Museums, Memorials and Sites of Concience

New Publication: Exhibitionist: Museums, Memorials, and Sites of Conscience

Sarah Edkins posted a new topic on the Bulletin Board

Title: New Publication: Exhibitionist: Museums, Memorials, and Sites of Conscience

Visible to: Accredited Sites, Asia, Africa, Europe, Immigration, Russia, Latin America, Environment

Exhibitionist: Museums, Memorials, and Sites of Conscience NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR MUSEUM EXHIBITION, FALL 2011 $10.00, Available for purchase here

Struggles over how we remember and represent the past are inextricably linked to struggles over representation and resources in the present. If museums stay completely silent on the issues that are of greatest concern to their communities, will they be rejected as irrelevant and unresponsive? Or is there a way in which sites can serve as forums for their publics to gain historical perspective on the questions that divide them today and discuss how they should be addressed in the future?”

Coalition staff members pose these provocative questions in a new article for Exhibitionist, the biannual journal of the National Association for Museum Exhibition. The Fall 2011 edition focuses on the role museums and memorials play outside their traditional roles as exhibition sites, featuring Coalition members Maison des Esclaves and the Tribute WTC Visitor Center.

“Sites of Conscience seek to serve as significant new tools for building lasting cultures of human rights and democracy,” writes Program Director Sarah Pharaon. "By initiating new conversations about contemporary issues through a historical lens, places of memory can become new centers for democracy in action.”