintenance
of ethnic difference
- explanation, emotional engagement,
quiet reflection & statistical
demonstration all have their place
- In German & Eastern Europe,
straightforward pedagogy (explaning &
documenting) not readily accepted
- couner-monuments in Germany testify to
ambiguities of these responses & intellectual
challenge of exhibiting absence
- Hiding, instead of showing can = powerful form of communication
BUT is hiding equivalent to covering over or forgetting