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| You are here: 2000 / Workshops, Panels and Seminars / Workshops on Remembrance and Representation / Workshop 2 on Remembrance, "The Role of Museums: Achieving a Balance between Documentation and Remembrance" / Presentation by Dr. Brewster Chamberlin | |||||||||
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Participants Countries and organizations Conference documentation Conference programme 
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Report from Workshop 2 on Remembrance: "the Role of Museums: Achieving a Balance Between Documentation and Remembrance" Presentation by Mrs. Yehudit Inbar Presentation by Dr. Brewster Chamberlin Presentation by Professor Bill Williams Presentation by Dr. Brewster Chamberlin Chamberlin, Brewster Presentation by Dr. Brewster Chamberlin In an age of ever more restrictive budgets and increasing difficulties in raising funds for cultural institutions such as museums and research institutes, questions have naturally arisen as to the role and nature of such institutions in the ongoing discussion of priorities to be supported or not supported. In the specific case at hand, the question is whether it is possible for these institutions to serve both as a public museum devoted to remembering the victims of the Holocaust through museological techniques and tools (such as exhibitions, lectures, the structure and use of the physical plant itself, etc.) and public ceremonial events (such as the annual Yom Ha-Shoah ceremony), on the one hand, and simultaneously to function as a center for scholarship on the Holocaust and its historical context, on the other hand. While exhibitions of any quality are based on thorough scholarly research and analysis, these two functions, remembrance and scholarship, are not necessarily viewed by museum leaders and the public as being of equal value to the institutions and the wider public world. This difference in evaluation can be particularly painful in times of financial hardship when priorities need to be determined and not everything of importance can be funded. Holocaust-related museums in geographical areas outside Europe and Israel, such as those in the United States, face an additional problem in that what is to be remembered and why it is to be remembered must be explained to the museums’ publics in some detail because the events in Europe during the first half of the 20th century are terra incognita to most of the museums’ visitors. Can there be any profound and true remembrance without scholarship and the collection of relevant documentation to support the memorialization? While in terms of numbers, the vast majority of museum visitors see only the physical result of documentation, research, and scholarship, namely the exhibitions and explanatory brochures, there can be no meaningful remembrance, in the museum context as opposed to other methods of memorializing, without documentation and scholarship. Once the questions of ownership of the past have been decided, that is those questions of what or who is to be memorialized and what equipoise should exist between victim and perpetrator, geographic arenas, content emphasis, and the like, all of which determine the scope and nature of the emotional and intellectual structures of remembrance, after these matters have been clarified, the gathering of documentation can be pursued in earnest. If Holocaust museums, or any other historical museums which claim to be a source of truth and memory, do not provide sufficient support for the collection of relevant documentation and the scholarship to analyze and interpret it, they will have failed to carry out their responsibilities to the very people whose memory they exist to perpetuate. Additionally, those Holocaust museums not directly situated on the killing grounds hallowed by the blood of the victims must face the uncomfortable, indeed disturbing prospect of expanding the parameters of their mandates 20 or so years into the future if they intend to continue to be living memorials with relevance to the present. While maintaining the centrality of the tragic Jewish experience in Europe during the period between 1933 and 1945, these museums will be forced to consider expending resources not only on the continued scholarly investigation of the Holocaust as such but also of its broader historical context and other forms of genocidal actions if they are to prepare themselves for the future in a world whose parameters no one today can define in any recognizable detail. >> Back to top |
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Introduction Opening Session: Messages and speeches Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches Workshops, Panels and Seminars
Other Activities |
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| For information about this production and the Stockholm International Forum Conference Series please go to www.humanrights.gov.se or contact Information Rosenbad, SE-103 33 Stockholm, Sweden | |||||||||