Museums are basically institutions that arrange space to preserve memories. Similar to how people take photos or keep diaries to document moments of their lives, museums collect all kinds of natural and cultural heritage, tangible or intangible. Through collection, exhibitions, and educational activities, museums witness and preserve the evolution of both nature and human civilization. The types of memories museums preserve can be categorized as follows:
1. The collective memory of a nation's history and culture: National art museums or national history museums often attempt to consolidate national identity and glorify the nation's achievements through writing the national history as a way to mold collective memory.
2. Evolutionary trajectory of nature, science, and industrial development: Natural history museums preserve extinct species whereas science and industrial sites museums witness the declining industries and the developing techniques.
3. The memory of local histories, customs, and daily lives: Local museums and community museums have thrived in recent years. By documenting memories of local development and people's lives through objects collection, exhibitions, and oral history, museums become important sites to solidify and shape community identities and memories.
However, as John Urry indicated, memorizing and forgetting is often a coin of two sides that construct each other. We cannot preserve all natural and cultural heritages since human society produces so massive amount of materials. At the same time, environment changes and species face the threat of extinct at such a rapid speed that it is beyond museum's capability to preserve them through collecting and representing techniques. Thus, it is crucial in museum studies to examine how politics and institutional power of museums decide what natural and cultural heritage to collect and represent, and what historues and memories to forget and suppress. Serving as a reservoir of a society's collective memories, there are more and more museums dedicate to preserving declining material culture and deserted industrial sites in the recent years, creating a trend of nostalgia. However, labours' industrial injuries and issues of pollution are seldom mentioned or be reflected upon.
In addition, difficult heritages and memorial museums that commemorate the oppression of human rights during World War II and Cold War have emerged. They tell stories of traumatic memories by displaying all kinds of disasters, human rights violation, and controversial history. Sharon Macdonald defines difficult heritage as irrelevant to a nation's positive achievement and thus not assisting the shaping of national identity. But she also points out that by preserving difficult heritage, it is possible to reconcile with the past and construct collective memory as well as taking the risk to split the society. All of these aspects still await further studies and discussions.
In Les Lieux de Mémoire, French historian Pierre Nora defines France as a collective of symbols. By discussing memorial days and mementos such as National Day, the Song of Marseille and Eiffel Tower, Nora contemplates how social memory and significance of objects have varied in time. Extending from Nora, this conference aims to discuss how history and memories, be it national or local, ethnic or cultural, colonial or marginal, are represented, inherited and suppressed in museums. In the rapidly changing society, how are endangered species and industrial culture preserved and exhibited in museums? How does the collective memories constructed by museums share, interact, and converse with personal memories? These are all included in the topics of the 8th International Biennial Conference of Museum Studies.
This Biennial Conference of Museum Studies wholeheartedly welcomes papers on the following subjects: theories or cultural studies of museums and memory, analysis of how the collections, exhibitions and educational programs in museums preserve, represent, inherit or oppress different memories and cultures. For more detailed descriptions, please refer to the sub-themes below.
1. Museums and Memory Politics
This theme discusses issues such as the nature of memories constructed by national museums, and how politics influence museums in selecting and preserving natural and cultural heritage. It also wishes to examine how collective memory is established through collecting and representing natural and cultural heritage (tangible, intangible, digital) in different forms. It also questions how colonized, marginalized and reactionary voices are oppressed through musealization. And what kind of framework enables these suppressed and forgotten memories to reemerge in the discourses of national museums?
2. Community Memory and Local Museums
This theme explores how local museums and local communities document the history of local development, the memories of people's lives and customs through museums. What is the process and significance of the selection, preservation, and creation of local memories? How are civilian power and local politics mobilized to establish museums? Does the folk culture become signs and symbols of nostalgia and tourism consumption during the process musealization? Or has it consolidated and shaped community identities and memories? These are all issues to be discussed in this sub-theme.
3. Endangered Cultural and Natural Heritage
This theme wishes to discuss the influence of museums on endangered natural and cultural heritage, including extinct species, disappearing industries, languages, and cultures facing inheritance crisis. How do museums preserve and represent them? What kind of roles and functions do museums play? Do museums accelerate the extinction of cultures and species, or do they successfully transform into a learning and recreational space?
4. Inheritance and Education of Memory
This theme examines different forms and types of educational strategies and practices in museums. How are educational programs implemented to deliver national, local, difficult and repressed memories, especially for different generations and communities to share memories? And how museums apply techniques such as oral history, reminiscence, digital collection to promote the exchange and inheritance of memories?
5. Constructing History and Memory of Difficult Heritages
In recent years, there are increasing academic discussions regarding the study of difficult heritages as it involves complex issues like memory politics and historical representations. This theme welcomes papers of following subjects: theoretical analysis of the nature of difficult heritages, critical analysis and case studies of domestic and international cases, visitors' experiences of visiting difficult heritages, and how to represent and preserve difficult heritages through history and oral memories, etc.
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Graduate Institute of Museum Studies, Taipei National University of the Arts ｜1, Hsueh-Yuan Rd. , Peitou Dist. , Taipei 11201, Taiwan (R.O.C.)