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Remembering and Disremembering: A Museum Perspective
Author(s) -
Hennes Tom
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
curator: the museum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.312
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 2151-6952
pISSN - 0011-3069
DOI - 10.1111/j.2151-6952.2012.00135.x
Subject(s) - exhibition , narrative , perspective (graphical) , variety (cybernetics) , interpretation (philosophy) , meaning (existential) , politics , museology , sociology , aesthetics , visual arts , history , media studies , epistemology , art , political science , computer science , literature , law , philosophy , programming language , artificial intelligence
Ken Waliaula’s essay in this issue, Remembering and Disremembering in Africa, acutely observes the interaction of individual memory with what has been remembered and “disremembered” (willfully erased) by local communities and larger national political structures in Kenya. His reflections on the way society deals with memory offer valuable insight into museum‐making. Exhibitions can accommodate the fuller range of complexity, meaning, and interpretation that is reflective of real history as experienced from the range of perspectives Waliaula describes. To create such exhibitions, museum professionals need to adopt methods of collection and curation that differ from the common practice of “telling the story” in favor of incorporating greater narrative variety that embodies the complex contradictions of events that become history. By doing so, museums may better equip their users to share interpretive authority and experience a greater sense of authenticity within the exhibition.