WORKSHOP: Reluctant Heritage: Revisiting Museums and Memory Sites in Central and Eastern Europe in a Transnational Perspective
Venue: Cerefrea, 6 Strada Emile Zola, Bucharest
Date and Time: 4 – 5 November 2016
Fees & Registration: Free and open to the public, no registration required
Facebook Event Page & more information from ISP
A troubled and segmented East-European history has given rise to a troubled and segmented museum history. Museums in Central and Eastern Europe have found themselves, time and again, faced with difficult and uncomfortable choices. Immediately after the Second World War, museums had to update their exhibitions in order to narrate radically different stories. One of the major changes also included exhibiting the socialist present, such as the accomplishments of the regime, and the recent past: the violent, revolutionary coming to power of communist parties all over Eastern Europe became part of the permanent exhibition of local and national museums. Museums also had to literally hide entire collections that were suddenly found inappropriate. After the fall of communism, these collections were brought back to museum halls (although much of their history, documentation and context had been lost) and it was time for the communist collections to become bothersome and thus be hidden or even destroyed.