“Militant” public memory institutions

Le musée militant is an expression coined in the 1970s by Tomislav Sola, a Croatian museologist who is the driving force and philosopher behind the Best in Heritage movement, a yearly conference which takes place in Dubrovnik in Autumn.

At this year’s edition, Professor Sola stated that political and social engagement is something museums and heritage institutions are called on to provide a platform for. Public memory institutions – and I would say all forms of public interpretation – must respond to the language of everyday life. How else can they claim to be public? How else can they become relevant to more and more people, from more and more diverse backgrounds?

He harked back to the 1970s, when the militant museum movement was embodied by the increasingly popular ecomuseums. These institutions, riding the long cultural wave of democratising history and its interpretation, brought together people’s stories, community narratives, folk traditions and launched a new policy of collections acquisition which meant something for the communities in which they operated. Some museums today continue that tradition – the ethnographical museum in Frankfurt being one. Others have misplaced their mission, and stagnated. The Ethnographic Museum in Dubrovnik, pictured below, which I visited during the conference, is just one example of a forgotten museum, a lonesome repository of something past which provides no fresh interpretation relevant to the present.

The idea behind militancy in a public memory institution (I like this expression because it brings together museums and heritage for their joint mission of communicating rather than separating them for their specialist forms of collection) is about being upfront with presenting dilemmas which we face everyday, and offering different interpretations.

The issue was brought home to me while walking around the streets of Dubrovnik, a site which was martyred during the ex Yugoslavia conflict in 1991-1992. The so called ‘pearl’ of the Mediterranean, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is absolutely beautiful: a walled city accessible only to pedestrians, medieval in its conception and planning, built around a market and port, a city state to rival Venice in the 13^th and 14^th centuries. Its deep red terracotta roofs are pristine: they have all been replaced in the last 20 years, and look very new and modern. It has been beautifully reconstructed from the ravages of war, which are visible only in photographic books available in some bookshops, in a tiny display in the Napoleonic fortress which overlooks the city, and a strange personal memorial corner in one of the beautiful side streets. Stuck on the wall by the bookshop owner whose books, manuscripts and editions were charred and burnt when his house and shop were bombed.

Where did Dubrovnik hide its recent history? Who wished it be swept under the carpet of tourism? Is it admissable, today, to retreat into silence? Is it simply more comfortable this way?

The recently re-opened Ulster Museum was awarded the 2010 Art Fund Prize for, among other things, being passionate about its public: “We were impressed by the interactive learning spaces on each level that are filled with objects which visitors are encouraged to touch and explore, and by how the museum’s commitment to reaching all parts of its community is reflected in the number and diversity of its visitors. The transformed Ulster Museum is an emblem of the confidence and cultural rejuvenation of Northern Ireland.”

The museum presents, among many other themes, the Irish Troubles which ravaged the northern tip of the island of Ireland and had long tentacles radiating into mainland UK between 1969 and 1990s. The museum’s interpretation strategy was to avoid object selection – they intentionally did not want to present a history by dividing communities around questions such as which objects are most prominent and most important and – of course – which have been left out. The story is too raw, too recent, too real to do this. So the interpretation perspective shifted. The museum team sought not to present a perfect, neutral survey of information – perfect but useless - but rather provide a new depth and a new breadth to the content, to carry a metamessage around its re-presentation of history: this space is a space for community, where content must remain purposeful in order to continue meaningful.

A new meaning of militant. Lessons we still have to learn.