"As you might imagine, we in ... are constantly faced with the question
of controversial exhibits. Our policy has been to let people on both (or
all) sides tell their own stories. Their experiences are the history. "
Hi all,
the writer is probably grown up in a surrounding which suggests this
policy. Let me say it frankly: I have to throw a stone into the water.
For a Central European accustomed to the terms "truth", "science",
"epistemology" and "museology", your policy is not only a sign of
political correctness, it is a Wikipedia-horror. Such a relativly
simple approach will, in a long term, destroy all jobs of museum
curators and interpreters and the institution of museums itself (as
Wikipedia has ruined the Encyclopaedia Britannica). It is not a sign of
strength, it is a sign of weakness. I dont not want to bore you with a
treatise on the roots of this approach, but it seems to be based in an
old deflational philosophy of truth.
In our eyes the museum museum staff does not only have the right of
interpretation, it is their obligation. They have to have a standpoint.
This does not mean an interpretation monopol, but a museum has the duty
to explain their museum objects. Museum professionals should have
knowledge on they highest level, they are the experts, they are (as
their colleagues at Universities), using museum objects, the scouts of
truth.
In our eyes any museum have to *teach *history. If you leave
interpretation up to the visitors: what have you studied for? To do some
administrational work?
Do you really think that any approach by anybody is as important as the
other?
What people say and remember is only one source, the truth - or history
- is not a mixture of all experiences or remembrances. The
reconstruction of history, of course, is a long lasting process;
sometime we get near to it faster, sometimes slower. Remembrances can be
wrong, experiences of subjects can be filtered by ideological positions.
Between experiences and oral reflection there is a lot of right or wrong
analysis.
We have learned not to take any oral reflection for granted and
developed a method called Source Criticism which takes the various
sources on a critical testbed.
Hope not offend anybody
Christian
--
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