Abstract
This chapter focuses on history museums around the world after 1945. In the aftermath of WW2 and during the Cold War, state intervention and control over history museums was massive and pervasive in the Soviet Union and in the Soviet bloc, as well as in China, but also in the United States, where so many important museums appear to be the result of private–public funding. Specific attention has been devoted to the crucial case of divided Germany, where state intervention in the creation of history museums was particularly strong. Post-colonial museums are also treated, in India as well as in Africa, and recent developments in the Gulf States are also considered. After 1989 a new wave of national and often nationalistic history museums has characterized Eastern Europe, but was also clear in Western Europe and elsewhere. In recent years Holocaust museums have paved the way to a new genre: the museums of victimization and suffering, now present all around the world, in Africa as well as in China (Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall). This chapter also gives insights into military museums, usually run by the army, which celebrate the nation in war, and therefore play a crucial role in national master narratives. Finally, it highlights the role of anniversary exhibitions, which usually mobilize considerable public funding and are in many cases at the origin of state-sponsored national history museums.
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Recommended Readings
Aronsson, P. and Elgenius, G. (eds.) (2011) Building national Museums in Europe 1750--2010. Conference proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums. Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press).
Basso Peressut, L., Lanz, F., and Postiglione, G. (2013) European Museums of the 21st century. Setting the Framework III (Milan: Politecnico di Milano).
Denton, K. A. (2014) Exhibiting the Past. Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press).
Poulot, D., Bodenstein F. and Lanzarote Guiral, J. M. (eds.) (2012) Great Narratives of the Past. Traditions and Revisions in National Museums. Conference proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen (Linköping University Electronic Press).
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Porciani, I. (2018). History Museums. In: Bevernage, B., Wouters, N. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of State-Sponsored History After 1945. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95306-6_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95306-6_20
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