Authors

Tadeusz Wojtych¹;  ¹ University of Cambridge, UK

Discussion

Museums in Central and Eastern Europe engage in a whole plethora of activities beyond their exhibitions: they sponsor conferences and boxing galas, publish journals and comic books, organise concerts and religious services, and – most recently – aid in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, such initiatives rarely receive scholarly attention. This paper, based on six case studies from Russia, Poland and Germany, analyses the interplay between such “additional” activities – often seemingly unrelated to history – and the museums’ historical narratives and messages.
I scrutinise four different types on museums’ initiatives: academic activities, educational programmes, social involvement, and commercial enterprises. How do these initiatives, usually perceived as supplementary to the institutions’ main missions, interact with the historical narratives that these museums forge? In Central and Eastern Europe, where history is emotionally charged and heavily politicised, museums often become battlegrounds where various visions of history, memory and identity collide. While it is logistically and financially difficult to change entire museum exhibitions, such “additional” initiatives are easier to orchestrate. Studying these initiatives sheds new light on the working mechanisms of museums and on the political pressures that they face. It thus contributes to a better understanding of politics of history in Central and Eastern Europe.