European Museums in the 21st Century: Setting the framework Vol. 2 Books European Museums in the 21st Century: setting the framework Volume 2 edited by Luca Basso Peressut, Francesca Lanz and Gennaro Postiglione Books European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 5 4 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) mela book 07 – European Museums in the 21st Century: Setting the framework (vol. 2) Published by Politecnico di Milano © February 2013, The Authors European Museums in the 21st Century æ Volume 1 1 – National Museums (edited by Clelia Pozzi) This work is provided on line as open access document under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. The work is protected by copyright and/or other applicable law. Any use of the work other than as authorized under this license or copyright law is prohibited. For additional information http://creativecommons.org/. isbn 9788895194332 Museums as Agonistic Spaces Clelia Pozzi he Museum and Radical Democracy Chantal Moufe Case Studies 2 – Natural History Museums (edited by Laurence Isnard, Sarah Gamaire and Fabienne Galangau) This Book ensued from the Research Project MeLa - European Museums in an age of migrations, funded within the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (SSH-20105.2.2) under Grant Agreement n° 266757. Project Officer: Louisa Anastopoulou Museums of Natural History in Europe Fabienne Galangau-Quérat, Sarah Gamaire and Laurence Isnard Escape from Bureaucracy Giovanni Pinna Constructing a Highly Citizen-Oriented Relection Interview with Judith Pargamin Case Studies 3 – Etnographic Museums (edited by Camilla Pagani and Mariella Brenna) mela consortium Politecnico di Milano (Coordinator), Italy – Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, Denmark – Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche ITIA, Italy – University of Glasgow, United Kingdom – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain – Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, France – The Royal College of Art, United Kingdom – Newcastle University, United Kingdom – Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’ Orientale,” Italy. www.mela-project.eu english editing Tim Quinn Ethnographic Museums and Culture Museums in the 21st century: A new paradigm? Camilla Pagani Cultural Diference and Cultural Diversity: he Case of the Musée du Quai Branly Nélia Dias National Museum of World Culture Interview with Klas Grinell Case Studies graphic design Zetalab — Milano layout Francisco J. Rodríguez Pérez and Francesca Lanz legal notice The views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. æ Volume 2 4 – Migration Museums (edited by Anna Chiara Cimoli) Migration Museums in Europe Anna Chiara Cimoli European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 7 6 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Museum and Nation Joachim Baur Table of Contents, volume 2 he German Emigration Centre Simone Eick Case Studies 5 – City Museums (edited by Francesca Lanz) City museums for changing cities and citizens Francesca Lanz City museums: do we have a role in shaping the global community? Jack Lohman 9 Acknowledgments International networking projects and the web Interview with Marie-Paule Jungblut 11 Migration Museums Edited by Anna Chiara Cimoli Case Studies 13 Migration Museums in Europe Anna Chiara Cimoli 31 Museum and Nation Joachim Baur 43 he German Emigration Centre Simone Eick Local Museums of the Future Hugues de Varine 47 Case Studies 49 Deutsches Auswandererhaus–German Emigration Center, Bremerhaven, Germany Case Studies 57 Museu d’Història de la Immigraciò de Catalunya–MhiC, Barcelona, Spain 63 Ballinstad, Hamburg, Germany Forms of collecting / forms of hearing Marco Borsotti 71 Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration–CNHI, Paris, France 83 Memoria e Migrazioni, Galata–Museo del Mare e delle Migrazioni, Genoa, Italy Putting History on Show Paolo Rosa, Studio Azzurro 93 Immigrantmuseet, Farum, Denmark 101 Red Star Line Museum, Antwerp, Belgium 109 City Museums Edited by Francesca Lanz 111 City museums for changing cities and citizens Francesca Lanz æ Volume 3 6 – Local Museums (edited by Elena Montanari) Local Museums as Strategic Cultural Forces for 21st Century Society Elena Montanari 7 – Temporary Exhibitions (edited by Marco Borsotti) Interviews with Anna Seiderer, Galitt Kenan and Marc-Olivier Gonseth Case Studies 8 – War Museums (edited by Luca Basso Peressut) European War Museums: architecture and representation Luca Basso Peressut European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 9 8 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) 141 City museums: do we have a role in shaping the global community? Jack Lohman 149 International networking projects and the web Interview with Marie-Paule Jungblut 155 Case Studies 157 Museum of London, United Kingdom 167 Københavns Museum–Museum of Copenhangen, Denmark 175 Palazzo Pepoli. Museo della Storia di Bologna, Italy 185 Historisches Museum Frankfurt, Germany 293 Museum aan de Stroom–MAS, Antwerp, Belgium 203 “Ortsgespräche”, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum, Berlin, Germany 209 Stadsmuseum Gent–STAM, Ghent, Belgium 223 Index of Authors and Editors Acknowledgments hese books grew out of the work of the Research Field 6 “Envisioning 21st Century Museums” leaded by the Politecnico di Milano prof. Luca Basso Peressut and Gennaro Postilgione within the European project MeLa–European Museums in an age of migrations. MeLa is a four-year interdisciplinary research project funded in 2011 by the European Commission under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities Programme (Seventh Framework Programme). Adopting the notion of “migration” as a paradigm of the contemporary global and multicultural world, MeLa relects on the role of museums and heritage in the twenty-irst century. he main objective of the MeLa project is to deine innovative museum practices that relect the challenges of the contemporary processes of globalization, mobility and migration. As people, objects, knowledge and information move at increasingly high rates, a sharper awareness of an inclusive European identity is needed to facilitate mutual understanding and social cohesion. MeLa aims at empowering museums spaces, practices and policies with the task of building this identity. MeLa involves nine European partners—universities, museums, research institutes and a company—who will lead six Research Fields (RF) with a collaborative approach, and this book is meant to report about the preliminary indings of the irst research phases. he editors would like to thank all the scholars who enriched this book with their suggestions and contributions as well as all the museums and their staf, curators, directors, designer and architects who kindly provided information, images and drawings supporting our investigations. Amention goes to the english editors and translators, and to Elena Montanari, Cristina Colombo and the staf from POLIMI, who essentially contributed with their help to the editing of this book. Migration Museums Edited by Anna Chiara Cimoli European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 13 Migration Museums in Europe Narratives and their visual translations æ Is Europe “late”? In search of new master narratives he literature on the subject of migration museums is quite poor in Europe. he issue has fascinated historians, anthropologists and museum scholars in the United States, Canada, Australia and New-Zealand for a couple of decades now, but has only touched Europe quite recently. Recently indeed, if one thinks that the Museo dell’Emigrante in the Repubblica di San Marino was inaugurated in 1997, as was the Immigrantmuseet (Danish Immigration Museum) in Farum. Most of the European migration museums, however, were set up after the turn of the century: the MhiC-Museo d’Història de la Immigraciò de Catalunya (Immigration History Museum of Catalonia) in 2004, the Deutsches Auswandererhaus (German Emigration Centre) in Bremerhaven in 2005, the museum of the Fondazione Paolo Cresci in Lucca and the Museo Narrante della Sila, both in Italy, in 2005, the Cité Nationale d’Histoire de l’Immigration in Paris in 2007, BallinStadt in Hamburg in 2007, the Museo Nazionale dell’Emigrazione Italiana in Rome in 2009, the “Memoria e Migrazioni” pavilion in the Galata Museum in Genoa in 2011. he Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp (due to open in September 2013) and the Emigration Museum in Gdynia, Poland (2014-15) are being built at the time of writing. A huge constellation of migration museums and exhibitions grew very quickly (in Italy alone there are about 30 institutions)1, while other pro- 1 See the Centro Altreitalie www.altreitalie.it/Le_Migrazioni_Italiane_In_Rete/Musei_E_Mostre/Musei_Italiani.kl and the Museo dell’Emigrazione Italiana websites http://www.museonazionaleemigrazione.it/elenco.php?id=4, last visited on December 10th 2012. previous page — A view of the “El Sevillano” train, Museu d’Història de la Immigració de Catalunya, Sant Adrià de Besòs, Spain. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. 14 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) jects seem to have failed or have simply been stopped, such as that of the Molo dell’Immacolatella in Naples, those promoted by the non-proit organisation, Migrationsmuseum Schweiz, in Zurich and by DOMiDDocumentation Center and the Museum of Migration in Germany (at the moment just putting on temporary exhibitions), the Museo delle Migrazioni in Lampedusa and many others. Migrations are not always a popular subject, being so strongly conditioned by the political situation of the time. Given the time required to recount an extended period of history and the fact that migrations are not an easy issue to face, neither politically nor culturally, it is taking a long time for European museums to take on the subject along with the resulting multicultural societies and the challenges they present. Still, migrations and multiculturalism are increasingly becoming a fundamental issue for museums—something they simply cannot ignore. he strong impulse to research the ield of migration studies in recent years, and consequently the push to a relection on the role of museums in a multicultural society, characterise European policies, often with the support of public programmess such as those promoted by the EU and its agencies, NGOs and activist groups. his impulse has found echo in the plethora of temporary exhibitions focusing on the relationship between migration and identity, seen through the lens of art, sociology and anthropology. (We are reminded of Migrations at the Tate Britain, “Un air d’Italie” at the Musée Dauphinois in Grenoble, “J’ai deux amours” at the CNHI in Paris, “Becoming a Copenhagener” at the Museum of Copenhagen, “Wahlverwandtschaften–Imaginationen des Nomadischen at the Ethnology Museum in Hamburg, “[S]oggetti migranti” at the Museo Preistorico Etnograico Luigi Pigorini in Rome, just to name a few casestudies of the last couple of years). If the museum was born to strengthen the idea of nation both in its img. 4.02 — The interior of the Museo Narrante Nave della Sila, Camigliatello Silano, Italy. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 15 physical and symbolic borders, it is evident that displaying mobility raises a number of questions about the nature, the ownership and the role of the mobile objects displayed; about new, blurred geographies; about an ever-changing political panorama that repeatedly redeines individual and social identities. As Kerstin Poehls remarks together with museums of migration [exhibitions] navigate in this contested ield of Europeanisation, and they do so along with political parties and activists, scientists from various disciplines, media and public opinion— a broad ield and a complex discourse with numerous participants where nothing even close to a consensus has been reached (and where any such consensus is probably not even desirable). Its omnipresence efectively turns migration into a classical ‘boundary object’ . (Poehls 2012) If it is true that temporary exhibitions are the precursors of museums, insofar as they can open up dialogic spaces and deal with provocations and highly contemporary issues with some sort of “freedom” or more courageous attitude, it must be recognised that the “blurring efect”, as Poehls calls it, produced by this plethora of exhibitions, relects perfectly the confusion and lack of sense of identity that goes hand in hand with widespread euro-scepticism. In the “immigration countries”, such as Canada, Australia, the USA, Brazil and Argentina, for evident historical reasons, the relection has a different departure point and is much older, having experienced a peak in the Nineties, though still being very active and involved in a process of continuous redeinition. he Migration Museum in Adelaide was inaugurated in 1986; the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York in 1990; in 1994, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum (N.Y.); in 1998, the Immigration Museum in Melbourne and the Memorial do Imigrante in São Paulo; in 1999, Pier 21 in Halifax, Canada; in 2001, the Museo Nacional de la Inmigración in Buenos Aires. Joachim Baur’s thesis is that in Canada, the USA and Australia, the building of autonomous immigration museums can be substantially considered a reaction to the crisis of narrations capable of promoting a sense of the community and to the diversiication of cultural identities. Representing immigration as a socially unifying experience, museums build a Meistererzählung [master narrative, n.d.a.] of migration, and in this way they work at revisioning the nation’s imagined community. (Baur 2010, 2) From impulse to calling into question the nation, the transnational phenomenon of migration becomes the basis for its narrative constitution. he main character of the immigration museum becomes, then, “representing immigration as a choral epic, capable of creating integration” (ibid., 2–3). Should we argue that where the concept of nation and of national identity is historically stronger (such as in most European states)—although, of course, this might be debatable—the need to harmonise the “dissonant heritage” is not a priority in the cultural agenda? he risk is that of a “too 16 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) strong” national identity, and therefore an “arrogant” attitude towards the new citizens. Of course this is the criticism most often expressed towards the CNHI in Paris, where the colonial past of France weighs heavily on the whole process. Moreover, the educational connection between past emigration from Europe and the immigration it has been experiencing in recent decades might also be debatable. Are we sure that displaying the emigration of Europeans, with its echo of poverty, famine, hunger and disillusionment, makes people more compassionate, sympathetic, or at least more open towards immigrants? Aren’t things more complicated than that? As Michele Colucci remarks, following François Hartog’s relection about the risks of “presentism” (the trend of shaping history according to the needs of the present) “a look at present times has determined a strong forcing and imbalance, putting into a single container luxes, movements and displacements diferent from one another in time and space” (Colucci 2007, 724). It is diicult to compare past and present migrations, as Ercole Sori notes when he states that it is a losing attitude to associate the revival of research into the history of Italian emigration with the educational aim of soothing the xenophobic and racist moods which permeate today’s Italy, now an immigration country. […] he recently promoted within the spectrum of ethno-social stratiication […] or in the economic development hierarchy are not the most hostile towards those who have allowing that promotion by occupying the lowest step of the stair? (ibid.) Jean-Claude Duclos, director of the Musée Dauphinois in Grenoble—not a migration, but rather an ethnographic museum which pays close attention to migrations and multiculturalism—describes this very well when he writes about the conlicts which arose from the exhibition “Pour que la vie img. 4.03 — A room in the Museo dell’Emigrante, San Marino Republic. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 17 continue–D’Isère et du Maghreb” (So that life continues–From Isère and Maghreb), which put French repatriates and citizens of Algerian origin side-by-side, each with their own claims and open wounds (Duclos 2008). his remark by Ercole Sori warns against the worst enemy of migration museums: naivety. Joachim Baur relates the comment by historian John Hope Franklin about the opening of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum: “No one in the black community is really excited about the Statue of Liberty. We came here on slave ships, not via Ellis Island” (Baur 2010, 6). he vast literature about “rival” or “conlicting heritages” which has appeared in recent years (Sandell and Nightingale 2012; Labrador 2010; Sandell 2007, 2002; Karp et al. 2006) is there to show the complexity of museum work in the present day. Who should be represented? What exhibitory method is most suitable for telling the story in an attractive way, without sacriicing the truth? What should be put under the lens of the observer? Tracing a history of “European’s migrant conscience” would be far too ambitious for this short essay. Still, the central question is: why now? When is a nation—a territory, a community—ready to represent its migratory experience? Nancy L. Green wonders about the CNHI in Paris: the pertinent question for historians seems to be why now? After two centuries of immigration to France, three decades of historiography on the subject and twenty years of museum projects at a time when the impoverished suburbs have erupted, when the sans-papiers (undocumented immigrants) continue to make headline news, and when debates over history and memory and France’s colonial past have made a resurgence, why have the French decided to commemorate their immigrant ancestors now? More generally, why do questions of memory arise at certain moments and not at others? (Green 2007) Joachim Baur tries to answer these questions starting from the nonEuropean museums, but his answer might just as well be applied to the European ones. Migration museums were born during—or as a consequence of—the museum boom of the 1980s. Moreover, “museum popularity” goes hand in hand with the “musealisation of the popular”, a consequence of the expansion of the ield of social studies which took place in the 1970s and 1980s. he shift from a single story (in Anglo-Saxon countries, that of the “winners”, of the colonisers, and only later that of the “irst nations”) to a multifaceted, pluralistic history would thus be a necessary condition for migrations to be represented in museums (Baur 2002). In the case of Europe, we could also add that, in certain countries, in particular in Scandinavia, Ireland and Germany, migration museums represent the answer to the need—prevalent mostly among US and Canadian citizens—to go back to family roots, to search one’s origins, to trace one’s ancestry. After the museum boom, we should talk about a genealogy boom, the reason for the growing popularity of “heritage tourism”, mostly in Northern Europe. he Swedish American Center in Karlstadt, for example, created in 1960, has been, since its inception, a 18 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) point of reference for the descendants of the Swedish in the “new world”. Part of its activity consists in organising and welcoming guided tours for the descendants of emigrants. Its digital archive, “EmiWeb–Living migration history”, is “a proit organisation within non-proit organisations” whose purpose, as written on the website, is “getting archives online and contributing to non-proit organisations’ research and development” (emiweb.eu). he Norwegian Emigration Center in Stavanger, which hosts the permanent exhibition “he Promise of America”, as well as doing genealogical research, also provides information and facilities for “heritage tourists”.2 he German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven is also very committed to linking the two sides of the Atlantic and in promoting its activities in the USA. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 19 img. 4.04 — The open air exhibition in the Museu d’Història de la Immigració de Catalunya, Sant Adrià de Besòs, Spain. Photo by Francesca Lanz. Another element that should be added to Baur’s relection, when considering Europe, is the impulse given by the riots that have touched some cities, such as London and Paris, in recent years, and have led many inluential igures (Angela Merkel and David Cameron in primis)3 to allude to the death of multiculturalism. Before putting the gravestone on this concept—or utopia, some might think—museums are questioning themselves and their audiences about the nature of multiculturalism, its limits, horizons and meanings. Migration museums, as well as being a celebration of an ancestor’s epic voyage, are meaningful when they are sensitive to the tensions, conlicts and negotiation areas which, today, are representative of their true nature. Otherwise, they risk becoming mausoleums or, worse, weekend theme parks. æ some reflections on the specificity of migration museums Generally speaking, European migration museums tend to tell collective stories, to stress the universal and atemporal dynamic of migrations, factors that are both rooted in the history of the single place, harbour or building, but that also transcend it. he birth of community museums (for example, dedicated to the role of Albanians in Italy, Mozambicans in Portugal, or the Turkish in Germany) is premature, and perhaps not a priority. Beyond considerations of colonial history, the fragmentation of Europe and the separatism professed in some regions, the recent issues connected to the economic crisis and the role of “strong” countries in respect to the poorer ones certainly do not contribute to serene relection, based on the sharing of a common identity. Consequently, when it comes to the question of the kind and width of discourse promoted—whether at a local, regional, national or international level—, each museum has a different response, depending mostly on the territory, the period taken into consideration and the audience it addresses. Very local museums tend to 2 See the interview with Diana Pardue, director of museum programs at the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island, on HamburgChicagoNews.net, September 2007: http://www.hamburgchicagonews.com/2007/09/genealogy-gateways-and-great-cities/ (accessed 13th December 2012). 3 The reference is to the speech to members of her Christian Democratic Union party in Potsdam by Merkel 16 October 2010 and to the one by Cameron at the Munich Security Conference on 5 February 2011, both of which led to heated debate. img. 4.05 — The Museo Nazionale dell’Emigrazione Italiana, Rome. Photo by Roberto Dulio. 20 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 21 stress the epic of their fellow citizens and tell their personal stories—this is very evident in many local Italian museums, such as the Museo Eoliano dell’Emigrazione in Salina or the Museo dell’Emigrante Casa Giannini near Genoa). Historical museums which developed from research centres tend to show documents and to build thematic narrations around them (e.g. the Museo dell’Emigrazione Paolo Cresci in Lucca. Museums with a national vocation, such as the CNHI in Paris, raise the voice of the individual migrant to a higher level, in an e pluribus unum attitude. It is interesting to note that, while the CNHI takes into consideration the period from the end of the 19th century, the small MhiC near Barcelona, dedicated to immigration in Catalonia, begins its analysis in prehistory, underlining how migration is a peculiar trait of mankind, and thus avoiding the risk of an overly local perspective. Museums dedicated to immigration in Europe are exceedingly rare. Apart from the CNHI, the MhiC near Barcelona and the Immigrantmuseet in Farum, near Copenhagen, are very interesting case studies, and are therefore described in detail below. A special case is represented by 19 Princelet Street, a building located in the Spitalields neighbourhood of London, which—in the style of the Tenement Museum in New York— represents a place of memory, being a tenement where many immigrant families have lived over the centuries. he analysis of migration museums could be easily extended to the many other museums which focus on the theme of displacement, mobility and diaspora, such as those dedicated to slavery (the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, opened in 2007), migrant labour (Le Bois du Cazier in Marcinelle, but also, for example, the interesting Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Industriekultur net), Jewish diaspora, Shoah and Porrajmos, and civil rights (such as the Humanity House in he Hague). Of course, the theme of migrations increasingly interacts with the anthropological and city museums, as well as the new French multidisciplinary museums—such as the Musée des Conluences in Lyon, focusing on the interaction of science and society, and due to open in 2014, and the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée in Marseille, opening in Spring 2013. As migration is the contemporary or “up-to-date” theme, museums with a diferent vocation have turned to it. he Cité de la Mer in Cherbourg, for example, organised a permanent exhibition in 2012 (“Titanic. Retour à Cherbourg”) and a seminar within the framework of the “Titanic cities” network, arranging the luggage hall in order to create a space dedicated to the theme of European emigration to America. he borders of migration museums seem to be luid and under constant re-negotiation. Kerstin Poehls’ remark about the “blurring efect” of migration leads us to a two-fold relection concerning, on the one hand, the physical limits of migration museums and their possibilities to extend their borders and become a sort of new “eco-museum” or “open-air museum”, on the other, the role of migrants inside migration museums and in museums tout court. Should migration museums work on going out or img. 4.06 — A workshop with migrant citizens in the Museo del Novecento, Milan. Photo by Marta Vireca. on drawing in? Should they just concentrate on the past or also deal with the present times in order to shed a light on them? Would an open-air museum be conceivable—I, for one, do not know of any—? And what would diferentiate it from a “site of conscience”? About 500 sans papiers occupied the CNHI in Paris between October 2010 and January 2011 in order to express their demands for a better immigration law, therefore interpreting the museum as the “forum” Duncan F. Cameron talked about (Cameron 1971). Migration institutions react to this delicate topic in very diferent ways. Are migration museums an ideal arena for involving migrants, or should they just tell a story, accompany it and let it work at a cultural level? he chapter of the migrants’ participation in museums is very complex, as it represents a real negotiation ield. It is often contained in other sections: ethnology, anthropology, the art ones in particular. Many positive experiences, such as those at the V&A in London, the GAM in Bergamo, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, the Pinacoteca di Brera and the Museo del 900 in Milan, the Museum of Ethnography and the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, the Museo de América in Madrid, the Glasgow Museums and many others, often created and developed within the framework of European programmes such as MAP for ID and LEM–he Learning Museum Network Project, are there to demonstrate that the museum can be a place for migrants to have a voice, and thus strengthen their sense of belonging and of citizenship (Bodo, and Mascheroni 2012; Bodo, Gibbs, and Sani 2009; Keith 2009; Pecci 2009; Bolla, and Roncaccioli 2007). Participation takes time and money, two things museums are usually short of. Not all museums will want to open up their doors to dialogue, as it means being exposed to criticism, asked for more space, recognition and opportunities to participate. Participation also implies, evidently, delicate political balances. As paradoxical as it may seem, migration museums can exist almost with- 22 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 23 out dealing with the subject of identity at all—identity in the sense of a multifaceted, dynamic, ongoing process. hey can merely tell the story of, say, emigration from Germany or Norway to the USA, without addressing the themes of “representation of the other”, multi–layered identities, or all the changes in society caused by the mixing of diferent cultures, habits, languages and traditions. A migration museum does not promote dialogue or mutual comprehension per se. It can evoke folklore and nostalgia, exorcise the fear of poverty (an experience so recent in European collective memory) and put on show the success and creativity of migrants. It can separate the story of yesterday’s emigrants from that of today’s immigrants, and therefore produce a very ambiguous message. It can pretend to tell an “objective” story based on documents, letters, passports and numbers. Migration museums, which at irst glance, in some sort of tautological way, might appear to be the most obvious type of museum dealing with the themes of multiculturalism and intercultural dialogue, sometimes seem, on closer inspection, to be far more elusive and evasive than they should be. his is why studying them at this time is both fascinating and crucial. hey can no longer pretend to stand on their own feet merely by producing a historically “pure” message; they really have to address multicultural audiences—the ultimate reason for their existence—at least in big cities, and they also have to question themselves on whether they want to be some kind of “theme park” or to depict life around them, by considering past emigration from Europe and today’s immigration as nothing other than two sides of the same coin. Nevertheless, a migration museum cannot be completely closed in on itself and “neutral”.4 As well as an empathic attitude, it should possess the instruments (time, funding, skills and staf ) to open up a dialogue with the audience, and listen to the associations, the members of the communities and the activists. In the 1980s, for example, the Migration Museum in Adelaide pioneered this approach by opening “he Forum”, a space where the various communities, every three months, could tell their story, from their own point of view, through an exhibition. he idea of “ethnic community”, at least in some European contexts, can still, however, be slippery and ambiguous. Other museums have found diferent ways to “include” without stressing the diferences. he Museo dell’Emigrante in the Repubblica di San Marino, for example, manages a very small and simple “space for prayer and meditation”, of Franciscan origin, open to all. Some institutions are questioning themselves about their role in contemporary society, and are designing new wings, exhibitions or sections where 4 Viv Szekeres writes: “History museums cannot pretend to be objective. Historical interpretation and objectivity are contradictory ideas. Given that we cannot be objective, then at least let us own our own bias and author displays. Let us also ask the public for their opinion and include those responses” (Szekeres 2002, 147). img. 4.07 — A workshop with migrant citizens in the Museo del Novecento Milan. Photo by Marta Vireca. they can talk about immigration. he most recent example is that of the German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven which, in 2012, opened a new wing dedicated to immigration to Germany, while the MeM section—dedicated half to emigration and half to immigration—was opened in 2011 in the Galata–Museo del Mare in Genoa, a maritime museum. Of course, exhibiting is not enough if this activity is not accompanied by an outreach and educational plan. Immigration museums such as the MhiC near Barcelona, or the younger Immigrantmuseet in Farum, are very much engaged in these activities, and the role they play in their “community” is clearly a positive one. hey are cultural centres, closely connected with the territory they belong to through participatory outreach activities, workshops and conferences. hey do not provide the same services as immigration centres (information, language courses etc.), but they do represent a point of reference for the immigrants. It is also likely that the extensive outreach activities organised by the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp, long before its opening, through—for example—a van which travelled the city inviting the people to join, discuss, share, under the motto “Hier ben ik!” (Here I am!), will also have a positive efect in attracting migrant or second generation citizens. he question about the mission or usefulness of migration museums should remain central. Talking about the usefulness of museums could, of course, seem inappropriate—is culture useful?—, but this particular typology, confronted with the urgencies of contemporary European history, the “failure” of multicultural societies, the present economic crisis and so on, raises the question in a very precise way. What should the role of a migration museum in Europe be? What masternarrative is more fruitful in keeping together a historical approach and a focus on contemporary challenges? Should the museum promote inclusion, dialogue and mutual understanding, or should it just demonstrate that migration is an eternal phenomenon, part of human nature and history, so that everybody can 24 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 25 img. 4.08 — A room in the Museo dell’Emigrante, San Marino Republic. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.09 — A room in the Museo dell’Emigrante, Repubblica di San Marino. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. make connections at their own level, with their own tools? And more precisely: should immigrants work in the museums? How many languages should be spoken in guided tours and workshops? Should there be a place for the immigrants’ communities to show of their culture, to celebrate, to discuss? Evidently, as well as an obvious response concerning the inances, staf and other resources available for all these activities, each museum has to choose and deine its proile within the framework of its territory. he MhiC, for example, being a small museum with very few staf and located in a fairly unfortunate district in the suburbs of Barcelona, chose to work on the idea of citizenship—a more extensive, thought-provoking concept compared to the objective concept of “immigration”—and to promote extensive outreach activities with local communities, groups and associations, described in detail in the chapter dedicated to this case-study. he museum is then really “the ear that listens to society” which John Kinard referred to when talking about Anacostia; exhibitions are the outcome of this listening activity, not its point of departure (Kinard 1972). æ Trends in exhibition design he lack of a collection and the need to create one can be the stimulus for contacting immigrant associations, activists, individuals and families, and asking them to contribute. his is not a neutral request, as museum operators know well. he fact of being represented in a museum through one’s objects creates commitment but also constraints, a positive tie but also a wish to control which sometimes collides with the nature of the museum, its vital rhythm and priorities. hrough the necessary, and continual negotiation, the Immigrantmuseet in Farum shows objects donated by the immigrants, without ever putting too much emphasis on their individual stories, on the owner, etc. he object is “fused” into the main narrative and is given back its personal nature only during guided tours. A very diferent choice is that of the CNHI in Paris, where the “Galerie des dons” (Gallery of gifts) becomes, symbolically, a very important exhibit. he gallery is physically separated from the permanent exhibition and constitutes a poetic, emotional look at objects brought from home, touched a thousand times, chosen carefully by the individuals who recognise themselves in the institution. After a visit to the thematic exhibition, the walk through this part of the museum suggests a kind of secular ritual of dismissal, a (reversible) wish to contribute—or to give back. Another interesting case-study which features the idea of “making objects speak” is that of the German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven, also described in detail further on. Here, for example, a pair of jeans owned in the 1970s by a Vietnamese worker represents modernity itself—seen both from Vietnam and from East Germany. he visitor is told the story of the owner, gets to know her name, becomes familiar with her. he owner of the object is given a signiicant role, and his/her story is recounted via the “technological” passport given to every visitor at the entrance. As European museums are slowly taking into consideration ways of involving, including and questioning the immigrants, of telling their stories as connected to that of our emigrants, or of opening up spaces for dialogue and confrontation, the exhibition scale still leans in favour of emigration. Indeed, in this time of globalisation, travelling is no longer such a big deal—at least from some countries to others. Many immigrants simply arrive by plane, or even by train. In the 19th century and irst half of the 20th century, emigration from Europe to America or to Australia was a real epic, with the ocean crossing—so many of the people had never seen the sea before—, the hiatus on board the ships, and the long-awaited arrival in the new country. he huge amount of literature about arrival at Ellis Island or other ports, with all the confusion, hearing an unfamiliar language, fears and hopes all mixed together, is a genre in itself. Many museums, therefore, choose to stress the epic nature of 26 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 27 Museo Regionale dell’Emigrazione in Gualdo Tadino, near Perugia, is located in a 12th century building, the Palazzo del Podestà. he verticality of the building suggested to organising the display backwards—the departure, and the reasons for it, is the subject of the upper loor, the journey is described on the irst loor (with images and audio recordings about ocean crossings) and the arrival on the ground loor (integration, food, religion, work, with a particular focus on mining, this being one of the most common jobs for emigrants to Belgium). While original documents are displayed in very poetic ways—inserted into Plexiglas sheets and hanging from the ceiling, more as if they were lying than as an invitation to be read—, the general choice was to use ICT extensively and, in particular, video projections. Sounds, songs old and new, and personal accounts are mixed with videos from television archives or contemporary images of migrants. img. 4.10 — The “Cultures” section in the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, Paris © EPPD–Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration. the departure through an immersive experience leading chronologically from departure to arrival. his is particularly the case for museums with a strong geographical connotation, often located near the main ports of departure. Despite a certain penchant for the rhetoric of costume drama, it cannot be denied that this linguistic choice, if well managed, is very efective, and very rewarding in terms of visitor numbers. he examples of the German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven, Ballinstadt in Hamburg and the MeM pavilion inside the Galata Museum in Genoa testify to this. Dolls dressed in old-fashioned clothes, the omnipresent suitcases—often mixed in with monitors, audio sources or other ICT devices—, environmental reconstructions, such as the dining room on the ocean liners, the sleeping cabins, the toilets, or the arrival at Ellis Island are the common features of this immersive museum language. On the other hand, museums who do not have such a strong “genius loci” tend to design and propose more “abstract” layouts, where identiication and emotions do not necessarily rely on theatrical techniques and a set design-like museography. his is the case for the CNHI in Paris, where the building, with its colonial origins, is so strongly characteristic that the exhibition design wisely chose to detach from it as much as possible, choosing bright colours, linear showcases and a frequent insertion of contemporary artwork. his is also the case for the MhiC near Barcelona where, as the original building fairly small and not particularly appealing, the choice was to “occupy” the garden over time with volumes each characterised by a strong personality, in dialogue with the content, if not with the form—the wagon of an old train side by side with the hypercontemporary “Espai Migrar”. Other museums, such as those of Gualdo Tadino and Camigliatello Silano, both in Italy, use a mixture of historical allusions and contemporary, advanced exhibition techniques. he result is hybrid, but interesting. he In Camigliatello Silano, in Calabria, the Fondazione Napoli Novantanove chose to adapt an existing building and turn it into a “ship”. Here, Gian Antonio Stella, journalist and author of L’orda. Quando gli albanesi eravamo noi—a best-selling examination of Italian emigration in the 19th and 20th centuries—, has “translated” his book into an exhibition. While the exterior is clean and simple, the interior suggests the shape of a vessel, which is a very odd efect, as the building itself is located in a mountainous area in central Calabria, quite far from the sea. he museum is described as “narrating”, as it does not display documents, objects or historical traces, but rather the history of emigration itself, mainly through posters and rare audio iles. he Internet is a fundamental resource in connecting the existing museums to the huge network of projects in progress (Tirabassi 2007): a case in point is the International Network of Migration Institutions launched by Unesco and the IOM-International Organization for Migrations in 2007 (www.migrationmuseums.org), which is still a useful point of departure, despite being very seldom updated, and therefore serving more as a general map rather than as a working or information tool for specialists. he launching of the website followed an important Expert Meeting on Migration Museums (Rome, 23-25 October)5. he AEMI (Association of European Migration Institutions, aemi.eu) gathers together a number of museums, archives and research centres that work as a network and meet once a year at an international thematic conference to share results, projects and objectives. Another important resource is the website of the International Coalition of Historic Sites of Conscience, online since 2008 (www.sitesofconscience.org), which deals with migration transversely—part of the Coalition is the Immigrations and Civil Rights Sites of Conscience Network, members of whom are, just to quote the European ones, the Bois du Cazier in Marcinelle, the Galata–Museo del Mare in Genoa and the Red Star Line Museum in Ant5 See the Centro Altreitalie (www.altreitalie.it/Le_Migrazioni_Italiane_In_Rete/Musei_E_Mostre/Musei_Italiani.kl) and the Museo dell’Emigrazione Italiana websites (http://www.museonazionaleemigrazione.it/elenco.php?id=4), last visited on December 10th 2012. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 29 28 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) werp. here are also many websites dealing with the representation of migration from or to a precise state or territory6, but a closer examination would fall outside the scope of this paper. Duclos, Jean-Claude. 2008. “L’immigration au Musée dauphinois.” In Migrations, mémoires, musées, edited by Laure Teulières and Sylvie Toux, 53–64. Toulouse: CNRS-Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail. In conclusion, I would like to mention briely the criteria used in choosing the case studies analysed. he irst is the originality expressed in the connection content–architecture. his is why the German Emigration Center, the CNHI and the MeM were included. he Red Star Line Museum, despite not being open yet, is also part of this list, and the editors and I thought it important for it to be included, both for its architecture and its urban implications. BallinStadt was also included as an example of an interesting memory rescue operation, involving an entire historical area in Hamburg. Green, Nancy L. 2007. “A French Ellis Island? Museums, Memory and History in France and the United States.” History Workshop Journal (63): 239–53. Secondly, since much of my inquiry is on the space given to contemporary immigration in migration museums, the reader will ind descriptions of two key examples—the Immigrantmuseet and the MhiC. Anna Chiara Cimoli Golding, Viv. 2009. Learning at the Museum Frontiers. Identity, Race and Power. Farnham: Ashgate. Karp, Ivan, Corinne A. Kratz, Lynn Szwaja, and Tomàs Ybarra-Frausto, eds. 2006. Museum Frictions. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Keith, Kimberly F. 2012. “Moving beyond the mainstream: insight into the relationship between community-based heritage organizations and the museum.” In Museums, equality and social justice, edited by Richard Sandell, and Eithne Nightingale, 45–58. London–New York: Routledge. Kinard, John. 1972. “he Museum in the Service of Man Today and Tomorrow”, In Papers from the Ninth General Conference of ICOM, 151–156. Paris: ICOM. Labrador, Angela M. 2010. “Heritage in Conlict and Consensus: New Approaches to the Social, Political, and Religious Impact of Public Heritage in the 21st Century.” International Journal of Cultural Property (17): 655–57. Pecci, Anna Maria, ed. 2009. Patrimoni in migrazione. Milan: Franco Angeli. æ references Baur, Joachim. 2010. “Il museo dell’immigrazione.” Nuova museologia (22): 2–8. — — —. 2009. Die Musealisierung der Migration. Einwanderungsmuseen und die Inszenierung dermultikulturellen Nation. Bielefeld: Transcript. — — —. 2008. “Imagining a Community of Immigrants. Révisions des nations dans les musées d’immigration des Etats-Unis, du Canada et de l’Australie.” In Migrations, mémoires, musées, edited by Laure Teulières and Sylvie Toux, 15–30. Toulouse: CNRS-Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail. Bodo, Simona and Mascheroni, Silvia. 2012. Educare al patrimonio in chiave interculturale. Milan: Fondazione ISMU. Bodo, Simona, Kirsten Gibbs, and Margherita Sani. 2009. Museums as Places for Intercultural Dialogue. Dublin: MAPforID Group. Bolla, Margherita and Roncaccioli Angela, eds. 2007. Il museo come promotore di integrazione sociale e di scambi culturali. Verona: Comune di Verona. Cameron, Duncan F. 1971. “he Museum, a Temple or the Forum”. Curator: he Museum Journal 14 (1): 11–24. Colucci, Michele. 2007. “Storia o memoria? L’emigrazione italiana tra ricerca storica, uso pubblico e valorizzazione culturale”. Studi emigrazione 44 (167): 721–28. 6 See for example, for the case of Germany, www.migration-ausstellen.de (exhibitions) and www. migrationsgeschichte.de (collections). The network Migration in Europe (www.network-migration. org) also provides good information about everything concerning the theme of migration, and also the relationship between migrations and museums. Websites accessed 30th December 2012. Poehls, Kerstin. 2012. “Museums in Movement? Mobilities and Migration in Current Exhibitions in Europe.” Narrations (website) http://www.eclabs.org/ sites/www.eclabs.org/iles/4152/kerstin_poehls_museums_in_movement_ feb_2012.pdf ). Accessed 19th March 2013. Pomian, Krysztof. 2005. “Le musée de l’Europe à la question des migrations.” Hommes et Migrations (1255): 63–71. Sandell, Richard. 2007. Museums, Prejudice, and the Reframing of Diference. London-New York: Routledge. — — —, ed. 2002. Museums, Society, Inequality. London-New York: Routledge. Sandell, Richard, and Eithne Nightingale, eds. 2012. Museums, equality and social justice. London–New York: Routledge. Szekeres, Viv. 2002. “Representing Diversity and Challenging Racism: the Migration Museum.” In Museums, Society, Inequality, edited by Richard Sandell, 42–52. London-New York: Routledge. Teulières, Laure and Sylvie Toux, eds. 2008. Migrations, mémoires, musées. Toulouse: CNRS-Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail. Tirabassi, Maddalena. 2007. “Musei reali e virtuali sulle migrazioni.” Studi Emigrazione 44 (167): 754–61. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 31 Museum and Nation æ Joachim Baur Dr. Joachim Baur is an independent curator and museum expert, based in Berlin. As co-founder and partner of the museum consulting irm “Die Exponauten” (www.die-exponauten.com) he currently develops the master plan for a new museum at the historic site of the famous Friedland refugee camp and curates an exhibition on 19th century globalization at the Museum of Communication Berlin. He teaches courses in museum studies at NYU Berlin and HTW University of Applied Sciences Berlin and lectures widely on contemporary museum-related issues. Dr. Baur holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology (University of Tuebingen, 2009) and an M.A. in Modern European History (University of Stuttgart, 2001) and Museum Studies (New York University, 2004). He is the recipient of numerous grants and scholarships, among others from Fulbright, the German Historical Institute Washington DC and the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation and has published on the history and theory of museums, migration history, representations of multiculturalism and the trans-/nationalization of memory. Recent books include: Die Musealisierung der Migration. Einwanderungsmuseen und die Inszenierung der multikulturellen Nation, Bielefeld 2009; Museumsanalyse. Methoden und Konturen eines neuen Forschungsfeldes, Bielefeld 2010 (ed.). img. 4.11 — The “Cultures” section in the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, Paris © EPPD–Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration. 32 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Since its birth as a public institution in the 18th century, and throughout its development in the 19th century, the museum has had a very close relationship with the stabilisation, consolidation and cultural legitimacy of the concept of the nation and nation state. In recent years, this connection has been highlighted by numerous authors1. he primary reference for the majority of studies – and also for this essay – can be found in the work of Benedict Anderson, where the nation is seen as an “imagined community”, which deines itself as a “political community represented as limited and sovereign” (ref.?). According to the author, the national community inds a deinition from the fact that its members develop a sense of belonging that prescinds from mutual knowledge within the community, that is, by having directly encountered and heard about the other members of the community. It must be a limited community since no nation encompasses the whole of humanity. It characterises itself, always and exclusively, as its deined part, and in this way it distinguishes itself from other nations. In the Enlightenment tradition, the nation is conceived as sovereign; as dynastic legitimacy declined, to be replaced by a tendency towards freedom and self-determination, the nation state found its extent, its purpose and its symbol. he nation is a community “regardless of actual inequality and exploitation, intended as a comradely union of similars” (17). Anderson argues that the evolution of the concept of the nation should be read in the light of the cultural consolidation of the nation. In his opinion, nationalism aims to create and make plausible an organic, almost natural, bond for a given population with a distinct culture and within a particular geographic area. He attaches special importance to the concept of the temporal and to the dissemination and promotion of languages through the press and commercial book market. He identiies three efective instruments of political power (especially with regards to colonialism): the census, the map and the museum. he census provides information about dominated people, the map provides information about the dominated lands, while the museum performs the function of reassuring the state about the legitimacy of its origins (163). Sharon Macdonald (2000, 126-130) has expanded upon the observations of Anderson, which were occasional and only referred to the colonial state. She examines the museum’s role in education and in the continuous updating of national identity, analysing its function of giving a logic to the nation state since the 19th century. he starting point is Anderson’s observation that national identiication requires the projection of feelings of belonging onto direct experience. When such identiication cannot be based on social relations, it must in1 It may be convenient here indicate the necessary distinction between nation and nation state: while “State” indicates a political system, legal and bureaucratic, “nation” refers to men’s experiences within this system, in the sense of a supposed unity because of language, culture or traditions. The construction of the nation has in particular to unify the population and the state. The state in its abstract form is difficult to identify with (Stratton and Ang 1998, 139). European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 33 stead have a cultural basis and be anchored to “unifying habits and ideas to a commonality of representation, ritual and symbolism” (126). he central element of national discourses, as described by Macdonald and Richard Handler (1988), is the vision of a completely speciic culture, one “made for purpose”. Museums are particularly suited to promote such a culture since they have already established themselves as important repositories of “cultural objects”. Collections had once projected the power and the tastes of princes, nevertheless, once they came into the public domain via museums, they could be used to demonstrate (or even verify) the “inner depth” of the nation. he collections and the buildings housing them could now promote the longed for national “speciic culture”, and sponsor national awareness and pride. Moreover the possession of artefacts from other cultures, allowed nations and in particular colonizing powers to boast of their ability to expand beyond their national boundaries and exercise global domination. hus the nation’s world importance and claims to greatness were laid out for all to see. hese displays aimed to put distance between the nation and the others. hey also promoted the idea of excluding foreign cultures and the proclamation of cultural and technological superiority of the home nation. hey responded to a Darwinian view of culture, with the superior itness of the nation’s “own culture” trumpeted. As summarised by Macdonald: “Museums then were capable of articulating two temporal narratives: one, a distinctive national trajectory’ and two, the nation as inal triumphant stage of successive progression. hat museum could present both of these simultaneously, through speciic artefacts and the sequences into which they were arranged, was part of their technological magic.”2 (2000, 128) In its examination of the relationship between the museum and the nation, Tony Bennett (1995, 141) cites Benedict Anderson and interweaves his thoughts with those of Nicos Poulantzas, a theoretician of the nation state. From the latter, Bennett takes the idea that modern state organizes national unity by establishing a speciic relationship between time and space, between history and state territory. his is expressed in the dual phenomena of the historicization of territory and the territorialisation of history, which show how much nationhood is about producing parallels between history and territory. In this process the history museum and historical sites acquire a special signiicance due to their proximity to the political culture of the state and the authority of state institutions. In museums, the national past is not documented but created. Museums 2 Macdonald notes a third quality of museums, which is that they hark back to classical designs, thus implying age and continuity through time. By acquiring a view “outside and above” and apparently detached, museums according to Mitchell (1988, 18-23) have defined the western conception of objectivity and reality. 34 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 35 are places where the “originating” myths are brought up-to-date and projected back onto the past, “creating the national stories, connecting the individual to national historical events in a more extensive and meaningful way” (Stuart Hall, cited by Kaschuba 2001, 29). congruence of culture, population and territory, which according to Anderson underlies the “imagined community”, is ever more uncertain and it is becoming increasingly diicult to marry old concepts of nationhood with current realities (Curthoys 2003; Cerwonka 2004; Kaplan 2006). he classic version of national museum exhibiting [...] is based on a key principle: the production and articulation of a common history and culture. A construct of this type has two implications: on the one hand, it serves as a social harmonizer by attempting to reconcile divergent interests and social conlicts within a wider whole (remember Benedict Anderson’s “imagined society” as a “comradely” union, regardless of the actual exploitation and inequality); on the other hand, in the desire to emphasize an unmistakable “speciic culture”, there is tendency to minimize cultural heterogeneity (Forster 1991, 249). In this sense, the theoretician of diasporas Khachig Tölölyan conceived in the museum as space of imagination, alluding to what is universal and referring above all to the symbolic meaning of collecting; he observes that: “[the nation-state] always imagines and represents itself as a land, a territory, a place that functions as the site of homogeneity, equilibrium, integration; this is the domestic tranquillity that hegemony-seeking national elites always desire and sometimes achieve” (Tölölyan 1991, 6). Nation states were never hermetically sealed cultural and clearly deined areas, although they were commonly represented and perceived in this way. his is quite clear today with the enormous increase in cross-border movements of people, goods, information and ideas, and the ubiquitous coverage of these processes. he basis of clear narratives of a national identity has been undermined. In this context, migration has played a decisive role. Arjun Appadurai (1998) has noted that the social and cultural formation of collective identities has changed irreversibly. Almost as a counterweight to the territorialisation of history and culture, he describes the movement of people, concepts and ideas as the strongest trait of this era. æ The Crisis of National Meta-narrative: Globalization and Heritage Dissonance Nowadays museums are far less self-assured than their 19th century predecessors. It is increasingly rare to ind emphatic celebrations of national greatness, glory, manifest destiny, civil or even racial superiority. Social changes in general society were of importance as were the “new social history” and the “new museology”. One-sided references to national historical splendour and grandeur have lost their previous credibility (Davison 2001; Beier-de Hahn 2005 a). National narratives in museums, as elsewhere, are confronted with far more substantial challenges than questions of getting the right tenor or feel in their work. he German term “Leistung” indicates the achievement, the fulilment of a duty, the beneit, the realisation and production of a hit, the triumph and trauma within the representation. he contours of the “imagined communities” need to be rethought from numerous points of view. Since they depend on the past, national narratives are neither static nor limited; they must, on the contrary, be continuously questioned and tested over time. he basic elements of the national narratives and their narrative strategies must be plausible under what-so-ever historical and social conditions are in force, in order to be reliable and efective (Foster 1991, 241; Kaschuba 2001, 29). his process has become precarious. he construct of the nation as an entity bonded by common culture, history and memory has lost its persuasive force, in an era of globalization and pluralism within society. he In his analysis, global ethnic spaces have arisen from culturally diverse practices; he observes that mobile actors such as tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles, etc. and the imagination released from space are “imagined communities” that act transversally with respect to the national State. James Cliford (1997, 250) completes the theoretical picture on the existence of speciic diasporas transcending the territoriality and temporality of the national state. hese diasporas are characterized by the fact that they have maintained important bonds and practical ties with a distant homeland or with scattered groups elsewhere, thus establishing transnational networks of relationships. In addition Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson focus on the phenomenon of de-territorialized identity construction. he recollection of faraway places functions as a symbolic anchor for immigrants in the formation of identity and community. According to this view, having the diasporas “collective far from the homeland” and maintaining “routes” and “roots” in a vital way, it becomes ever more diicult to put them in imaginary national narratives. For Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (1992, 11) this phenomenon of deterritorialized identity construction and its antagonistic position is not reducible to simple national narratives. According to these authors, the current situation is characterised by a “profound bifocality that characterizes locally lived lives in a globally interconnected world”. In other observations, they ascribe a role to memory. he memory of distant places, or rather the construction of places recalled from a geographical distance, representing for migrants a symbolic anchor in the creation of identity and community. he arguments of Mary Stevens (2006) are similar, stressing in particular the resistance potential of remembrance, in the context of post colonialism and migration, as well as the subsequent challenge to nation-building: “In the postcolonial context, memory has often been seen as a strategy to resist hegemonic power. Diasporic cultural memory has been perceived as particularly subversive since it preserves within the bounds of the country 36 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) of residence the presence of an elsewhere, an outside. It is not necessary for the memory itself to be emancipatory (indeed it may be imbued with a repressive nostalgia that hinders the development of the subject). he very existence of a set of stories that can only with diiculty be incorporated into accounts of a shared national past constitutes a form of resistance”. In this way transnational dynamics – evident as real or imaginary migrations, as well as the memories and the imaginary border crossing – bring into question national stories and go beyond the borders of the nation state, thus blurring a perimeter that was once thought of as sharp and deined. At the same time, because of cultural pluralism within the nation state, the classical idea of national imagination, which is “one State, one nation, one people, one culture” (Bennett and Carter 2001, 254), has been put in doubt. Instead of “imagined communities”, based on history and culture, we discover a growing fragmentation and conlict. his is primarily true for colonial societies3, such as the USA, Canada and Australia, which in recent decades have been shaken by deep “heritage dissonances”. In light of this concept, John Tunbridge and Gregory Ashworth (1996, 179-222; also: Graham et al. 2000, 96-111), with particular attention to the Canadian context, but without excluding the other two aforementioned countries, discuss the diiculties that arise in trying to build a national identity, based on the history and cultural heritage. In their opinion, the current situation is that of a fragmentation into “heritage identities”, where there are three types of social groups, which are themselves fragmented. On the one hand there are the so-called “founders’ society” – a British matrix in the United States and Australia, and a British and French in Canada – which form the basis of national origin myths and dominate the national narrative. At the moment they face two key challenges: one is represented by indigenous peoples, who are pushing to be recognized in their status as a colonized country, to have colonial crimes recognized, and, last but not least, material compensation; the other is represented by immigrants and their descendants, who want to be respected for their cultural heritage and have their history accepted within the national narrative. Starting from here, according to scholars, tensions may arise: reference to history and culture often function as a social glue, but they can also generate centrifugal tendencies. According to Tunbridge and Ashwort (1996, 179), the situation in the USA represents a special case that should be considered in depth. he diversity of the cultural heritage there reaches a pinnacle and we must be aware of the particularly explosive memory of the slave trade. Previously in the USA conlicts and diferences have been defused by the existence and maintenance of a powerful national mythology. We can say that US national identity has stronger ideological and political foundations than 3 Together with Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis (1995, 3) I call “colonial society” (“settler societies”) “societies in which Europeans have settled, where their descendants have remained politically dominant over indigenous peoples, and where a heterogeneous society has developed in class, ethnic and racial terms”. The authors make it clear that in this case it is not a fixed category but a continuum, which makes further differentiations necessary. In this study a distinction is made between United States, a “settler republic”, and “white dominions” Canada and Australia. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 37 in France or Canada. he “American Creed”, the American civil religion, which dates back to the revolution and is nourished by universal political secularism, takes as its core universal values rather than the values of a particular civilization (Stratton and Ang 1998, 141-147). Its founding elements are the rights of the individual and individual freedom, equality before the law and private property. As we know, two of the most potent symbols of the USA are the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell. Despite the above, there is a growing articulation of speciic group stories and the dissolution of the founding narratives; this fact has been noted and commented on in the USA with some discomfort. he veteran Democrat Arthur M. Schlesinger, for example, has highlighted the direct link between the pluralisation of cultural heritage and the erosion of national cohesion. his was his admonition, in 1991, in an essay published in Time Magazine: “he growing emphasis on the USA multicultural heritage exalts racial and ethnic pride at the expense of social cohesion” (Stratton and Ang 1998, 135). In the strengthening of ethnic-based identity, he has diagnosed a reevaluation of group identity, which in a sense could come between the individual and his duties towards the American nation, thereby releasing the centrifugal forces. Referring to the US national motto “E pluribus unum”, he pointed out: “he balance is shifting from unum to pluribus” (Stratton and Ang 1998, 145). He fears what he calls the “Disuniting of America”, if a reliable container for the growing cultural diversity is not found. Similarly, from a more conservative view point and also in Canada and Australia, there are worries about too many discordant voices causing a “tribalization”, “balkanization” or “a new babel” in a multicultural society, devoid of a shared foundation ( Jupp 2001, 265; Geissler 2003, 23). Whether the development of the nation is seen as problematic because of loss of its cohesion or as positive because of freedom for subnational identities, it remains true that there has been incalculable growth in the complexity of building a national narrative, establishing ties and mutual dependencies. John Docker and Gerhard Fischer (2000, 6) make several interesting points about some of the contradictions and conlicts of modern nationhood. “Colonial versus post-colonial, old settlers versus new settlers, indigenous people versus invaders, majority versus innumerable minorities, white against black or coloured, the search for a collective, inclusive or “national identity (in an era of post-colonial globalization) vis-à-vis the search for individual and personal or group identity, based on ethnicity, language, country of origin, or religion”. In museums the pluralisation of cultural heritage and the dissolution of widely shared narratives has manifested itself in two trends: the irst records – in the sense of the diagnosis of Tunbridge and Ashworth about the “heritage dissonance” – an increase in the number and intensity of disagreements about exhibitions and museum projects (Beier-de Haan 2005a; Dubin 2006; Kaplan 2006). he second sees a trend towards 38 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) greater diferentiation of political identity in the presentation of groups and individuals in central institutions (Doering 2002, 10; König and Ohliger 2006, 14).4 Both trends are equally symptom and cause of a crisis in museums’ representation of the nation state. However, at the same time, the disorientation in the consolidation of the “imagined community” – already proposed in the conception of crisis as a decisive turning point – also strengthens the search for new forms of nation-building, of alternative founding narratives for the community and a “common ground”5. æ Showing Migration and Showing the Nation Robert Foster (1991, 237) raises a central question for this analysis: “How can the construction of national boundaries be sustained in a world now more than ever open to cultural lows? Can a collectivity imagine or be made to imagine itself as a bounded entity when its members are increasingly exposed to a ‘cosmopolitan cultural regime’ through media, travel, and encounters with migrants and refugees?” Castles and others (1992 5) then add, with clear reference to society’s culturally heterogeneous fabric, that the celebration of cultural diversity with the advent of multiculturalism has replaced dominant national racial stereotypes. his change naturally brings certain diiculties: “How is the tension between ethnic pluralism and the cohesiveness of society as a whole to be resolved? How can a nation be deined, if not in terms of ethnic identity, shared history, traditions, culture and language?” In summary the question is this: how can the nation in a time of multiple transnational dynamics and the internal pluralisation of society, be conceived as a community entirely uniied, deined and tied to a speciic territory? Even more provocatively: how is it possible to narrate and ex4 To illustrate the fragmentation of the political identity in the US national historic landscape, Zahava Doering (2002) takes as an example the development currently underway at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where new and autonomous museums of so-called “minorities” are constantly being opened. Following the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian in 2004, the National Museum of African American History and Culture is currently under construction, and similar projects for Latinos and Asian Americans are under consideration. To a certain extent the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which opened in 1993, may also be included in this category, although in this case we go beyond the special significance for American Jews of the Holocaust (Pieper 2006, 189-191), and we see a more general vaunting of the moral superiority of American values. 5 The national museums of cultural history are the natural locations for new ideas and research in this field. It’s worth mentioning: the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa/Hull, opened in 1989 (Macdonald 1992; Delaney 1994; Mackey 1999, 73-88; Dean/2005 Rider), the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, 2001 (2002, Message Gore 2005; Cvoro 2006 as other contributions from Healy and Witcomb 2006) and the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C which is currently undergoing renovation. These museums are founded in part on old collections. This case leads to the difficulty or even impossibility of producing a synthetic and coherent national history in a multicultural word full of diverse ideas about identity. Richard Handler (2003), powerfully shows how curators, after great debate, have given up on trying to narrate a coherent national story. The important sense of community now is unable to grow from the same “historical substance”, instead - as Handler says, in reference to the functionalist model of secular rites of Durkheim - it must come as “solidarity ritual”, in the common consumption of attractive exhibits, and the actual content becomes secondary. The transverse phenomenon of the “new national museums”, which were created and are ideally placed in second modernity, is the subject of a profound analysis by Beier-de Haan 2005a. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 39 hibit the multicultural nation in a context of globalization? And, as for the museum, does it have a role to play? According to Sharon Macdonald (2000, 124), in fact, the crisis of “representation/re-presentation”, raises questions for museums because of the close historical relationship between the museum and the nation: “If the nation-state and the kind of ‘public’ with which it was associated are on the brink of obsolescence, then what future is there for museums? Are museums perhaps too intimately linked up with material- and place-rooted, homogeneous and bounded conceptions of identity to be able to address some of the emerging identity dilemmas of the ‘second modern age’ or ‘late modernity’?” […] I would like to propose an interpretation of the birth of museums of immigration as a way to overcome the crisis in the concept of nation in museums. My thesis is that the internal dynamics of these places, with all the diversity of their collections, is a metaphor for immigration and can demonstrate an “imagined community” for immigrants. In this way the various stories of immigrants from diferent origins are not only intertwined among themselves, but are also blended with the story of the early settlers, who were themselves once immigrants. In this way, an immigration museum can serve as a place for the harmonisation of dissonant cultural heritages and also as a platform for a multicultural vision of the nation. he concept of “re-vision” evokes two ideas: irstly a renewal of content and secondly a structural consolidation of the concept of nation. he irst aspect involves the recognition of the history of those who have been marginalized for many years, the revaluation of the alternative narratives of non-hegemonic groups, and above all eliminating mono-cultural thinking and encouraging its replacement with a multicultural mentality. he second brings these various narratives together in a migration master narrative. hose imaginations, which have been stretching beyond the limits of the nation state, can be welcomed back in, and can be united and regulated. he museums of immigration can act as tools for re-centring identity politics (above all ethnic identity), as places of national political identity, by gathering and assimilating details of political identity. hey can act as a “staging ground” (Annis 1986) for nation reformation, in the name of multiculturalism. hus, museums of immigration will be designed as a boundary and a continuation from previous museums that represented the nation. Regarding continuity, [...] we must particularly note to what extent social inequalities and conlicts are swept under the carpet when exhibiting an “imagined community” of immigrants, in the name of ethnic and cultural unity, or excused as cultural diversity. What is at stake is more than the relationship between exhibiting, appearances and the national meta-narrative, even better between exhibitions, history and the point of view of the indigenous population: we must bring clarity and, more generally, think about how, in presenting a decidedly inclusive narrative, we can examine exclusion. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 41 40 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) æ References Anderson, Benedict (1996). Die Erindung der Nation. Zur Karriere eines folgenreichen Konzepts. Frankfurt am Mein: Campus. Annis, Sheldon (1986): he Museum as a Staging Ground for Symbolic Action. In: Museum 38/3, 168-171. Graham, Brian J./Ashworth, Gregory John/Tunbridge, J.E. (2000): A Geography of Heritage, Power, Culture and Economy. London: Arnold. Gupta, Akhil/ Ferguson, James (1992): Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity and the Politics of Diference. In: Cultural Anthropology 7/1, 6-23. Appadurai, Arjun (1998): Globale ethnische Räume. Bemerkungen und Fragen zur Entwicklung einer transnationalen Anthropologie. In: Beck, Ulrich (ed.), Perspektiven der Weltgesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main: suhrkamp, 11-40. Handler, Richard (2003): From Cultural Coherence to Ritual Solidarity in an American Natural History Museum. Proceedings from the conference Contextualizing Ethnicity: Conversations Across Disciplines, Center for International Ethnicity Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh (NC), (http:// www2.chass.ncsu.edu/CIES/HandlerPaper.htm (12.07.2008)). Beier-de Haan, Rosemarie (2005), Erinnerte Geschichte – Inszenierte Geschichte. Ausstellungen und Museen in der Zweiten Moderne. Frankfurt am Mein: Suhrkamp. Jupp, James (2001): he Institution of Culture. Multiculturalism. In: Bennett, Tony/Carter, David (eds.), Culture in Australia. Policies, Publics and Programs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 259-277. Bennett, Tony (1995): he Birth of the Museum. History, Politics, heory. London-New York: Routledge. König, Mareike/Ohliger, Rainer (2006): Facing Migration History in Europe. Between Oblivion and Representation. In: König, Mareike and Ohliger, Rainer (eds.), Enlarging European Memory. Migration Movements in historical perspective, Ostildern: Jan horbecke Verlag, 11-19. Bennett, Tony/Carter, David (eds.) (2001): Culture in Australia. Policies, Publics and Programs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Castles, Stephen/Cope, Bill/Kalantzis, Mary/Morrissey, Michael (1992): Mistaken Identity: Multiculturalism and the Demise of Australian Nationalism. Sydney: Pluto. Cerwonka, Allaine (2004): Native to the Nation: Disciplining Landscapes and Bodies in Australia, Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press. Cliford, James (1997), Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Curthoys, Ann (2000): Cultural History and the Nation, in Teo, Hsu-Ming/ White, Richard (eds.), Cultural History in Australia, Sydney: University of New South Wales, 22-37. Davison, Graeme (2001): National Museums in a Global Age: Observations Abroad and Relections at Home. In: McIntyre, Darryl/Wehner, Kirsten (eds.), National Museums: Negotiating Histories Conference Proceedings, Canberrta: he National Museum of Australia, 12-28. Docker, John/Fischer, Gerhard (2000): Adventures of Identity. In: Id. (eds.), Race, Colour and Identity in Australia and New Zealand, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 3-20. Doering, Zahava D. (2002): Serving the Nation: Lessons from the Smithsonian, paper presented at the Museums Australia National Conference, Adelaide Conference Centre, South Australia (http://www.museumsaustralia.org.au/conf02/ Papers/Doering.pdf (26.10.2007)). Dubin, Steven C. (2006): Incivilities in Civil(-ized) Places. “Culture Wars” in Comparative Perspective. In: Macdonald, Sharon (ed.), A Companion to Museum Studies, Malden/Oxford: Blackwell, 477-493. Foster, Robert J. (1991): Making National Cultures in he Global Ecumene. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 20, 235-260. Geissler, Rainer (2003): Multikulturalism in Kanada – Modell für Deutschland? In: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B 26, 19-25. Handler, Richard (1988): Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec. Madison: University of Winsconsin Press. Kaplan, Flora E.S. (2006): Making and Remaking National Identities. In: Macdonald, Sharon (ed.), A Companion to Museum Studies, Malden: Blackwell, 152-169. Kaschuba, Wolfgang (2001): Geschichtspolitik und Identitätspolitik. Nationale und ethnische Diskurse im Kulturvergleich. In: Binder, Beate/Kaschuba Wolfgang/Niedermüller Peter (eds.): Inszenierung des Nationalen. Geschichte, Kultur und die Politik der Identitäten am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts. Köln: Böhlau, 19-42. Macdonald, Sharon (2000), Nationale, postnationale und transnationale Identitäten und das Museum. In: Beier-de Haan, Rosmarie (eds.), Geschichtskultur in der Zweiten Moderne, Frankfurt am Mein: Campus, 123-148. Mitchell, Timothy (1988): Colonising Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pieper, Katrin (2006): Die Musealisierung des Holocaust. Das Jüdische Museum Berlin und das U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.. Köln: Böhlau. Stasiulis, Daiva/Yuval-Davis, Nira (1995): Unsettling Settler Societies. Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and Class. London: Sage. Stevens, Mary (2006): Migration Rebound. State Responses to the Challenge of Transnationalism. In: Re-public. Re-Imagining Democracy (e-Journal) (http:// www.re-public.gr/en/?p=77 (12.7.2008)). Stratton, Jon and Ang, Ien (1998): Multicultural Imagined Communities. Cultural Diference and National Identity in the USA and Australia. In Bennett, David (ed.), Multicultural States. Rethinking Diference and Identity, London: Routledge, 135-162. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 43 Stella, Gian Antonio. 2011. “Il sogno delle “Meriche” che ha cambiato l’Italia.” Corriere della Sera, November. 19 The German Emigration Centre æ simone eick Simone Eick is the Managing Director of the German Emigration Center at Bremerhaven, where she previously has operated as Scientiic Director and Deputy Director. From 2003 to 2005, she has participated to the scientiic conception of the museum at Studio Andreas Heller in Hamburg. Her studies in History and Philosophy at the University of Hannover were concluded by a dissertation on “American emigration in the 19th century”. Many changes have happened since the AEMI Conference which took place in Bremerhaven in 2009. While the irst wing of the museum, opened in 2005, is about emigration from Germany and Eastern Europe via Bremerhaven from 1830 to 1972, in April 2012 we opened a new wing dedicated to immigration in Germany. We are now, therefore, a museum about migration from 1683 until today (we chose the year 1683 because it was the year a irst large group of German people settled in North America). he two buildings are connected by a bridge, which of course is very important to highlight its symbolical meaning. We have not changed the “emigration” part, but now we provide a closer look at the integration of German Americans in the Unites States and on immigration to Germany in the last 300 years. he German Emigration Centre is located in Bremerhaven, somehow “at the end of the world” for many Germans. We are located at the New previous page — German Emigration Center, Bremerhaven, Germany. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. 44 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 45 Americans in order to show that the Germans were not “top of the class”, and therefore to discuss the theme of integration, interculturality etc. We reconstructed parts of Grand Central Terminal in New York in the year 1913. It is a place of transit, both physical and symbolic—from being an emigrant to an immigrant. Here, a German mother with her child asks where the train to Chicago leaves: it is a way of talking about the movement of German people in the U.S. img. 4.13 — German Emigration Center Bremerhaven, Germany. Harbour from where many people departed. he total number of people who left Bremerhaven harbour totals 7.2 million, among whom 3.4 million were from Eastern Europe. Bremerhaven is like any other German city, a place where, since the Fifties, people came to work, mainly in the ishing industry. Since the oicial ban of organised labour coming from abroad to Germany, which happened in 1973, the workers’ family members also arrived in Bremerhaven. Our museum has 200,000 visitors a year; we are a public-private partnership project. he museum’s narration is based on two pillars. One is the importance of real biographies and objects, the other is the efectiveness of the historical reconstructions. I will give you a quick overview of the old building because some of you have not been in Bremerhaven, so that you can get the picture. You start from a reconstruction of the quay in 1890, and from this moment the visit turns into a kind of time–travel. In the “Gallery of the 7 million” we display a part of our collection of migrants’ biographies. As a matter of fact we have carried out research on over 2000 people who migrated via Bremerhaven. For some of them, we know all the generations, up to 7 generations of one family, but in other cases we just know the name and the date of departure. he central part of the museum concerns the theme of the crossing and here we display the changes that happened from 1854 from 1929. At the end, there is a reconstruction of Ellis Island, where you can experience how it feels to be asked questions by an immigration inspector, and if you do not answer correctly you have to go back. his is very popular among young people. As for the new wing, when we started thinking about the extension of our museum, there were a lot of questions and doubts. Our idea was, and is, that we want our visitors to compare historical migration with migration happening today, so the idea is to tell them stories about German In the second room we have a waiting hall where we tell stories of German Americans from 1683 to today. his is the last room of the historical tour. After that, the visitor is shown the history of immigration to Germany in the last 300 years. How should be it be displayed? We decided to rebuild a 1973 shopping mall, a key date not only because it was the year when organised labour migration to Germany stopped, and so many family members started arriving, but also because it was only three years after the opening of Eastern Europe following visit of the former Chancellor Willy Brandt to Warsaw. We could have chosen another year, but it was important for us to have a historical lavour, and we did not want to portray the Germany of today because the following year it would be old. So, we chose a public place again, because this allows us to meet all the members of society, all the social classes and the diferent nationalities etc. We have a German department store, a supermarket, a travel agency, a hairdresser, and of course “Eis” (ice-cream sellers), this is important because of all the Italian ice-cream makers who came to Germany. he idea is that the visitors discover migration in Germany in everyday life, so we chose shops representing diferent aspects of integration: the hairdresser, for example, stands for appearance, the way one looks, which is of course very important. Past the hairdresser the visitor inds the antiques shop. his is a very important shop because here we deal with the theme of religion, identity, tradition and what in Germany we call Heimat, something linked with the concept of “home”. For example, here we show objects referring to diferent religions—we have “memory objects” from Protestants, Lutherans, Calvinists, Catholics, Muslims, Jews and Serbian Orthodox, the latter ofered to the museum by refugees from the former Yugoslavia—, so the visitor can compare each faith with another and ind out which objects were worshipped by diferent groups of migrants. he visitors then ind a photo studio where we display albums, designed like those personal photo albums that are kept in almost every family. his display is very popular because it rouses the curiosity and allows the visitors to have a closer look at people they have never met. In the department store one can see how we work with the objects from our collections. You can see “memory objects” displayed together with real objects that were sold in a department store in 1973. In a showcase you can see fake Diesel jeans, an obvious western status symbol, made by Vietnamese workers in the GDR. Most of these Vietnamese people stayed after the fall of the Berlin wall. Another example is two drinking bottles looking almost the same at irst glance, but one is from 1973, while the other belonged to a miner from Poland in 1953 Visitors can compare two 46 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) objects that look the same but tell diferent stories. he idea we suggest is that you have to have a closer look, when talking about migration. On the second loor of the building there is a part we are working on at the moment, where we will have an immigration oice showing the bureaucratic steps necessary for people coming to Germany today. At the moment, we are looking for objects and for more information. We also have a cinema, with the atmosphere of the 1950s, and we are showing productions about the descendants from German migrants to the USA and Argentina. At the beginning of the visit every visitor gets a boarding pass—the entrance ticket—, and with that he gets to know the biographies of two migrants: one emigrant and one immigrant. We chose the couples very carefully: for the emigrants we have groups of settlers, workers, housewives, academics, inventors etc., while for the immigrants we chose 15 immigration groups, among whom there are Huguenots, forced migrants, students, contract workers, travelling merchants, etc. We chose these groups not only because of their large numbers, but also of their importance for German immigration history. For example, we have 4,000 Italian icemakers, but they are important because in every German city you can see their business. Let me give you two examples: one is Martha Hüner, who emigrated in 1923 to the USA, and the other is Mai Phuong Kollath, who came to Germany in 1981. Both were very young when they emigrated, both had to change their professional lives. Martha opened two bakeries in New York together with her husband, and Mai became an intercultural coach after the fall of the Berlin wall. Both of them sufered discrimination. When World War I broke out, Martha lost her bakeries because the shops were in a neighbourhood where many Czech people lived and they did not want to buy bread from the Germans. Mai lived in Rostock, in the north of Germany, where in the 90s there were violent attacks on the houses of the Vietnamese community. Both women kept objects from their parents. Martha kept a horse brush her father gave her, and Mai kept a letter from her parents and a pair of jeans. he fake Diesel jeans mentioned above. Case Studies European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 49 48 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Deutsches Auswandererhaus–German Emigration Centre Bremerhaven, Germany 2005, 2012 he Deutsches Auswandererhaus is among the major points of reference as concerns the museography of migration in Europe. Inaugurated in 2005 in a medium-sized town, peripheral to the tourism routes, even though easily accessible from Bremen and Hamburg, it has enjoyed huge success from the outset in terms of visitors (about 200,000 per year, more than 1.5 million in October 2012, 90% of whom were German, with ten percent coming from abroad, especially North America). In 2007, it received the prestigious European Museum of the Year Award, while in 2008 it won the Best in Heritage Award. In April 2012, the museum inaugurated a new 1,900-square-meter wing, built ex-novo and dedicated to immigration in Germany over the last three centuries. Seven point two million people left from Bremerhaven from 1830 to 1974; sixty percent were German, while the other 40% were Polish, Russian, Czech, Hungarian and Romanian. he harbour experienced two principal migratory waves—one around 1850, and the other circa 1880. he museum tells the story of the migrants, following them step by step along their journey through a highly immersive experience, as well as very rich from the sensory point of view and with signiicant recourse to technology, environmental reconstructions, etc. From this point of view, Bremerhaven’s museum has become a paradigm for many other European museums—including BallinStadt in Hamburg, MeM in Genoa and the Cité de la Mer in Cherbourg. he quality of the architecture, the extent of the exhibition space, the variety of exhibits, the richness of the educational program, and the amount of ICT are really outstanding. img. 4.14 — German Emigration Center: a detail of the “Gallery of the Seven Million”. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. Designed by Hamburg-based Studio Andreas Heller Architects and Designers, the Deutsches Auswandererhaus is located in front of the New Harbour, and is part of the urban renovation programme known as Havenwelten Bremerhaven (Harbour Worlds Bremerhaven), which has led to the construction of a number of tourism-oriented buildings as well as museums. In recent years, in fact, the town has undergone a radical restyling, aimed mostly at attracting family tourism centred around the theme of the sea. he story of the museum begins twenty years before its creation, when the Freundeskreis Deutsches Auswandererhaus (Circle of Friends of the German Emigration Centre), founded in 1985, began to support and promote the project. In the late Nineties, the Initiativkreis Deutsches Auswandererhaus (German Emigration Centre Initiative) also played an active role in the project. he museum is based on a private-public partnership, with funds allocated by the Municipality of Bremerhaven and the State of Bremen (not by the Federal State, although federal funds did actually pay for the construction of the new wing, at a total cost of two million euros). he museum is managed by the private company Paysage House 1–Gesellschaft für Kultur und Freizeit mbH & Co. KG. he museum’s collection is composed mainly of letters and photographs, but also includes objects such as suitcases, passenger lists, passports, family memorabilia, diaries, many of which have been donated by visitors—in some cases, the museum has made replicas, as similar as possible to the original. It is interesting to note that the museum’s longterm project has been to concentrate irst on the theme of emigration, a theme very familiar to many Germans, and of great interest to their descendants, which number more than 50 million worldwide—in addition, emigration is once again a hot topic, given that 150,000 Germans are leaving the country each year. It was only at a later stage, once the public had become European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 51 50 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 4.15 — German Emigration Center: sketch by Andreas Heller © Studio Andreas Heller, Hamburg. img. 4.16 — The emigration wing of the German Emigration Center seen from the harbor. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.17 — German Emigration Center: the “Gallery of the Seven Million” © German Emigration Center. Photo by Werner Huthmacher. familiar with the museum, that the immigration wing, treating a more delicate theme, was opened. he Deutsches Auswandererhaus’ mission is not only to run its exhibition system, which, although spectacular, appealing and rich in technology, always requires some form of mediation and space for discussion and relection. he educational activities in the museum include ilm projections, debates, book presentations, conferences, concerts, open-air tangobars, temporary exhibitions, collaborations with universities, research centres, museums and magazines. Among the many temporary exhibitions organised, we note “Paciic Palisades, California USA”—about German writers who escaped from Nazi Germany, 2006—, “Of to Buenos Aires! German emigrants and refugees in the 20th Century” (2008), “he Flight After the Flood. New Orleans–the city left behind” (2009) and “he Yellow Ticket. Traicking in Girls” (2012), the result of a research project which involved descendants of Germans resident in New Orleans, with the aim of sensitising public awareness of the link between migration and climate change, and thus shifting the focus from historical processes to contemporary issues and challenges. All the texts, both written and audio, are in English and German. “News”, a magazine containing information about the museum’s activities, is published regularly. æ critical analysis he museum is located opposite the New Harbour, opened in 1852. he place itself is representative of the history displayed inside. he genius loci here is of tremendous importance, and the architecture plays cleverly with the contiguity of inside and outside, in a sort of hyper-realistic attitude, overlapping the “artiicial” experience of the inside with the “real” nature beyond the windows. he two buildings, the irst dedicated to emigration (2005) and the more recent one to immigration (2012), are aligned geometrical blocks, parallel to the harbour, with a beautiful promenade in front, and are linked via a bridge. he overall surface is 3,200 square meters. From the compact volume of the “emigration” building emerges a transparent globe, a tribute to the travellers who left to cross the ocean (they are also celebrated in a monument located on the quay). he concrete wings, or “sails”, hint at the handkerchiefs waved at the moment of farewells. he elliptical basement is in concrete, while the upper rectangular level is covered in wood. he same covering is adopted in the new wing, giving a sense of harmony and unity to the complex. he opening of the new immigration wing emphasised the museum’s argument that emigration and immigration are actually two faces of the same coin—the eternal theme of mankind on the move, which also includes refugees, seasonal workers, asylum seekers, and all other categories of people who leave their homeland, be it for a short or extended period of time. “Moving stories” is the motto of the museum, and so reads a press release by the museum (2012): “he didactic presentation and communication of migration as a human behaviour is the main focus of the work at the German Emigration Centre. Migration is understood as all movement: from classical emigration to workmigration to light and persecution. Migration is not looked upon as temporary, but rather as a behaviour which human beings resort to when personal living conditions face the threat of a change for the worse, or when personal safety is put at risk. […] Migration is therefore a permanent phenomenon and not a inalised historical incident. Migration itself is looked upon at the German Emigration Centre as a whole process which starts with the socialisation of the potential migrant in his home country, and ends with integration in the destination country. We summarise this whole process with the key word ‘acculturation’”. he personal and direct experience of this discourse is facilitated by the visitor’s identiication with the migrant’s biography. Indeed, historical 52 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 4.18 — German Emigration Center seen from the street, with the new wing on the right © German Emigration Center. Photo by Klaus Frahm. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 53 img. 4.20 — German Emigration Center: reconstruction of the Grand Central Terminal in New York © German Emigration Center. img. 4.19 — German Emigration Center: on board the steamship © German Emigration Center. Photo by Stefan Volk. img. 4.21 — German Emigration Center: the shopping mall in the new immigration wing © German Emigration Center. 54 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) biographies constitute the heart of the museum and the key it has chosen to use. he identiication “deal” is made at the beginning of the visit, when the visitor receives a boarding pass—with an iCard—with both the data of an emigrant and those of an immigrant. hroughout the visit, when the iCard activates the interactive devices through the RFID technology (radio frequency identiication), the visitor is able to share the adventures, diiculties and challenges of that individual. he entrance is from the square behind the building, along a busy road where there are also public services. he hall contains the restaurant-cafeteria—also with open-air tables for the milder weather, and often also used for parties and receptions—, a well-stocked shop and the ticket oice. After purchasing a ticket, the visitor accesses a room which hints at a reconstruction of a 19th century waiting room of the North German Lloyd (now destroyed), dedicated to hiphop aesthetics, with graiti and posters. hey are invited to wait here until a small group is formed. It is only at this point that they are ushered into a small room where they can listen to an audio ile. Subsequently, they enter one of the most spectacular spaces in the museum, where the harbour quay is reproduced. Here, 45 igures stand, dressed in the fashions of three diferent eras of the whole 150-year period . Beyond the quay, the steamship Lahn is waiting. We see only the dark, menacing side of it, while the voices of people from Eastern Europe mingle with the noises of the harbour in the background. he visit continues in the “Gallery of the Seven Million”, a huge room with windows facing the sea. Here it is possible to glean information about the emigrants—who they were, where they came from, why they left. his is where the visitor encounters real biographies. he design is reminiscent of a 19th century archive, with an enormous chest of drawers from loor to ceiling organised chronologically. Some drawers can be opened, and they contain the stories of 2000 migrants, told through photographs, documents and letters. Devices activated by the iCard tell the story of the visitor’s “own” migrant. From the comfort of sofas facing the windows, audio iles are accessed via headphones. Exiting this bright space, comes the surprise. We become that voyager, it’s we who are embarking, and the crowd of igures on the quay are waving to us. It is interesting to note that by “collecting” the visitors together in the irst room, we establish a certain rhythm, a certain atmosphere, which helps to preserve the surprise. Once on board the ship, we are asked to observe and experience life on three diferent kinds of vessel—the sailing ship Bremen (1854), the steamship Lahn (1887) and the transatlantic ocean liner Columbus (1929). Past the hold, with its “classic” accumulation of old luggage, we cross the diferent spaces—the cabins, the dining rooms, the toilets…—and we understand their functions thanks to a plethora of interactive devices, videos, irst-hand documents. In a bathroom, for example, an annoying drip makes us bend over a washbasin. Here we read: Please turn of the faucet, and our movements generate a screen display with information about hygiene conditions onboard. Arrival in New York is visually represented by the white mesh of the Ellis Island registration hall, where the migrants were gathered and examined, and where their language knowledge and mental health were tested. Here visitors can be put through the same test used for the immigrants from 1892 to 1954. Again, with the help of original documents, we get to know real life stories, and we discover which were the most frequent destinations in the USA. Following their arrival in the New World, visitors can see and read how emigrants prepared themselves for their emigration—by using, for example, letters sent home, or guide books— and also what date the immigration countries— the USA, Canada, Australia and South America—collected from the new arrivals; this is all on display in the “Oice of the New World.” In the reconstructed ticket booths of Grand Central Terminus in New York (1913), the biographies of the emigrants who have accom- European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 55 panied us thus far are recounted as far as their present-day descendants. he railway station is also the place to learn about the hardships and challenges as well as the successes of German immigrants to the USA, in three time periods: the mid 19th century, the end of the 19th century, and the middle of the 20th century. Past the hall of Grand Central Station, the visitor arrives at a shopping mall, “frozen” in the year 1973, when the German parliament passed a law banning the recruitment of migrant workers. From one shop to the next—the hairdresser, the kiosk, the ice-cream seller, the department store—the history of immigration in Germany from the 17th century on is exhibited in more biographies, recounted by personal objects, passed down from parent to child, symbolic of a link with tradition, or rather its dynamic transformation over time. In the Roxy cinema two ilms, specially produced for the German Emigration Center, may be viewed: “Welcome Home” and “24h Buenos Aires.” Anna Chiara Cimoli æ references 2009. Deutsches Bremerhaven. Auswandererhaus. DAH: European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 57 56 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Museu d’Història de la Immigraciò de Catalunya–MhiC Immigration History Museum of Catalonia, Sant Adrià de Besòs, Barcelona, Spain 2004 he museum, inaugurated in 2004, is located in the municipality of Sant Adrià de Besòs, contiguous to Barcelona, and linked to the city by the Ronda Litoral and the underground. he oice and temporary exhibitions space are hosted in the Masia de Can Serra, a small rural 19th century building with no special appeal. he permanent exhibition is located just alongside the Masia de Can Serra inside a wagon of the El Sevillano train, used by emigrants who moved to Catalonia from the south of the country during the 20th Century. In this section, the themes of departure and journey are considered. An external pavilion, the “Espai Migrar”, designed by Jorge Mestre and Ivan Bercedo (Mizien Arquitectura SLP, Barcelona), displays mostly videos and photography. In this section the main issues are globalisation, trespassing borders and arriving in a new homeland. he garden, partly cultivated by the elderly living in the neighborhood, forms an integral part of the museum and allows for open-air activities. In October 2012 the new exhibit “Temps de migracions” was inaugurated. his extension, as well as creating a new entrance, provides a historical excursus through a timeline, describing migrations from pre-history to industrialisation. his extension, which occupies the arcade of the Masia de Can Serra, refers more to “migratory” than to historical concepts (nomadism, prejudice, territoriality and interculturality). he museography is interactive and plays on personal emotions and reactions rather than on scientiic data. Each “thematic island” asks the visitor three questions aimed at stimulating a personal response. For example, in “Nomadic Humanity”, the questions are: img. 4.22 — The “Integration Game” in the Museu d’Història de la Immigració de Catalunya. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. æ Who is this speaking another language? Ignorance; æ Why am I afraid of him? Insecurity; æ Who is “the other one”? It seems that I am “the other one” for him as well...Prejudice. he texts are written in Catalan, Spanish and English. he MhiC counts approximately 12,000 visitors per year. Its website, www.mhic.net, is also used as a virtual museum and as a shared working platform. Here you can ind the links to the blogs which gather together all the “work in progress”—mainly by schools. he name of the museum, with its evident political message, indicates that the research ield is Catalonia, but the area of interest is much broader, since at the core of the museum’s mission is the recognition of migrations as an international, eternal phenomenon—temporary exhibitions, in fact, do not focus only on Catalan themes, but tend to show the diversity and peculiarities of each migrant community. Despite the limited dimensions of the museum—in terms of physical area, number of staf and resources—the MhiC represents an interesting case-study for its dynamism and outreach capacity. he museum’s mission has three cores: the historiographical, the social—the museum as a place promoting inter-cultural policies— and the testimonial—the museum as a collector of individual and collective stories. A documentation centre is also part of the institution. æ critical analysis he main subject of the museum is the story of migrations to Catalonia from their origins up to the present day, with particular focus on the last century. About one and a half million people moved to the region between the 1940s and 1970s, especially from Estremadura and Andalusia. he central discourse concerns the connection between 20th century migratory history and European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 59 58 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 4.25 — Museu d’Història de la Immigració de Catalunya: the interior of the « Espai Migrar ». Photo by Francesca Lanz. Entrada/Sortida 1 Introducció - Recepció. Temps de migracions 2 Humans en moviment. Línia històrica 4 Espai Migrar. Migració y Globalització 3 l’Andana i El Sevillano. Migracions del Segle XX 5 Masia de Can Serra. Exposicions temporals i arxiu MhiC Vostè esta aquí Recorregut Accessibilitat Serveis img. 4.23 — Museu d’Història de la Immigració de Catalunya: the articulation of the museum spaces. Courtesy Museu d’Història de la Immigració de Catalunya. img. 4.24 — Museu d’Història de la Immigració de Catalunya: a view of the “El Sevillano” train. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. Bar img. 4.26 — Museu d’Història de la Immigració de Catalunya: the open air section dedicated to borders. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. 60 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) that of today, between internal and international migrations, seen through a lens which considers migrations as the result of a search for a better life, the expression of a “collective tenacity”, and thus a symptom of a society’s vitality. his discourse is expressed through the active involvement of the public, whether composed of the elderly, teenagers, schoolchildren or the local public—the conference room regularly hosts associations, organisations and institutions which use it for their own meetings, parties and other activities. Above all, the museum aims to be an arena for inter-cultural dialogue. In order to attract the public it appeals to the emotional, shared dimension typical of migrations, a dimension that concerns not only individuals but society as a whole, given that it is based on transversal issues which are important to all, such as family, social ties, the challenge of improvement and the deinition of identity. Among the more successful initiatives, we are reminded of “Diàlegs migrants”, a project—and later also a photo exhibition hosted by the museum—which put together “old” and new immigrants, bringing them together in order to open up spaces for dialogue, starting from the proximity of their life stories—this project was designed by Fundaciò Ciutadania MulticulturalMescadìs, and sponsored by the Diputaciò de Barcelona, the Ajuntament de Barcelona and the diocesan Caritas; the museum was one of the partners. Another important project was “Fem un museu. Jo també he estat immigrant”, that involved many neighbourhood schools in the search for documents to become part of the museum’s collection (the output can be seen at http://oliba.uoc.edu/mhic_joomla/webs). he location of the museum is quite unusual and is undoubtedly in some ways problematic. It is a suburban museum, located in the middle of a busy junction and spread over diferent units. Beginning with these objective data, the choice was to “immerse” it physically in the social and urban fabric by entrusting the gardens to the elderly—mostly immigrants from the south of the country, and therefore protagonists of the story told in the museum—and by working actively on designing projects which involved the public. he museum, despite its small number of staf—director, security guard, a couple of external collaborators for educational activities and one or two interns per semester—, ofers a rich and diverse range of activities. Its relationship with the public and its willingness to listen are the basis of the museum’s cultural project. he permanent collection is displayed aboard an original carriage of the El Sevillano train, dating back to 1958 and donated by the railway museum of Vilanova i la Geltrù. Inside the carriage, each section describes a diferent moment or aspect of the journey, from departure to arrival, often using personal accounts—which can be read on monitors or listened to through audio devices in their original language, while the guidebook is also translated into English. Narration is developed through superimposing visual (photo, video) and audio accounts, creating a strong emotional response. he display is quite traditional. We ind some of the “commonplaces” of the museography of migrations, such as the luggage-monitor, the display of objects connected to the journey—bags, a water bottle, luggage tied up with twine, dolls dressed in old-fashioned clothes—some digital reconstructions of the migratory routes—indicating the three main points of departure: Seville, Badajoz and La Coruña—or of the time necessary to travel from the south to the north of the country—which today would be the light-time to Ecuador. Again, the visitor can read on a monitor some sentences from a letter telling about the fears and sensations of journey, or watch the sea as it looked from the window to those who maybe had never seen it before, or experience the confusion of arrival at the Estaciò de França. In this speciic case, the historical container, even if completely decontextualised, has the function of leading the visitor, almost by the hand, inside an important place for migratory history, and therefore to transform the public into an actor who, while walking the train’s corridor, identiies with the epic journeys of many Spaniards. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 61 In the garden we also ind the “Espai Migrar”, a 300-square-metre open space dedicated to migrations in an era of globalisation and to the shift from the idea of “immigration” to the more contemporary one of “citizenship”. If the Sevillano was about departure, here we are concerned with all the physical and identitary stages that characterise arrival and the challenges of the new life. his area is extremely interesting since it succeeds in treating a huge variety of issues in quite a limited space. It is organised in three parallel and longitudinal units, one dedicated to the myth of departure, the second to the frontier, the third to arrival and settlement. he overall image of this area, from the outside, suggests the impression of a superimposition of coloured, transparent layers. he irst. when looking from the Sevillano, deals with the moment of departure by displaying, on one side, several icons of consumerism which contribute to creating the myth of an “elsewhere” and pictures dedicated to farewells; on the other side, there are images evoking family ties. he second unit, through two parallel partitions made of mesh, evokes the image of the frontier—in all its declinations: physical, administrative, mobile, internal and urban. he visitor enters this space over a level crossing. he mesh is the support to a visual survey (photos and signposts) of the risks, challenges and contradictions of borders. Separating this volume from the previous one is a glass wall dedicated to arrival, on which there is a reproduction a map similar to a hypothetical underground, with lines of diferent colours crossing each other. he colours of the lines correspond to themes such as language, perception of the other, work and the “Ulysses syndrome”. he stations have the names of the large cities of the world, the places where immigration takes place. Between this wall and the inal volume, drawn on the ground, there is a game played all over the world. Here it is inspired by the various stages of “integration”, with continuous leaps back and forth depending on the rhythm of bureaucracy and of justice. Inside this space the focus is on settlement and stabilisation—the themes treated are housing, work, culture, sport and spare time. Here we have several brief texts and an evocative iconographic apparatus, with many poetic screen printings on glass. On one of the two short walls of this rectangular space videos which the visitor may chose are displayed. he other short wall, the one towards the Masia de Can Serra, is used as a video screen. Touch-screen videos allow an in-depth viewing of some of the videos. Inside the Can Serra, at the ground level, we ind the oices. hese host the documentation centre, the CEDHIC (Centro de Estudios y Documentación de Historia de la Inmigración de Cataluña) and a meeting room, while temporary exhibitions are held on the irst loor (100 sq.m.). he museum pays special attention to the needs of the hard-of-hearing, the visuallyimpaired and the disabled. Anna Chiara Cimoli æ references VV.AA. 2009. Memòries del viatge 1940-1975. Ed Cossetània–MhiC: Barcelona. 2004. D’immigrants a ciutadans. Diputació de Barcelona–UB–MhiC: Barcelona. 2005. Moure l’aigua. Museu d’història de l’Hospitalet–MhiC: Barcelona. 2007. La riuada de 1062 a Sant Adrià. Arxiu Mapl de Sant Adrià–MhiC: Barcelona. 2007. Viatjant vides.Creant Móns. MhiC: Barcelona. Donoso, Tatiana and Magada Banderas. 2011. Soy el que come, eres el que me come, somos lo que comemos. Diputación de Zaragoza–MhiC: Barcelona. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 63 62 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) BallinStadt Hamburg, Germany 2007 Located on the Veddel Island, one of the many islands that form Hamburg’s archipelago along the Elbe river, BallinStadt takes its name from Albert Ballin, an enlightened manager who was the director of the HAPAG shipping company from 1898 to 1918. he buildings we see today are the reconstruction of the Emigration Halls built by HAPAG where the travellers gathered, found accommodation, spent the quarantine period, and waited for their turn to leave from Hamburg harbour. It is estimated that about ive million people, mostly Jews from Eastern Europe, left from Hamburg’s harbour bound for America. HAPAG irst built some accommodation buildings on the Amerikakai (America Quai) in 1892, but they soon became too small and inadequate. Subsequently, from 1898 to 1907, the company built a real “city inside the city”, consisting of a reception hall, sleeping and living quarters, dining hall, administration building, clinic, stable, luggage room, two hotels, and even a church, synagogue and music hall. he quality of life, the hospitality and sanitary conditions were generally good, compared to other harbours and departure stations of the same period. Some special measures, aimed also at preventing conlict, were adopted; people of the same country were generally kept together, and kosher food was provided for the Jewish community, a unique opportunity among European harbour cities (Albert Ballin was a Jew himself ). he emigrants, on arrival on Veddel Island, were medically examined, and all the Russians, plus all those suspected of being ill, had to undergo quarantine. All clothing and luggage was disinfected. img. 4.27 — BallinStadt: the “Ship of Dreams”. Courtesy of BallinStadt, Hamburg. he irst facilities opened in 1901, and at their busiest hosted 3,500 people. hree years later the “city” had to be extended, and other 43,000 sq.m were added, plus 6,000 for the quarantine barracks, the latter being donated by the municipality. Construction went on, in stages, from 1898 to 1907. During World War II, the Emigrant Halls were used by the SS group Germania; later on, the halls which had survived the road construction of the nearby Wilhelmsburg district became an immense prison camp. Subsequently, the British Army commandeered the halls in order to accommodate several companies. In 1947 they were used as temporary shelter for those who had lost their homes during the Hamburg bombing. In the 1960s, all the halls bar one (no. 13/14, later an automobile body shop) were torn down; only the church was preserved. he Emigration Halls were “re-discovered” thanks to a story-writing and theatre workshop in the nearby neighbourhood. In 2004, the City of Hamburg, realising the cultural and historical value of the place, despite its being completely unrecognisable at that time, decided to fund the reconstruction of several buildings (two-thirds of the funding was public). he museum consists of three buildings in a “U” shape, with glass volumes “inserted” into two of them. he buildings host the information centre and entrance hall (building no 1), the exhibition itself, organised according to a “classic” design, going from departure to arrival (no. 2), and the reconstruction of the reception area and of a dormitory in 1910, as well as the research centre, shop and restaurant (no. 3). BallinStadt tells the story of the migrants coming not only from Germany, but from all over eastern Europe, and it does so in the very place where the migrants gathered before leaving for the United States from 1850 to 1938. “Milieu reconstructions” and recourse to theatrical forms represent the language and display method chosen by the curators. he architectural reconstruction and adaptation was designed by LeisureWorkGroup GmbH, while the exhibition design is by Studio Babelsberg, based in Potsdam. 64 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 4.28 — BallinStadt: the advertising image of the museum. Courtesy of BallinStadt, Hamburg. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 65 img. 4.30 — BallinStadt: the museum premises with the open-air restaurant. Courtesy of BallinStadt, Hamburg. img. 4.31 — BallinStadt: the first room with the balloons evoking historical background. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.29 — BallinStadt: a general view of the museum premises. Courtesy of BallinStadt, Hamburg. 66 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 67 img. 4.32 — BallinStadt: the “archive” collecting the passengers lists. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.34 — BallinStadt: the reconstruction of a steamship cabin. Courtesy of BallinStadt, Hamburg. img. 4.33 — BallinStadt: the prow of the “Ship of Dreams”. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.35 — BallinStadt: what New York looked like. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.36 — BallinStadt: the dormitory. Courtesy of BallinStadt, Hamburg. 68 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) æ critical analysis he reconstruction of three halls—only one of which, building no.3, retains some original parts—“as they used to be”—very much a 19th century attitude towards restoration—is in itself a testimony to the sense of heritage expressed in BallinStadt. he aim of the design of the buildings and the exhibition aims is to suggest a “days-gone-by” atmosphere, the charm of history, an immersion into a world that no longer exists. his does not necessarily mean that the museum concept is romantic or supericial; the dark side of emigration is shown, described, explained in detail. Still, complexity is somehow “levelled of ” through the choice of certain narrative solutions, such as the invitation to listen to personal accounts, which form the il rouge of the narration. his is very common in museums dealing with migrations—as well as in those related to Shoah, war crimes or diicult historical matters. Here, the curators have chosen to personify the emigrants through life-size mannequins in period garments, and this represents one of the points of ainity with the German Emigration Centre in Bremerhaven, opened two years previously. Another museological choice—also very popular—is that of the “milieu reconstruction” or “period rooms”. he atmosphere of the place is recreated using techniques which are almost theatrical. he feeling of being on a cinema set is sometimes strong, and communication from the museum only reinforces this impression. Reference is often made to family tours, to the fact that the museum is suitable for all ages, to a kind of of “leisure” or “amusement” to be found in the museum experience—of course, no museum would want to describe itself as ofering a miserable experience. In keeping with this, there is a successful interactive game for children and teenagers. he museum hosts “heritage tours”, organised increasingly by US tourists keen to discover their “roots”. Efective advertisement and communication is also to be found in tourist areas. Soon after the museum opened in 2007, he New York Times wrote: “he colourful and unorthodox presentation styles, which sometimes border on kitsch, should appeal to younger museum-goers” (Andreas Tzortzis, “Hoping to Lure Visitors by Recalling Departures”, 14 July 2007). In the irst room the visitor is presented with ive real biographies scattered through diferent historical moments and personiied by life-size dolls. An audio device placed next to each doll tells their stories and allows the visitor to identify with each. Hanging from the ceiling, white balloons represent the main issues involved in the choice to migrate and contain symbols of them; they include tolerance, money, religion and the pursuit of freedom. he next room is dedicated to the main reasons for emigrating from Europe in the 19th century—the “push and pull factors”. Here, an interactive map—in the form of an over-sized book—shows the native countries of the emigrants—between 1881 and 1914 mostly the Ukraine, Galicia, Lithuania and Belarus. Many documents relating to the dream of the “new world” are shown here, among which advertisements for the various shipping lines. Attention is drawn to the economic and political factors which led to emigration, such as industrialisation, the inlation of the 1920s and the religious persecutions. he design marries the dream of the “golden land” to a golden wall, complete with images of arrival in the new land hung from it, circulated via the propaganda of the emigration agents (and later prohibited). Here, the narrative stresses the siren song which was so difused throughout Europe in the 19th century and beginning the 20th. A common technique in migration museums, luggage containing video instead of garments, is used in this room. One room is a reconstruction of Albert Ballin’s oice. Above the mantelpiece, a videoinstallation shows German actor Wolfgang Völz impersonating HAPAG’s director. A giant photo of the original oice, the furniture and personal documents provide information about this elegant, skilled man, who committed suicide in 1918, two days before the end of the war ended, out of fear for the possible political consequences of his involvement—he had served as a mediator between the German empire and European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 69 Great Britain prior to the outbreak of World War I. Beyond the control station, the visitors embark on the so-called “Ship of Dreams”. hey are accompanied by personal questions about their departure, such as What are you taking with you?, written on the columns. he ship is represented by its prow—the part stands for the whole—, and oriented towards a huge glass window, suggesting wide open spaces, while the rest of the museum spaces are mostly immersed in half-light. On board, visitors are informed about the accommodation available—the diferences between the classes in terms of comfort and hygiene crystallize in the reconstruction of the cabins for the “rich” and the “poor”—, the change for from sail to steam, with all its implications, and the cost and duration of the journey. he destination is New York, via Ellis Island. he statue of Liberty stands behind a mesh, but before reaching it the migrants have to pass medical assessment and interviews, represented by full-size dolls of the oicers. Via posters, shop windows, and even a horse-drawn cart bearing fruit and vegetables (and video installations), the visitor is then plunged into the New York of 1900s. here is also a small section here dedicated to emigration to Latin America. In the inal room, some display cases present a proile of the German community and the story of the “Little Germany” neighbourhood, almost decimated following an accident at sea in 1904, which saw the deaths of about 1100 people from the area. here are stories of commercial success—such as those of Levi Strauss and Henry John Heinz, and artefacts showing the merging of the two cultures. Pictures accompa- nied by text narrate the stories of several statesman of German origin, such as Henry Kissinger and Ernesto Geisel. Finally, we discover what happened to the emigrants we met in the irst room. he “U” shape of the building means that we ind ourselves back where we started, and able to tie up the thread of personal and social history. No space is left for relection on contemporary immigrations or multiculturalism. he adjacent building recreates the original atmosphere of the place. Here we ind very little text, no partitions, no real “museum exhibition”, but rather an immersion in the dormitory “as it used to be”. Passing by the beds, in the open luggage we ind texts, documents and artefacts describing the lives, habits, rules, rights and duties of the guests. We discover, for example, that men and women were hosted in diferent dormitories, but families were kept together; children slept two to a bed. Life-size mannequins suggest a dialogue between an oicer and a guest at the moment of registration Genealogy research can be carried out free in the research centre; the museum provides access both to the Hamburg passenger lists, and to other databases, thanks to ‘s partnership with Ancestry.de. Anna Chiara Cimoli æ references 2007. BallinStadt. Das Auswanderermuseum Hamburg. Betriebsgesellshaft BallinStadt mbH: Hamburg. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 71 70 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration–CNHI Paris, France 2007 he Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration is located in the Palais de la Porte Dorée, built in 1931 for the Colonial Exhibition. Since then, the building hosted the Musée des Colonies, later called Musée d’Outre-Mer, then Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie (the scientiic design of the latter was by Georges Henri Rivière). A typical Art Déco example, it is decorated by frescoes by Pierre Ducos de la Haille and bas-reliefs by Alfred Janniot. he iconographic program of the building illustrates the exchanges between France and its colonies ( Janniot’s bas-relief façade describes the colonies’ economic contribution to France, while the Salle des Fêtes’ frescoes describe the opposite process). On the ground loor there is an Aquarium, a ticket oice and a bookshop shared by the two institutions, and the huge “Salle des Fêtes” or ‘Party Hall’ dedicated to art projects often commissioned by the CNHI itself, or to public conferences, presentations or celebrations. he exhibition rooms are located on the irst and second loors. Prior to the opening of the CNHI, the institution developed a participatory policy with the aim of involving institutions, the cultural world and activists, as well as creating a collection (the museum had no collection: the works of art were bought on the way, while the documents were partly donated by privates and partly found in archives). he Cité’s vocation, in fact, is not to be a research centre itself, but instead to work as a collector, a catalyst, and a place where researchers meet both at a national and at an international level, as is the case of the Cité de la Musique and of the Cité la Science. img. 4.37 — Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration: a view of “Repères”, the permanent exhibition © EPPD-Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, Paris Beyond the permanent exhibition, a rich program of temporary exhibitions is also at the heart of the CNHI’s mission: among the more recent we recall “J’ai deux amours” (November 2011-June 2012); “Migrants en Guyane. Photographies de Frédéric Piantoni” (February- May 2012); “Vies d’exil - 1954-1962. Des Algériens en France pendant la guerre d’Algérie” (October 2012 – May 2013). Part of the Cité is also the Abdelmalek Sayad Library and Archive, whose catalogue can be browsed online. It contains 20,000 documents. Educational activity is at the core of the Cité’s mission. Part of it is a literary contest, the so-called UniverCité (a popular university organizing conferences and workshops, often linked to the activity of the bimonthly magazine “Hommes et Migrations”, published by the Cité itself ), the presence of performance art (music, dance…), video and ilm projections, workshops with artists and educators for all kinds of public, literary cafés on Saturday afternoons, guided tours both at the museum and at the building. he website is extremely rich in documents and has a very useful section for teachers. he ilm “Deux siècles d’histoire de l’immigration en France” can be seen here. æ critical analysis he irst project for an immigration museum to be built in Paris dates from 1976. his project, presented by the Oice National de Promotion Culturelle des Immigrés (National Oice for the Cultural Promotion of Immigrants), was conirmed by the socialist government in 1983 also thanks to the appointment of the historian Gérard Noiriel. In 1990, the Association pour un Musée de l’Immigration, created by a group of historians and activists, among them Noiriel, took charge. Some associations of immigrants and of activists worked under the same management since the end of the eighties, trying to draw the public attention to the rediscovery of migration history, seen as a common heritage. Following the interest demonstrated by Lionel Jospin, in 2002 President Jacques Chi- 72 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img.4.38 — Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration: a sketch of the hall and the forum © Agence Construire, Paris. Courtesy of Loïc Julienne/ Agence Construire, Paris. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 73 img. 4.41 — Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration: a view of the permanent exhibition © EPPD-Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, Paris. img. 4.39 — Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration: a view of the front facade. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.40 — Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration: the “Galerie des dons” (Gift Gallery) © EPPD-Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, Paris. img.4.42 — Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration: a view of the permanent exhibition © EPPD-Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, Paris. 74 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) rac created a speciic committee inside the ADRI-Agence pour le Developpement des Relations Interculturelles (Agency for the Development of Intercultural Relations), and charged Jacques Toubon to design what at that time was called Centre de ressources et de mémoire sur l’immigration (Resource and Memory on Immigration Centre). he project was oicially launched by JeanPierre Rafarin, who on the occasion of the presentation announced the choice of the Palais de la Porte Dorée as the location of the new museum, which since then took its present name. he riots in the Paisian suburbs (2005) demonstrated the failure of the adopted policies until that moment and aroused a relection on the nature of multicultural societies and on integration strategies. hat same year, the necessity to read France’s colonial history anew became evident: the appeal entitled “Nous sommes tous indigènes de la République” (We all are Republic natives) was published on the internet and had a huge echo. he same year, protests against the law asking to underline in school programs the positive role played in the overseas colonies blew; meanwhile, activists asked for the institution of a Memorial Day commemorating slavery. Slowly, a series of claims appeared which seemed to be parallel or juxtaposed, when not competing. he diferent “heritages” seemed in conlict, almost in competition with each other. In 2007, a group of historian members of the scientiic committee left the group, protesting the restrictive policies concerning immigration in France, and maybe also not agreeing on some points concerning the cultural direction undertaken by the project. Nevertheless, the restoration and requaliication works, directed by Patrick Bouchain and Loïc Julienne from the Paris-based Construire, chosen in the consultation organised by the Direction des Musées de France in 2005, continued and the Cité opened its doors on 9th October, 2007. Both for its content and the choice of the location, since the beginning the museum aroused bitter controversy, and it was often criticised. he fact that it was never inaugurated by Presi- dent Sarkozy or any of his delegates was interpreted by many as a political choice. Director, Luc Gruson writes: “he lack of inauguration meant for some people lack of recognition. For others, on the contrary, this meant that the institution might somehow ‘disturb’. But most of the French simply never heard about it, and it is true that the lack of a political message at the moment of opening, cast a doubt on the ‘legitimisation’ project sent by the museum” (Gruson, 2011). It must be stressed that between October, 2010 and January, 2011 the Cité was occupied by 500 “sans papiers” (undocumented people), who recognised in it the right place to express their demands. he exhibition areas are quite rigid, since the rooms are located around two huge, full-height spaces, symmetrical in respect to the entrance, following the idea of alignment, monumentality and rhythm, typical of the time when it was built. he irst space the visitor meets, on the upper loor, has the function of a historic and general preamble. It is occupied by three metallic volumes, hung from the ceiling, designed to be looked at from below. Each of them is dedicated to a subject—migrations on a world scale, migrations towards France and the distribution of migrants in the country—and chronologically articulated in four steps, from the turn of the XX Century up to today. hrough maps (also published on the website: www.histoireimmigration.fr/histoire-de-l-immigration/ questions-contemporaines/cartes), the visitor gets the basic information. In the same space the visitor is given the audio guides that are necessary to listen to the stories disseminated along the way. Here starts the permanent exhibition, called “Repères” (points of reference). Here, the documents belong to three macro-typologies: anthropologic documents (interviews, irst-hand stories), historic (handwritten or published texts, books, lealets, posters, historical synthesis in a touch-screen form) and artistic (photography and works of art). he overall idea is that the experience of immigration, in the two centuries taken into consideration (XIX and XX), has common features, re- European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 75 img. 4.43 — Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration: the “Rencontres” (Encounters) section in the permanent exhibition. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.44 — Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration: barthélémy Toguo, Climbing down, 2004. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.45 — Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration: a view of the exhibition J’ai deux amours, 16 November 2011-24 June 2012. 76 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 4.46 — Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration: plan of the ground floor of the museum. Courtesy of Agence Construire, Paris. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 77 78 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 4.47 — Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration. Section north-south AA and section Est-West BB. Courtesy of Agence Construire, Paris. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 79 European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 81 80 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) gardless of the place of origin and of the reasons for departure (the search for a better life, the issue of housing, that of identity, of integration and so on). herefore a thematic approach was chosen, capable of taking into consideration the historical and chronological dimension, leaving instead in the background in-depth views into this or that speciic migration history. Repères is organised into three main areas, each sliced into various sub-themes, that we quote here using the same titles as the exhibition’s sections: æ he choice to leave, the journey, the meeting with France (sub-themes: Emigrating, In front of the State, Welcoming country/Hostile France, Here and there); æ Living and working places (Life places, Working, Grounding, Sports) æ he contribution of cultures (Diversity). his last section, maybe the most interactive, relects on the theme of language—for example through a work of art by Zineb Sedira—, of the “other” in artistic production (containing interviews with artists and ilm extracts), on the power of objects—in their passage from everyday life to fashion systems, in their transnational component, in the superposing of layers through time: this is the case of Mona Lisa, Italian par excellence but the symbol of the Louvre at the same time… Around one of the two galleries is the “Galerie des Dons” (Gift gallery), where objects donated by migrants or by their descendants are exhibited. What is mostly valued here is the uniqueness of each persons story, which always melts into a common, national, shared story: immigration is seen as a crossing phenomenon, which somehow afected almost every family, and which today is an integral part of France’s history. Matt plastic sheets, put on the glass, are eliminated one after the other, as gifts arrive at the museum, so as to show what lies beside and giving the sense of an ongoing process. Around the other gallery, temporary smaller exhibitions are held. he museum’s strong issue is the narration of immigration as a “shared heritage” (in line with the USA, Canadian and Australian examples). he historical, more detached approach was preferred to a memorialistic approach, also in order to favour a sort of collective appropriation process. his sense of collectivity is very strongly part of the museum’s mission: the museum wants to be un lieu et un reseau (a place and a network) and to create a strong interaction between cultural ofering and social request. he collaborative aspect seems to be one of the crucial points—the migrants associations which fought to be part of the process now expresses some perplexity about a place the reads as an expression of the State… According to Luc Gruson, research shows that the visitors think that the museum stresses the society’s point of view too much, and the migrants’too little: a perspective for the future could be to “insist less on migration and more on integration” (Gruson 2011). Anna Chiara Cimoli æ references 2004. “Vers un lieu de mémoire de l’immigration.” Special issue, Hommes et migrations (1247). 2007. “La Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration: une collection en devenir.” Special issue, Hommes et migrations (1267). 2007. “La Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration: quels publics?” Special issue, Hommes et migrations. 2007. “Le patrimoine culturel des migrants.” Special issue, Museum International 59 (1–2). 2007. Guide de l’exposition permanente. Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration: Paris. 2010. J’ai deux amours. Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration: Paris. Gruson, Luc. 2006. “Peut-on réconcilier diversité culturelle et cohésion nationale ? Le cas de la Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration.” Paper presented at the seminar La France et ses autres, nouveaux musées, nouvelles identités, Cahiers parisiens, he University of Chicago Center in Paris, Maison René-Ginouvès, Université Paris X Nanterre, June 1–2. — — —. 2011. “Un musée peut-il changer les représentations sur l’immigration? Retour sur les enjeux de la Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration et sur son occupation par les sans-papier.” Hommes et migrations (1293): 12–21. Murphy, Maureen. 2007. Un palais pour une cité. Du musée des Colonies à la Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration. Réunion des musées nationaux: Paris. Poinsot, Marie. 2008. “Leur histoire est notre histoire. La Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration, vecteur de reconnaissance des populations immigrées en France.” In Migrations, mémoires, musées., edited by Laure Teulières, and Sylvie Toux, 37–50. Toulouse: CNRS-Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail. Renard, Isabelle and Marie Poinsot. 2011. “La place de l’art contemporain à la Cité. Entretien avec Jacques Toubon.” Hommes et migrations (1293): 22–27. 82 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 83 Memoria e Migrazioni (MeM), Galata-Museo del Mare Migration section at the Genoa Sea Museum, Italy 2004, 2012 he Memoria e Migrazioni (MeM) section, inaugurated in November 2011, occupies the entire third loor of the Galata-Museo del Mare e delle Migrazioni in Genoa. It covers a 1200 sq.m. surface. he building—the oldest in Genoa Harbour—was renovated by Guillermo Vazquez Consuegra, who transformed it into a transparent volume, open to the surrounding environment, thanks also to the presence of the mirador, the viewpoint on the top loor. Both the Galata and the nearby Aquarium, one of the most successful entertainment structures in Italy, were opened in 2004, the year Genoa was European Capital of Culture. he Nazario Sauro submarine, part of the Galata collection from 2009, is the irst museum ship in Italy that may be visited by sea. It therefore constitutes another attraction for tourists and other visitors who, in 2011, numbered over 200,000—according to the website Trivago, Galata is the eighth most visited museum in Italy today. img. 4.48 — Galata-Museo del Mare: a view of the museum. Courtesy of the Estudio Vazquez Consuegra, Seville. Photo by Duccio Malagamba. he former President of the Italian Parliament, Gianfranco Fini, visited the MeM soon after its inauguration. It was also the site of one of the irst public visits by Andrea Riccardi, Minister of International Cooperation and Integration in the Monti government. his shows to what point the museum is taking on an important challenge and touching on a contemporary and sensitive theme. It is the irst permanent installation to deal with the theme of the representation of immigration in an Italian museum. In fact, while many European museums are progressively trying to include the multi-layered issue of multiculturalism (through temporary exhibitions, educational programs and partici- patory practices), Italian museums appear to lag behind in this respect. Since 2011, in order to relect its new nature, the previous name “Galata-Museo del Mare e della Navigazione” became “Galata-Museo del Mare e delle Migrazioni.” Galata is a municipal museum and is part of the Mu.Ma network (Genoa Sea and Navigation Museums, also including the Maritime Museum in Genova Pegli and the Commenda di Pré, a place of hospitality for pilgrims going to or coming from the Holy Land during the Crusades). It is managed by Costa Edutainment. æ critical analysis he MeM project derives from the exhibition “La Merica! Da Genova a Ellis Island, il viaggio per mare negli anni dell’emigrazione italiana” (“La Merica! From Genoa to Ellis Island, the sea journey in the years of Italian emigration”, 2008-2011), which described the phenomenon of emigration to America using a wide variety of multimedia tools—including those designed by Studio Azzurro—, and which was rewarded with huge success in terms of visitor numbers (400,000 in total). his interest, together with the will to deal with the theme of migrations in a city which was one of the focal points for emigration in Italy (together with Naples), was the driving force behind the transformation ofthis single episode into a permanent exhibition. he MeM deals with both emigration and immigration, giving them equal room, and seeing them as two linked chapters of the same story. “A journey in search of the past in order to understand the present”—so reads the slogan on the poster 84 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) where a young African man, in a red shirt, is framed against a black-and-white photograph of a 19th century ocean-going vessel. he message is clear: History is circular and unpredictable; yesterday we were the migrants, now someone else is. Tomorrow, who knows? refectory and women’s section. Both the voyage of the poor—with bunk-beds where you can sit and listen to audio iles—and of the wealthy are shown, in order to give an idea of how money could make the diference between a comfortable or painful journey. Let us now irst analyse the design of the exhibition , and then proceed to a broader relection on the choices and challenges. he exhibition design is based on interactivity (there are 40 interactive devices) and historical reconstructions. Emphasis is placed on the reconstruction or simulation of the migrant’s experience, rather than on the display of irst hand documents—as is the case, for example, at the MEI in Rome, or the Fondazione Paolo Cresci in Lucca. At the beginning of the tour, the visitor receives a reproduction of a “real” passport. It contains the data of one out of twenty migrants (two of whom are still alive) and during the visit it is inserted into bar-code readers, in order to follow the stages of the journey in a participatory and empathic way, identifying with the real concerns of the migrant’s life. he arrival in America is narrated via the three most common destinations for those who left from Genoa: Argentina—with a reconstruction of the Boca neighbourhood, the houses painted in bright colors like those of the Liguria region—Brazil, which, after the abolition of slavery in 1888, encouraged immigration in order to compensate for the lack of labour; a roaring jaguar represents the dangers of life in a fazenda, and the United States—the symbol for which is Ellis Island’s Grand Hall. In this last room visitors can take the same intelligence and linguistic tests the immigrants were put through his can be quite an intense personal experience. In the same room, there is a huge 19th-century-style iling cabinet, , where the public can look for “his or her own migrant” and discover whether that particular journey had a positive or negative outcome. Opposite, a bank of monitors allow access to the CISEI (Centro Internazionale Studi Emigrazione Italiana) data-base, which contains boarding lists of all Italians departing from Genoa harbor. he irst room is occupied by the reconstruction of a part of the historical center of Genoa, where the inhabitants—actors leaning out of monitors representing the windows of the original houses—talk both to each other and to the emigrants. he commonplaces regarding migration mix and overlap in a lively buzz of activity. hen, there is the reconstruction of the Lavarello brothers’ travel agency and the façade of the hotel which hosted the emigrants before their departure. he next step in this “chronological” journey is the Maritime Station, where the interactive dialogue between the traveller and the customs oicer takes place. he moment of boarding is represented in a reconstruction of the quay and of the hanging footbridges which suggest the image of broken ties. We then board the “Città di Torino” steamship, where we experience the claustrophobia and the unease of the voyage. he interior of the steamship is reconstructed in detail—second class cabins, sick-bay, emigration commissioner’s cabin, coninement cell, With a clear linguistic switch, we enter the wing dedicated to immigration to Italy. his begins with a selection of photos by Uliano Lucas representing 1973, the year migratory balance became active. he irst interactive display, in this part of the museum, is called “Journey Postcards”. Here the visitor can choose a postcard and place it on a table, and by doing so activate a video with autobiographical narrations which challenge the idea of “exoticism”. Among the monologues, there is an “imaginary” one by one of the victims of the Portopalo shipwreck (1996). In the following space we see a ship from Lampedusa, the result of a special agreement between the municipality of the island and the museum. If the visitor holds a fender, he can listen to the accounts of migrants. By the ship, in small cases, there are several objects be- European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 85 img. 4.49 — GalataMuseo del Mare: a sketch by Guillermo Vazquez Consuegra. Courtesy of the Estudio Vazquez Consuegra, Seville. img. 4.50 — Galata-Museo del Mare: a view of the museum. Courtesy of the Estudio Vazquez Consuegra, Seville. Photo by Duccio Malagamba. img. 4.51 — Galata-Museo del Mare, MeM section: the arrival in Ellis Island. Courtesy Galata Museo del Mare Archive, Costa Edutainment. Photo by Merlofotografie. 86 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 87 img. 4.53 — Galata-Museo del Mare, MeM section: Interactive display: the dialogue with the customs officer before the departure © Archivio Galata Museo del Mare, Costa Edutainmentph Merlofotografie. img. 4.54 — Galata-Museo del Mare, MeM section: reconstrucion of Genoa center, with the Albergo Piemonte whoich hosted the emigrants before the departure © Archivio Galata Museo del Mare, Costa Edutainment-ph Merlofotografie img. 4.52 — Galata-Museo del Mare: MeM section, general plan of the MeM. Courtesy Deborah Bruno, Genoa. 88 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 4.55 — Galata-Museo del Mare, MeM section: a reconstruction of the Boca neighborhood in Buenos Aires. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.56 — Galata-Museo del Mare, MeM section: life in a Brazilian fazenda. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 89 longing to the migrants (documents, pieces of clothing, a baby’s bottle…). On the walls, video projections show dramatic images of the rescue of shipwrecked persons, made by the Italian Finance Police. Due to the power of the images—which need no captions—and the evocative nature of the objects, this is one of the more moving rooms. he narration now underlines the “positive” aspects of immigration through three main themes—work, school and gastronomy. In the exhibit “Who steals our jobs?” we see some provocative videos that show how immigration represents a pillar of Italian welfare. he visitor is invited to choose an object—a safety helmet, a bag, a hairdrye—which, when placed on a base, activates a video about the diferent aspects of the work done by immigrants, with a special focus on the care of children and the elderly. Next to it, an interactive video shows a classroom. he visitor, standing as though s/he were the teacher, can call on one of the pupils, who will then read an autobiographical text. On another wall, a video shows an Italian chef— Chef Kumalé—accompanied by four colleagues from four diferent countries, preparing several recipes; this refersto the popular TV cooking shows. he inal exhibit consists of “relection niches” inspired by the “confession rooms” of the Big Brother format. Here, the museum staf ask questions in the form of a quiz. he multiple-choice answers are recorded and used for statistical purposes. he aim is to challenge what we knows—or think we know—about migrations. After each visitor response, whether right or wrong, the curator provides a short, clear explanation. It is worthwhile including a few observations concerning the choice of content. he museum seems to have divided opinion in the scientiic community. On the one hand, there are those who have welcomed the fairly explicit stand and the choice of an immersive, emotional experience. Conversely, however, there has also been criticism of the massive use of technology and the sequence of historical reconstructions and interactive devices which do not leave enough space for personal relection, making the mu- seum more suitable for schools or a young audience rather than for adults and the general public. he curators themselves acknowledge some of the criticism, such as the unsuitability of the audio sources in some rooms, or the fact that technology is by deinition fragile, and a broken device represents a “hole” in communication that cannot easily be illed. It is true that the exhibition design is quite dense, that there are few spaces for decompression and relaxation, and also that an adult or elderly public might sometimes have diiculty with the interactivity. Of course, this problem is common to all the museums who have made this kind of technological stand. But what is perhaps more important to underline is the “political” relevance of the choices made by director Pierangelo Campodonico, developed with President Maria Paola Profumo, architect Deborah Bruno and the scientiic committee as a whole. For the irst time in an Italian museum, a permanent exhibition discusses immigration not as an emergency to be addressed, but rather as a historic phenomenon, which has always existed and is deeply-rooted in human nature and history. he physical, historical and cultural continuity between the two sections of the MeM creates an appropriate background for the visitors to tie the threads of history, and immerse themselves in it with empathy. In the “relection niches”, then, one can go more “in-depth” and work on facts and igures, which are quite rare inside the museum; in this way, the visit is not always based solely on experience rather than on numbers or information. he MeM is based on the assumption that migrations have always existed, are a fundamental key to understanding mankind, and that the notion of “diference” is deeply rooted in it. his fresco is designed to communicate the idea of the complexity of migrations, above all by promoting personal meetings with real life experiences,in order to escape the vagueness of generic discourse. 90 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 4.57 — Galata-Museo del Mare, MeM section: the interactive display called “Journey Postcards”. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.58 — GalataMuseo del Mare, MeM section: a boat given to the museum by the Municipality of Lampedusa. Courtesy Galata Museo del Mare Archive, Costa Edutainment. Photo by Merlofotografie. img. 4.59 — Galata-Museo del Mare, MeM section: the interactive display dedicated to cooking. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 91 he MeM sends a clear message: the society we live in is already multicultural, the intersection points among “diferent people” are already ininite, the reality is not the one recounted by the media, it is rather that which is “difused” in a community’s life—the “everyday multiculturalism” which Amanda Wise and Selvaraj Velayutham refer to. Religion is also taken into account, though in an “indirect” way. We see, for example, the prayers ofered by Senegalese marabouts to the emigrants, or several objects of worship in the showcase dedicated to everyday things—candles from the Holy Land, a reproduction of Ganesh, etc. he geographical focus is initially very local, but then becomes wider and wider. Genoa, once an important harbour, is now a post-industrial city with no particular appeal to migrants, especially if compared to cities such as Milan, Turin or other cities in Northern Italy. he interpretation of the present day is therefore a wide one, taking into account national and international phenomena—such as wars, famines, unemployment and poverty. he narration is choral, and it attempts to show the migrants’ point of view through the reading of letters—in the irst part, based on archival research carried out at the Civic Archive in Genoa, the Fondazione Paolo Cresci in Lucca and other archives—and video accounts. he philological approach of the irst part is brough to life via the videos with actors playing the migrants, dressed in old-fashioned clothing. Here, the individual voices represent an entire community of travellers; they tend to melt into the choral narration, even if we are encouraged to follow the path of the individual migrant whose passport we receive at the beginning of the visit. he accent here is not so much on the “success” or “failure” of the migratory adventure, but rather on the sense of leaving, the hopes and fears and the historical impact of migration. he insertion of “dissenting” voices, such as those of the “priggish” of the XIX Century in the irst room, creat a link between the prejudices of yesterday and today. he museum’s agenda is not to stimulate “par- allel interpretations” of migration history, but rather to suggest empathy, and to support it with objective data. his attitude is a very plastic one, especially in the “relection niches”, where the quiz is not about feelings or personal opinions—such as, for example, in the Tolerance Museum or in some exhibits in the Anne Frank House—, but about facts and igures, whose sources are always quoted. It is demonstrated, for example, that there exists no connection between immigration and crime or the unemployment rate. At the end of the visit, a computer shows the results of surveys made in parallel by the MeM, the Bois du Cazier in Marcinelle and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, gathered in the Sites of Conscience, of which the Genoa Sea and Navigation Museums network is a member. Anna Chiara Cimoli æ references AA.VV. 2008. “La Merica!” – 1892-1914. Da Genova a Ellis Island, il viaggio per mare negli anni dell’emigrazione italiana. SAGEP: Genoa. AA.VV. 2009. Galata: popoli sulla scia. I quaderni del Mu.Ma: Genoa. Cimoli, Anna Chiara e Buonasorte, Nicla. (forthcoming). “Le nouveau pavillon ‘Mémoire et Migrations’ du Musée de la Mer à Gênes.” Hommes et Migrations. Galletta, Giuliano. 2011. “I migranti sbarcano al museo.” Il Secolo XIX, November 8. Niri, Rafaele. “Nel porto di Genova la Ellis Island dei nuovi italiani.” Il Venerdì di Repubblica, November 18. Pistocchini, Francesco. 2011. “Se il mare ha la memoria lunga.” Popoli ( June-July): 42–43. Quirico, Domenico. 2011. “Il museo di quelli che sognavano di essere italiani.” La Stampa, November 16. Repetti, Ferruccio. 2011. “Quel viaggio nella memoria e nella speranza dei migranti.” Il Giorno, November 17. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 93 92 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Immigrantmuseet Immigration Museum, Farum, Denmark, 2012 he irst exhibition was created in 2001 as part of Farums Arkiver og Museer, the local museum of the municipality of Farum, north of Copenhagen. he new permanent exhibition was inaugurated on 27th January, 2012, and is designed by Kvorning Communications and Design, an architectural irm based in Copenhagen. he museum is located inside the Farum Cultural Centre, which also hosts a cinema, an art gallery, a library, a music school and a café. Together, these activities create a very lively atmosphere and help bring people to the museum—access to which is free. he area of the museum is about 400 square metres, and is divided into four parts: the hall, the “kitchen”, the so-called “labyrinth” and the temporary exhibitions gallery. he museum focuses entirely on immigration, in the spirit of integrating the Danish Emigration Archives based in Aalborg, with which the museum has developed a close cooperation. Together with Mosegaarden, in the town of Værløse, and “he old grocery store, Cornelen” in Farum, the Immigrantmuseet is part of the Furesø Museums network. he museum addresses itself mostly to people living in Denmark, with a special focus on school children. he recent translation of all the texts into English makes the museum accessible to a wider public, as well as to the tourists. One of the main challenges is to attract migrant citizens and to involve them in the cultural relections going on in and around the museum. Its physical position in the heart of the cultural centre could help, but because it has been open such a short time, the work is still in progress. img. 4.60 — Immigrantmuseet, Farum: an exhibition case dedicated to life in an asylum camp in the “labyrinth”. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. he educational activities regarding schools and adults are developed mainly through visits, which can be “general” or thematic, video projections accompanied by talks, concerts, genealogy courses and other forms of involvement. Some activities are being designed expressly for teen-agers, such as an “integration game” played both in the classroom and in the museum. he museum is run through public funding— both governmental and local—and tries to attract other funding for its research activities, as well as for projects concerning exhibitions and other kinds of public activities. It is member of AEMI and of the Danish Museums network, and collaborates with a number of institutions, mostly in Europe but not exclusively. Part of the outreach activity is developed through the social networks and the museum’s blog. An important tool is the website dedicated to integration strategies through 500 years of Danish history (www.velkommenher.dk). he museum has developed three databases, dedicated to the registration of immigrant workers from 1812 to 1924, to awarded citizenships from 1776 to 1960, and to expulsions from 1873 to 1919, all accessible through the website. It also owns an archive—mostly made of interviews. At the beginning the collections were very small, but through time they have attracted more donations and loans. æ critical analysis Ellis Island in New York, Pier 21 in Halifax and especially the CNHI in Paris, as well as other European museums, proved to be the best source of inspiration for the Immigrantmuseet. he CNHI was particularly inluential due to its multi-layered interpretation of migration as an individual, social and historical phenomenon, and the continuous interconnection between theoretical issues and personal histories. In the Immigrantmuseet, history is always used as a tool for putting events into perspective, and helping the visitor trace a personal relection. Very little text is used and the museum wants to be a place where questions can be raised, to 94 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 95 img. 4.61 — Immigrantmuseet, Farum: the facade of the Museum and the Cultural Centre. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.64 — Immigrantmuseet, Farum: a view of the exhibition cases in the “labyrinth”. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.62 — Immigrantmuseet, Farum: the corridor at the entrance of the museum. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.65 — Immigrantmuseet, Farum. A “classic” revisited: luggage and the story it tells. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.63 — Immigrantmuseet, Farum: comparison among the three monotheistic religions. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. 96 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 97 img. 4.66 — Immigrantmuseet, Farum: plan of the museum by Kvorning Communications and Design. Courtesy of the Immigrantmuseet, Farum. img. 4.69 — Immigrantmuseet, Farum: exhibits in the in the “labyrinth”. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 4.67 — Immigrantmuseet, Farum: scale model of the museum. Courtesy of the Immigrantmuseet, Farum. img. 4.70 — Immigrantmuseet, Farum: exhibits in the in the “labyrinth”. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. img. 5.68 — Immigrantmuseet, Farum: the space dedicated to food and cooking and their meanings. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. 98 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) make people think, rather than learning cold facts, which can be found in the literature. Historical data is foundation from which it is possible to suggest other interpretative layers than the more obvious ones—the ones we ind in the media, for example. From this viewpoint, contemporary and controversial items such as the burqa, urban ghettoes, the social impact of migrants, and all matters concerning citizenship can be seen under a diferent light. he museum does not take a position, but it presents evidence of historical facts and puts them under a prism, so as to shed new light on the present. It often does so in a very synthetic, visual way—also due to space limitations. For example, the issue of “importing queens” as a political currency of exchange, often recurring in European history, is represented through a beautiful queen’s dress, on loan from a theatre. Irony is used delicately as a means to stress the paradoxes that often punctuate matters of migrations, identity and the perception of the other. his is also the case, for example, of the puppet TV ilm shown recently, where Arabic words merge into the Danish language, as in teenagers’ slang, or of the children’s book from 1954 where a language and an iconography about Africa was used that would never be acceptable today, using our sensitivity and awareness of linguistic “propriety”. he access hall consists of a corridor on whose sides words related to migrations are written in white against a bright, red background. he lack of a timeline has been questioned by visitors, who think it would have been a useful tool (interview with Susanne Krogh Jensen, 17 July 2012). he choice was to create a suggestive opening space to show the complexity of the issue of immigration. A mirror at the end of the corridor, aside from opening up the perspective, suggests that the subject of the museum, in the end, is us. Texts are very short with some touchscreen devices ofering more in-depth analysis. In this very graphic layout, some showcases display documents and artefacts (books, hats, records, scarves, passports, magazines, posters…) related to a number of selected themes that introduce the complexity involved in the issue of migrations—traditions such as the “importation” of the Christmas tree from Germany, “immigrations as a brand”, referring to the traditional Dutch blue peasants’ hat, identity, remittances, citizenship laws, the UN’s refugee convention, the presence of Buddhists, work permits, the so-called Foreign Law of 1875, etc. Personal stories are the access key. For example, the statement “My religion is Palestine” made by a person who had never lived in his grandparents’ homeland is the key to access the issue of belonging. Another issue dealt with here is faith. he main diferences among the three monotheistic religions can be discovered by lifting some laps in two cupboards—comparison is made among food, the holy book, calendar, baptism, etc. he next space is a wider room where, on one side, there is a written insight into the theme of citizenship and the history of the laws which have led to current legislation, displayed through a series of posters, one next to the other. On the other side of the room the theme of food was chosen as a key to access the issue of diversity. A cupboard shows diferent ingredients, while a series of drawers can be opened and personal stories related to food, traditions, recipes and the symbolic sense of cooking are displayed. Here the visitor is also ofered multisense experiences. For example he/she is asked to smell spices and to recognise them, discovering that, despite being used in Danish food, they are often grown elsewhere. Past these two introductory spaces, the visitor enters the “labyrinth”, dedicated to cultural encounters. he irst part of this room, again conceived as a series of thematic “islands” with a strong visual element and very little text (integrated by touch-screen devices), deals with the issues of the historical reasons for going to Denmark—from French and German peasants in the 17th century to Turkish and Yugoslavian guest workers in more recent years, to scientiic researchers employed in the pharmaceutical industry up to football players—and on the legal treatment of the foreigners. Up until 1952, for European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 99 example, people could be asked to leave if they could not prove they had enough money to live in the country. Some personal stories are told, chosen from the database concerning expulsions managed by the museum. Cartoons of the prophet Mohammed cannot be ignored though, of course, they are not exhibited. he relection concerns the consequences of talking about other cultures without taking into account feelings and perceptions. his is also the museum line when talking about gypsies. Being a very delicate and controversial issue, no easy solution is outlined, but it was still felt important to include them in the museum narrative. A brief account of the legislation concerning gypsies is ofered, and a comparison with the destiny of nomadic peddlers—here represented by artefacts made of human hair. A law was passed to ban peddling so that even gypsies would be banned. Human traicking is also hinted at as a very current and delicate subject. two cases, for example, the strength of the real story is so evident that it is used to exemplify a complex discourse, almost to replace it. Most of the issues are dealt with through personal stories. his is the case, for example, of the discourse on refugees and asylum seekers, an important national concern. he museum received on loan a number of artefacts belonging to a German person who was responsible for cultural activities in refugee camps after World War II. Another important loan consists of a collection of letters exchanged between a Danish man who hosted an Austrian child after World War I, and the natural father. In these Kjær, Birgitte. 2012. “Nu åbner Danmarks første immigrantmuseum.” Politiken, January 25. he last part of the labyrinth is centred on current events and on the very idea of “meeting the other”. It deals with city ghettoes, second generations, mixed marriages, adoptions, transmigrations, commonplace concerns such as the controversy regarding the burqa—it is estimated that only between 50 and 100 women are wearing it one at present in Denmark. A huge gallery hosts thematic temporary exhibitions, which last about 4 months each. Anna Chiara Cimoli æ references Blüdnikow, Bent. 2010. ”Nyt Immigrantmuseum på vej.” Berlingske Tidende, December 3. Lenler, Jens . 2011. “Kære Kemal, man kan ikke købe en dansk pige.” Politiken, October 29. Lund Poulsen, Pia. 2012. På tværs og på Trods. Om ægteskabsimmigration i Danmark. Copenhagen: Frydenlund. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 101 100 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Red Star Line Museum Antwerp, Belgium 2013 Red Star Line worked as a shipping company linking Antwerp and the United States from 1873 to 1934. It is estimated that about two million people travelled from this harbour to America—mostly eastern Europeans, including Jews escaping from Russia and Galicia. he company was founded by the International Navigation Company (INC) and its aim was to transport petrol from Philadelphia and New York to Antwerp. he INC found a Belgian partner, a local mercantile house, and together with it a proitable business emigration. Ships sailed to the USA and to Canada under the Belgian lag—at times also British or American lags—for economic reasons—labour and ships were cheaper. Both the government and the city of Antwerp provided the company with advantageous conditions. Since 1902, Red Star Line has belonged to the International Marine & Mercantile Company founded by J.P. Morgan. During World War I, management moved to Liverpool. It then later went back to Antwerp, but the number of emigrants fell due to the restrictions imposed by the US government. he 1929 crash was another serious blow for the company, which was liquidated in 1934 and sold to Holland America Line in 1939. img. 4.71 — Red Star Line Museum: view of one of the museum premises with the panoramic tower. Photo by Anna Chiara Cimoli. he three original warehouses on the Rijnkaai cover an area of 1,777 sqm. Medical examinations, administrative checks and luggage disinfection took place here. he oldest building (1893-94, called RSL1), at the corner of Montevideostraat, was a hangar of about 400 sqm where medical examinations took place. Just before the war, 550 sqm RSL2 (customs) was built by the city of Antwerp for storing goods, and later luggage. In 1922, after the Dillingham Immigration Restriction Act that deined a quota per nationality, the company built RSL3, an 800 sqm open space with metal columns, designed by Jan Jacobs speciically for third class passengers. his interesting art deco building housed showers, fumigation kettles, a hairdresser’s and two waiting rooms. On the upper loor were the washrooms and a waiting room where migrants queued up before medical examination. he Red Star Line site is located in the old port neighbourhood, het Eilandje, and is undergoing a major city renewal project which will transform a forgotten part of the city into a commercial and cultural hub. he museum will open in September 2013. he nearby Museum aan de Stroom (MAS), an impressive, outstanding museum designed by architects Neutelings and Riedijk and inaugurated in 2011, was a focal point in this renewal process. his institution, rapidly becoming one of the main tourist attractions in the city as well as being massively frequented by Antwerp’s citizens, deals with the twofold theme “Antwerp in the world” and “the world in Antwerp”. he physical proximity and the contiguous areas of interest mutually reinforce the two institutions, as well as contributing to the renewal of the neighbourhood. It is interesting to note that the restoration of the Red Star Line premises has broadened the perimeter of the “mental city map” for citizens, in a clear example of the recovery power of culture and of a virtuous process of urban regeneration started by museums. he irst impulse in preserving the three remaining warehouses of the Red Star Line shipping company came precisely from the need to save them from destruction. In fact, used for diferent purposes after the company’s liquidation, they had been neglected since the 60s. In 2004 the city of Antwerp decided to purchase the Red Star Line premises, classiied as a listed building (RSL1 was the last one to be classiied in 2006). In 2005, the temporary association of Beyer-Binder-Belle Architects and Planners LLP—designers of the Ellis Island Immigration museum—and the engineering company 102 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 4.72 — Red Star Line Museum: rendering of the exhibition design with the “globe”. Courtesy of Beyer Blinder Belle – Christophe Gaeta and Red Star Line Museum, Antwerp. img. 4.73 — Red Star Line Museum: rendering of the exhibition design with the “timeline”. Courtesy of Beyer Blinder Belle – Christophe Gaeta and Red Star Line Museum, Antwerp. img. 4.74 — Red Star Line Museum: an original plan. Courtesy of Red Star Line Museum, Antwerp. img. 4.75 — Red Star Line Museum: an original plan. Courtesy of Red Star Line Museum, Antwerp. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 103 104 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Arcade Ltd. started drafting the renovation process, following an open call by the Flemish Master Builder. Initially the project was set up as a generic plan to transform the buildings into a lieu de mémoire. In 2007, the project was transferred to the museum department and a scientiic committee was created which designed the general concept, based on the awareness that the history of the Red Star Line could serve as an example of the universal phenomenon of mobility. he concept chosen by the curators is to have the visitors walk the same route followed by the emigrants from departure to arrival. Entrance is from RSL2. Here the ground loor is conceived as a multifunctional open space hosting the ticket oice and the museum shop. Small temporary exhibitions, lectures etc. can take place here. he visit to the main exhibition starts in RSL1 and focuses on international mobility in the past and in the present, while in RSL3 the stress is on the history of the Red Star Line shipping company and on Antwerp as an international migrant harbour. At the end of the main exhibition there will be a research centre and an area dedicated to the “Leave your trace” interactive tool. he two main narrative instruments are multimedia on the one hand, and historical experience on the other. A sloping walkway leads to the observation tower, the only new area—which replaces a small, 40s building which is suggestive of a ship’s prow. he panorama from this viewpoint is breathtaking, and puts the visitor in the position of looking forward, in an attitude of suspension, as might have been that of the migrants. his element represents the physical and visual link with the river, which is about 200 m. away. It also represents an “icon”, in the sense that, with its height—the same as the lagship—and verticality, it testiies to the city the presence of a place which was completely erased from collective memory—at a later stage, after the museum’s opening, the regeneration of the Scheldt quays in front of the museum might be undertaken. hanks to a widespread campaign, the collec- tion—the result of the merging of the city of Antwerp’s museum collections and of the nonproit organisation, Friends of the Red Star Line, as well as private collections, is now rich in communication items such as posters, brochures, calendars, postcards, as well as fans, handkerchiefs and other promotional items. Among the artefacts present in the collection are the objects used aboard the ships such as tableware, cutlery, plates, music programs and menus, as well as ship models and personal artefacts. Unfortunately, the Red Star Line archives were probably destroyed during the war—some documents were found in the Holland American Line’s archive, others in the Ellis Island Immigration Museum’s archive, etc. Still, archival research plays an important role in the museum—it has already proved itself crucial in preparing the main exhibition. he Research Centre will collect contemporary as well as historical personal histories, and will also serve as a place for genealogy research. hrough databases, the visitors will be able to do research on the collection, on the Belgians who emigrated from 1500 to 1960 (approx. 100,000 already in the databases), as well as access tools on migration history, passenger lists, etc. Collaboration with the Family History Association of Flanders was set up, which allows access to the database in the museum. A pre-opening was ofered to the city in April 2012 through a 3-week festival, which was also an occasion to verify how spaces work in RSL2 (the festival attracted 20,000 visitors). Programs for the two years after the opening comprise an exhibition on the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, a photography exhibition, the further development of the Research Centre in collaboration with other institutions and archives, publications (catalogue and book on emigration via Antwerp) and the collection of migrants’ stories. æ critical analysis he irst point of strength of the Red Star Line Museum is its location. he fact of being located European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 105 inside the original premises of the company is a powerful story in itself. Despite the long abandonment, the warehouses could be renewed through a delicate consolidation and restoration process, and are in themselves a lieu de mémoire. Still, compared to other European experiences, it seems that the museological choice will not ofer an immersive experience in the past “as it was” (or “might have been”)—notwithstanding the fact that historical and personal experience is always important in the overall narrative—but rather to build continuous bridges between past and present, local and global. he museum deals with migration from 19th century up until today, and interprets the history of the company as a malleable example of the universal history of migration from pre-history to today. he museum’s concept is very clear: quoting Eric Vanhaute “the intention is to present an image of long-distance migration as a social process. he process occurs at the crossroads of movements, from the individual story through local experience, the passage itself (transport), international and intercontinental contacts, all the way through to global relations. hus, it covers human choices, external challenges and threats, transport and movements, new settlements, hospitality and exclusion” (quoted in Nauwelaerts 2008, 18). he vision is that local history is told through a universal prism—that of mobility as the core of human nature. Still, if mobility is a universal and ever-extant dimension, migration and travel change through time. he exhibition will then focus on these changes. At the very beginning of the main exhibition, a short introduction is ofered through a picture of 3rd class passengers in the buildings—taken exactly in the place where the visitor stands. After a brief text about the company and the buildings, the discourse will open up through a monumental globe—where 360° screens will broadcast a ilm loop focusing on the universal but also personal experience that people have with mobility, through both historical and contemporary footage—and a timeline, where twenty individuals will represent diferent moments in history going from prehistory to today. he attempt here is to reverse the “classical” theory that sees settling down as an arrival point in the history of humankind, and to show how mobility has represented a great propulsive force. Passing the nearby building, we dive into the “historical story”, inding out what happened to the passengers travelling on Red Star Line ships. While the chronological approach is quite “classical”—from departure to arrival—, the attempt here is to bring history to life through a number of thematic stages. he journey starts in Eastern Europe—only about 10% of the people leaving from Antwerp were Belgians—and through its development some themes are investigated, such as marketing networks, the “push and pull” factors, the voyage by train to Antwerp, transmigration through the city—how it looked to migrants and how they saw it—, controls in the building, the departure, the voyage on the ship—the division into classes, social rules…—, the arrival at Ellis Island, the attachment to one’s roots represented by the ethnic press and other documents, and so on. Recourse to multimedia is very important in the overall exhibition design. At the end of this journey there will be two art installations, one with contemporary testimonies of people living in Antwerp linked to important symbolic places in the city, and another one showing 800 people invited to represent the “basic” human experiences linked to migration—such as fear of control, saying goodbye etc. he museum does not have a space dedicated exclusively to educational activities (though an empty room beneath the tower could be used for that purpose in the future), but the choice is to hire cultural mediators able to compare their personal migrant experiences, through storytelling, with the ones narrated in the museum. he outreach activities developed through time testify the wish to include the migrants living today in Antwerp in the story told, and to make the Red Star Line a living experience, thanks to a balancing of immersive experiences—suggested, for example, in the rooms dedicated to life aboard or to the arrival in Ellis Island—and 106 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 4.76, 4.77, 4.78 — Red Star Line Museum: renderings of the exhibition design. Courtesy of Beyer Blinder Belle – Christophe Gaeta and Red Star Line Museum, Antwerp. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 107 information about the context. he idea here is not to facilitate immersion in the past, and therefore work on the emotional impact of the space, but to suggest the ininite connections of past and present, of the universal history with the personal. he museum designed some research and communication tools to contact Antwerp’s population before the opening. One of them is the “transit bus” touring around the city which collected about 400 stories, out of which the exhibition “Hier ben ik!” (“Here I am!”) was conceived. Another important one is “Leave your trace”, an interactive tool available online and accessible from the Research Centre for the people to tell their stories through pictures and texts. he social media are of course a very important means of communication with the public, who react to the demand for stories, objects and testimonies. Anna Chiara Cimoli æ references Nauwelaerts, Mandy, ed. 2008. Red Star Line. People on the Move. Bai: Schoten. City Museums Edited by Francesca Lanz 110 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 111 City Museums for Changing Cities and Citizens A European overview: cues for reflection As many authors have already pointed out, a city museum is a relatively new museum type, the deinition of which is neither uniied nor ixed (Postula 2012; Visser Travaglini 2008; Kistemaker 2006: 5-6; Bertuglia, and Montaldo 2003; Galla 1995). It is not deined by the type of objects it conserves; in fact, its collections usually include very heterogeneous objects, sometimes strictly related to the city’s identity and history, and other more diverse items, gathered together according to the collecting strategies and the socio-political context of the time. hey thus include archaeological inds, photos, historical art works, garments, furniture, paintings, objects of material culture, and private collections and memorabilia, as well as new, recently-acquired, objects such as digital content, contemporary works of art, audio, video, and much more. A city museum is neither deined by the ownership of its collections nor by its funding sources, which may be municipal as well as national or private. Originally, city museums developed to conserve and display the city’s history and, indeed, they are usually identiied with historical museums, but today this is often not the case for many new and renewed city museums, whose mission and purpose are being developed beyond their traditional role towards a more active social involvement within the contemporary city and its communities. hey may be identiied with local museums, but nowadays their “relatively small geographical focus (...) transcends itself in attending to the transnational relations which produce the place whose cultures the museum maps” (Whitehead, Eckersley and Mason 2012: 100). Perhaps nowadays, one of the most telling deinitions of a city museum is the one given by Steven hielemans in 2000, and quoted by Renée Kis- previous page — Bologna City History Museum, Italy. Display “My museum”. Courtesy of Mario Bellini Architect(s) and Massimo Negri. 112 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) temaker in her introduction to the fourth symposium on city museum in 2005: “a city museum is a museum about and in the city. It is connected with both the strategy of the city and with its citizens” (2006: 5).1 his deinition has been taken as the starting point for this analysis of the contemporary evolutionary trends of city museums across Europe. he survey mapped about 50 city museums, including the museums of the capital cities of the 27 European member states, those of the capitals of the candidate states, city museums located in major European cities which have hosted signiicant events over the last ive years—such as the Olympics, the Expo or that have been nominated European Capitals of Culture—, and recent eye-catching projects for new city museums around Europe. Some of the most telling examples, selected because of their outstanding attempts at developing innovative models and approaches—in terms of both programme and museographical project—have been then visited and, where possible, their curators and designer interviewed. he aim of the research was to explore if and how city museums are reacting to the challenges and changes posed by what the MeLa project deines as “an age of migrations.”2 he survey developed around some main research questions, investigating the role that city museums can play within a changing urban context, how they deal with the growing heterogeneity of the city’s population ensuing from contemporary mobility and migration luxes, and how their role and this context inluence their strategies and narratives, in order to eventually examine how their communication tools, spaces and exhibition design might consequently change and contribute to the efectiveness of the museum’s mission. his chapter should be understood mainly as a working document, which collects and summarises the preliminary indings from this in-progress research, and aims at outlining possible developments, cues for relection and ields to be further investigated. æ contemporary european city museums: a turning point Increasing attention is currently being focused on city museums, a phenomenon that is attested to by the lively new debate that has developed 1 Such a definition leaves out many museums located in the city, owned and managed by the municipality, but where the focus is not the city itself, clarifying thus a common misunderstanding—this is the case, for example, of the Italian civic museums, a few of which are actual “city museums.” On the other hand, it covers other museums, such as neighbourhood museums—e.g. the Kreuzberg Museum—whose activities and contents are strictly related to an important part of the city’s identity. Hence, in a way, it enlarges and blurs the boundary of the field, virtually including museums that focus on an urban region or a metropolitan area—such as the Ruhrlandmuseum or the museum of the city of Trento and the Region of Trentino in north Italy—as well as other museums that do not call themselves “city museums”, but which actually are about their host city, its socio-cultural development and its identity – such as the Galata Museo del Mare, in Genoa or the MAS in Antwerp. Some of these museums are presented in the case study section of this chapter and in other chapters and volumes of this book. 2 The notion of “migration” is adopted by the Project as a paradigm of the contemporary global and multicultural world. Thus “migration” is not meant only as a matter related to people, but rather as a complex condition of contemporary society, which seems to be increasingly characterised by an accelerated mobility that involves people and entire populations, different kinds of “migrations” of bodies, objects, ideas, information, goods, knowledge and cultures (Basso Peressut and Pozzi 2012; Basso Peressut, Postiglione and Lanz 2012). European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 113 around the subject as well as by the signiicant economic investments of which they have recently been the target. In the last ten years a number of city museums have been inaugurated across Europe and further aield, including both new projects and renovations of historic city museums. Examples include the Museum of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, a £72m project inaugurated in 2011, which is the largest newly-built national museum in the UK for over a hundred years, and the Museum of London, where they have recently concluded a £25m project aimed at redesigning part of the museum’s spaces and galleries, as well as opening a new museum venue in the Docklands dedicated to the history of London’s East End. In France, the Musée Gadagne in Lyon was reopened in 2009, with an investment of €30m to restore the building, double its spaces, and re-design the exhibitions. he Musée Historique of Strasbourg, closed in 1987, was re-launched in 2007 with a project by Laurent Marquart. he new Musée d’Histoire de Nantes, hosted in a ifteenthcentury castle, has opened with a new exhibition design by Jean-Francis Bodin, and in 2013 in Marseille, the new city history museum will be inaugurated in time for the Marseille-Provence 2013 European Capital of Culture events. In Spain, the renovated Museu d’Història de la Ciutat de Barcelona opened in 2008 and the new Museo de Historia de Valencia in 2003. In Belgium, the new MAS–Museum aan de Stroom in Antwerp, a €33.5m building designed by the Rotterdam irm Neutelings Riedijk Architects, was inaugurated in 2011, and the STAM–Stadsmuseum Gent, was restored and enlarged in 2010. In Italy, three city museums have recently been completed, each of them focusing on the city’s history and hosted in an ancient and relevant building that has been restored to turn it in a museum: the Santa Giulia in Brescia, designed by Tortelli and Franzoni architects, opened in 1998 and extended in 2011; the Palazzo Pepoli in Bologna, funded by the CARISBO Bank Foundation, designed by Mario Bellini with Italo Lupi and Massimo Negri at a cost of around €18m, and inaugurated in 2012; and in Bergamo, the Museo Storico dell’Età Veneta, inaugurated in 2012, with a new exhibition— mainly ICT based—designed by the video and multimedia studio N!03 in collaboration with Alessandro Bettonagli Architecture Entertainment. In Germany, the new Frankfurt’s museum project, due to open in 2015, is currently underway. he list may be even longer, encompassing other European cities, or even expanding out from Europe internationally, including, for example, the USA—with the $72.5m Chicago History Museum project, the projects for the city museums of San Francisco, Tampa Bay and Atlanta, or the $100m Boston Museum project—and Asia, with projects such as the $150m Capital Museum of Beijing, inaugurated in 2006. In addition, many other city museums throughout Europe are currently undertaking extensive renovations and rethinking their collections, spaces and exhibitions, as well as developing many interesting projects. Examples include, though are not limited to, the Museum of Copenhagen, the Amsterdam Museum, the Helsinki Museum and the Museum Rotterdam. 114 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 115 img. 5.02 — The Museum of Liverpool, United Kingdom © Jose Campos. Courtesy of 3XN Architects. he birth of city museums in Europe can be traced back to the second half of the nineteenth century when the largest cities, involved in the urban, economic and social transformations of the time, attempted to preserve documents, stories, and memories from the past. hese museums were usually hosted in ancient, iconic buildings of the city, and were conceived as repositories of civic treasures and places where the history of the city should be conserved. heir collections were meant to represent the city, tell its story and celebrate its glorious past; consequently, they were very heterogeneous and included several kinds of objects, usually organised according to typological or chronological criteria. From the second half of the nineteenth century, this museum type spread throughout Europe and many city museums were established.3 However, by the early second half of the twentieth century the city museum was already a mostly outdated and disused museum type. At the end of the 1990s, city museums again became the subject of attention. his new interest was triggered by the need for these museums to move away from the doldrums in which they found themselves, but was also a consequence of the new pressing issues ensuing from a changing urban scenario. heir mission and raison d’être have been questioned and reconsidered, and their role redeined from one of merely preserving and displaying the city’s glorious past, to representing and interpreting the city’s present, as well as imagining and debating its future (UNESCO 1995, 2006; Fleming 1996; Kavanagh, and Frostick 1998; Bertuglia, and Montaldo 2003; Kistemaker 2006; Aymonino, and Tolic 2007; Jones, Macdonald, and McIntyre 2008; Calabi, Marini, and Travaglini 2008; Jones et al. 2012). Several new tasks are envisioned for them, starting from their historical role and moving beyond it. hey are seen as a 3 Such as the museums of London (the Guildhall Museum, founded in 1826, and the London Museum, founded in 1911), the Musée Carnevalet in Paris, whose project dates back to 1860 and was inaugurated in 1875, the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna, which opened in 1887, the Helsinki City Museum, which was set up in 1911 or the Amsterdam Historical Museum, first opened in 1926. custodian for the city’s history, a mirror of civic memory and belief, a place of identity-building, interlocutors for local governments and urban planners, access points to the city, and much more. Among their new tasks, they are undersood, on the one hand, as urban marketing tools for city promotion, acting as a portal for city communication, often touristoriented and occasionally also implemented in relation to city branding and local policies (Monlieu 2012; Tisdale 2012a). On the other, they are asked to carry out a social role, being more involved in urban and social issues, addressing diicult topics and contributing to fostering dialogue between the diferent ethnic, religious, social and generational groups of the city (Galla 1995; Flaming 1996; Lohman 2006; Kistemaker 2006). As David Flaming pointed out, the increasing attention paid to city museums is not only theoretical or speculative, but is also a response to the new cumulative demands which are “part ideological, part economic, driven by perceived social and educational needs, and by cultural competitiveness between cities looking to diversify their post-industrial role towards European tourist currencies” (1996: 132). At the same time it may also be related to the re-emergence of local and regional identities in a context of political and cultural re-deinition, and to the current dynamics which afect many European cities. img. 5.03 — Museum of Liverpool, United Kingdom. Plan of the first floor and section © 3XN Architects. 116 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) It is widely recognised that the ongoing political, economic and cultural process of creation of the European Union, the luid mobility occurring at the European and global level, and the new economic and cultural opportunities ofered by globalisation, are transcending the political-economic sphere, to the extent that they inluence almost every aspect of human life and activity. Extensive research, as well as statistical surveys, has already shown how cities are deeply afected by these phenomena in every aspect of their structure (Sassen 1991, 1994; Martinotti 1993; Amendola 1997; Rykwert 2000; UN|DESA 2012). Being the destination of material and immaterial luxes of objects, individuals, information and business, many “European capitals”—which may be national capitals, historical centres, as well as new cultural, political or economic key areas—are currently experiencing rapid and profound changes, assuming crucial new roles in a highly competitive framework, struggling to hold on to a large share of the market, attract tourism, and secure economic investment and the hosting of international events. At the same time, the ongoing phenomena of migrations and movements of people are also leading to a new demographic growth in European cities, and are reconstituting an internal cultural diversity after a long period of ethnic simpliication. According to the Eurostat 2011 census, 9.4% of the population of the 27 EU states are citizens born in countries other than those in which they reside.4 Of this number, more than a third were born in a non-European country, and most of them are concentrated in urban centres. Consequently, matters and concerns related to globalisation, migration and the growing ethnic-cultural mix which characterises contemporary societies currently represent some of the most pressing issues for urban cultural institutions and policies, including city museums. While on the one hand all these processes undoubtedly produce new energy within European cities, they also pose new challenges and can lead to an increase in social friction and new cultural, social, ethnic and economic “invisible boundaries” (UN-HABITAT 2008). As Georges Prevelakis pointed out: cities are today in the forefront of new opportunities and dangers (…) In order to promote new forms of cooperation between cultures, cities need to invent and to propose new cultural and political models. hey are in an excellent position to become laboratories of the ‘dialogue of civilization’ in order to counterbalance the efects of the ‘conlict of civilizations’ raging in the surrounding sea of the global archipelago. (2008: 21) Hence many major European cities are currently reconiguring their cultural and political agenda according to this context, a renewed cultural and economic impulse and a new emerging social context. 4 “In 2010 there were 32.5 million foreigners in the EU-27, corresponding to 6.5% of the total population. The majority of them, 20.2 million, were third-country nationals (i.e. citizens of non- EU countries), while the remaining 12.3 million were citizens of another Member State […] There were 47.3 million foreign-born residents in the EU in 2010, corresponding to 9.4% of the total population. Of these, 31.4 million were born outside the EU and 16.0 million were born in another EU Member State” (Eurostat 2011). European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 117 City museums, as institutions historically charged with representing the city, recording its transformations and conserving its memory and history, should and could play an important role, not only in registering these urban changes, but also by acting as cultural tools capable of inluencing and driving them, going beyond their traditional role of repository of city history, and involving themselves in contemporary urban and social issues. he number and features of new city museums opened and renovated around Europe and beyond in recent years seem to suggest that the theoretical debate so far developed this overall scenario are ultimately encouraging an actual transformation of this museum type, and that city museums are reacting to these stimuli. City museums are nowadays experimenting with new strategies, promoting intercultural programmes, redesigning their exhibitions, reorganising their collections, broadening their activities, rethinking their narratives and communicative approaches and ultimately facing new challenges and seeking out new models and tools with which to tackle them. It is undoubtedly diicult to set up shared strategies or common tools and, obviously, diferent cultures, histories and museological models generate diferent kinds of museums—this is especially true if we consider city museums, which are nowadays facing a deep evolution, and which are deeply inluenced by and embedded in their speciic local contexts, the city, that, moreover, is itself under transformation. However, several city museums are currently implementing new approaches and interesting solutions that may provide suggestions worthy of further exploration and development: the aim of this essay is to outline the most signiicant challenges and possibilities, paying particular attention to the role of exhibition and museum design and to the emergence of new museographical models. æ the challenge of representing contemporaneity Whether city museums develop more towards city promotion and tourist communication, or direct their eforts more towards a socially-oriented purpose, a common trend in this transformation is the shift in their focus from urban history to social history, and in an interest towards the contemporary evolution of the city. his shift also currently represents an impetus for development and a major challenge. More generally, the challenge of representing contemporaneity is a matter of relection for many contemporary museums, a ield which ofers exciting development prospects but which also opens up several new issues and questions: how to represent something that is happening while we are talking? how to prevent the rapid obsolescence of the museum’s message? and how to get away from the “closed history” model of representation? Museums seem to face a dichotomy between representing what is in the here-and-now—processes that are ongoing, rapid and unpredictable—, and their own traditional and consolidated practices and approaches, concerning which it could be argued that they are a non- 118 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) natural place to represent processes. he shift that many city museums are performing in order to focus on the city’s present and future undeniably requires the development of new working strategies and the use and implementation of new communication tools, as well as the development of new approaches to storytelling and new museographical models. Firstly, it entails a deep relection on their very core—the collections. City museums were created as historical museums; recording, conserving and representing the history of the city was—and in some ways still is—their main purpose, and their narratives and collections have been constructed on this basis. heir collections thus include various objects, sometimes collected because of their relevance to the city’s history, others donated to the museum by private citizens and collectors; they were often inluenced by the taste, diferent collecting strategies and the city’s sociopolitical context of the time of the museum’s creation. he heterogeneity of their collections often makes it diicult to go beyond the nineteenthcentury model, while historical collections may be not appropriate for representing the contemporary city. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 119 the citizens’ sense of belonging and the overall urban quality of life.5 he city which these city museums are representing is thus neither monolithic nor unitary. Its identity is strictly related to the identities of a variety of subjects coming from abroad, who live and experience the city with their intellectual and cultural diferences, with diferent expectations and aims, on a long-term as well as temporary basis. he city’s places— considered not only as physical locations but also “in terms of the social relations which they tie together”, as “processes” themselves with their own indetities (Massey 1991: 28)—change and evolve constantly. “he modern city—pointed out Joseph Rykwert—is a city of contradictions (…) it houses many ethnes, many cultures, and classes, many religions. his modern city is too fragmentary, too full of contrast and strife: it must therefore have many faces not one” (2000,7). Which city museum for this city? What is the “place” of “city” in city museum? What may be its role in handling these urban transformations? Should it only record them, or it can play a part in driving them? How can this be done? Hence, city museums today need to work hard on and with their collections, reinterpreting them, making the most of their archives, and developing new selection criteria for the objects to be displayed—often also reducing their number. At the same time, they need to set up new collecting strategies to enlarge their collection, upgrading them to include contemporaneity, and thus facing questions of how and what to collect, how far from the object they should go, and how to display the new kind of objects collected—which may sometimes be unusual and problematic, consisting of personal items, as well as voices, ilms, sounds, photographs and contemporary works of art, and in some cases also related with dificult topics and delicate personal histories. It stands to reason that one of the priorities for city museums is to create, recreate or strengthen their bond with the city and its inhabitants. herefore many of them are currently devoting considerable efort to the development of multipurpose outreach projects, aimed mainly at connecting with the diferent urban communities. At the same time, these projects are tools for the museum to address contemporary city issues, develop new collecting strategies focused on contemporaneity, experiment with alternative curating approaches and also to reach a broader audience (Betti 2012). In addition, their other cornerstone, the relationship with the city itself, is also questioned by this shift. Since the museum is now attempting to focus not only on the city’s past and history but also—and sometimes primarily—on its present and future, what kind of relationship exists between the museum and the city which is, at the same time, the cultural and physical context of the museum, the subject of the museum itself, and also exists just beyond the museum’s walls? Which links, synergies, crossreferences and mutual enrichments may be established? What should and could a visit to the museum add to the experience of the city? An interesting ield of experimentation in this context is that of exploring the possibility of the museum physically moving into the city and its communities, bringing the museum into the streets, and out of its enclosure. his is not only a strategic trend for city museums, as for all contemporary museums—which has several positive efects from a communicative and promotional point of view as well as in community engagement (CFM 2012)—but, for a city museum, it is also a basic question of approach and conception, a metaphor for, and a relection of, the city museum’s openness and bond with the urban reality. A deinition of a city museum as a museum in and about the city, understands the city on the whole, including its history, present, and future, its places and their transformation, its multifarious identities and its many and diferent inhabitants. he current developments of many cities also gives rise to rapid urban changes, with the demolition of large industrial districts, the building of new areas, and the social and physical transformation of many historical neighbourhoods. At the same time, the global economy is making the cities’ architecture progressively less diverse and more homogeneous, deleting many points of reference and thus afecting his aim results in several diferent types of project and experiment. hese include, for example, the development of outdoor pop-up projects (Tisdale 2012b), which are proving to be a very efective tool. hey are lexible and cheap—a very important quality in this particular time of æ to reach out: the city museum beyond its walls 5 With no reference points, Rykwert states, quoting Kevin Lynch, “a citizen cannot ‘read’, let alone ‘understand’ his home”, since they make the place legible, and “not only offer security but also heighten the potential depth and intensity of human experience” (2000, 133). Moreover, many authors assert that the current changes occurring in cities, which are faster than ever before, are also inducing the rise of a sense of disorientation and, consequently, a feeling of insecurity, alienation and homologation (Boeri 2012). Several studies have already highlighted the role of places in shaping people’s personal identity and providing a setting for collective memory (Mason, Whitehead and Graham 2012). 120 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.04 — Popu Up project, Cambridge, Massachusetts. “If this house could Talk” is a community based history and public art project, created and produced by residents of the Cambridgeport section of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photo by Ross Miller. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 121 crisis—, open to multiple levels of engagement with the public, able to accommodate diferent perspectives and, moreover, they can create direct links between the museum, the city and the people, reconnecting places, history and personal experience. Similar advantages are provided by the implementation of out-and-out mobile museums and urban installations such as the “Museum on the Move”, a series of outreach events using a mobile trailer developed by the Museum of London in the early 1990s at the time of the “Peopling of London” exhibition to consult and publicise the project as extensively as possible (Merriman 1997). Another example is the San Francisco “Mobile Museum”, a participatory touring exhibit that its in the back of a car, or “the WALL” by the Museum of Copenhagen, an interactive multimedia urban installation travelling around the city over a four-year period up to 2014, developed as a communicative tool for the museum, a way to improve accessibility to the museum’s archive about the city history, and an experimental tool to collect material about the contemporary city (Sandahl et al. 2011). Food for thought and ideas for further development can also be provided by other city-related projects, such as the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a mobile interdisciplinary laboratory travelling between 2011 and 2013 to major cities worldwide and aimed at addressing issues of contemporary urban life through programs and public discourse, or the Berlin’s “Info Box,” a red pavilion designed in 1995 by Schneider and Schumacher as a temporary structure to provide information about the construction around Potsdamer Platz since 2001 (Choi 2009), as well as by performative art and other cultural events as festivals and fairs in public spaces.6 img. 5.05 — Popu Up project “If this house could Talk” Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photo by Cathie Zusy. It is important to remember that the possibility of establishing and nourishing a relationship between the city and the city museum lies not only in temporary or communicative projects or educational and partecipative activites, but also, and primarily, in the very project of the museum itself. he design of a city museum can be seen as an opportunity for urban development, for the rediscovery and enhancement of the city’s heritage, and a chance to nurture awareness of the city’s cultural resources and identity, thus contributing to the cultural, touristic and economic development of the city. Including the city in the museum and the museum in the city also means considering one as an inseparable part of the other, also from an architectural and urban planning point of view. he opening or renovation of a city museum can provide an opportunity for the restoration and rehabilitation of a signiicant historic building which has its own history and identity, and which can be thus returned to the city and itself become part of the museum’s collection—among the many examples, the Italian museographical tradition has largely experi6 New technologies can also make a significant contribution to these outreach projects. Social media facilitate the communication and promotion of these experiments, and increase their level of openness and the possibility of audience involvement and engagement. They can also enrich the experience by adding new levels and content (Allen and Lupo 2012). Examples abound: two interesting examples are the historical pop-up, developed by the Museum of London “street museum” mobile application, and the “city insights” programme for city exploring. 122 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 123 img. 5.06 — BMW Guggenheim Lab, New York City, USA. Exterior view from East First Street. Photo by Paul Warchol © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. img. 5.08 — BMW Guggenheim Lab, Mumbai India. January 3, 2013 Batliboy Compound Mumbai. Photo: UnCommonSense © 2013 Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. For the Mumbai Lab, Atelier Bow-Wow, working with Mumbai’s SDM Architects, designed a structure suited to the densely populated environment of Mumbai. Modeled after the Indian mandapa, a raised outdoor pavilion traditionally used for public celebrations and events, the Mumbai Lab structure is constructed primarily of bamboo and evokes a light, open and transparent quality. mented in this sense (Lanz 2013). he construction of a new museum, on the other hand, ofers the possibility to work on urban planning, rehabilitate or enhance an urban area and create a new iconic city symbol, which can act as a new, cultural and physical reference point within the city—the project for the MAS in Antwerp and the Museum of Liverpool for example, originate also from this aim. he museum itself can be considered part of the city’s urban fabric; its rooms can be the city’s streets and squares, its windows the city’s showcases, its facilities urban meeting points, and its exhibitions libraries and schools, transforming the museum’s mission and approach into an architectural concept. he Antwerp museum for example has been intended as a city walk with a panoramic terrace; the design of the Amsterdam Museum was meant to represent the museum’s openness towards the city, including a gallery—the Schuttersgalerij Gallery—meant as a freely accessible “museum shopping street” (Kistemaker 2008); and similar relections can be done in relation with the renovation project of the Museum of London by Wilkinson Eyre Architects. At the same time, the city’s streets and squares can be seen as a part of the museum collection, not with historical reconstructions within the museum, but rather with a broad-based museographical project, which considers the actual places of the city as if they were rooms of the museum, and which encompasses the whole city and its cultural heritage—including city areas such as archaeological sites or historic buildings, as well as the city’s everyday life—a part of the city’s intangible cultural heritage which the museums should collect, preserve and present. img. 5.07 — The BMW Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany. The Lab opened in Berlin from June 15 to July 29, 2012. Schönhauser Allee 176, Hof 3. Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. Photo by Christian Richters © 2012 Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. he museum can be the starting point of a journey within the city, beginning inside the museum’s walls and spreading outside7, recounting the BMW Guggenheim Lab. Design by Atelier Bow-Wow of Tokyo. The architecture of the BMW Guggenheim Lab structure is designed to be responsive to the cities that the Lab visits. 7 The Museum of London provides maps for thematic city walks related to some museum topics – for example, passing through several historic buildings connected with the slavery trade; the Amsterdam Museum has recently inaugurated the exhibition Amsterdam DNA, an introduction to the city museums and a visit to the city in the context of four topics identified as the city’s main values, and which char- 124 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 125 img. 5.09, 10 — Santa Giulia, city history museum of Brescia, Italy. Aerial views of the museum complex, and the sourranding area of the city center © Archivio fotografico Civici musei d’Arte e Storia di Brescia. img. 5.12 — Santa Giulia, city history museum of Brescia, Italy. A view of the monastery and the Domus Pavillon from the Horti © Archivio fotografico Civici musei d’Arte e Storia di Brescia. Santa Giulia, city history museum of Brescia, Italy: scientific project by Andrea Emiliani; Architecrtural Project by Giovanni Tortelli and Roberto Frassoni, 2012. According to the so called “progetto brixia”, the museum should spread in the city, involving other areas of the city centre and historical remains. img. 5.13 — Santa Giulia, city history museum of Brescia, Italy. View of the archieological remains in the Domus Pavillon © Archivio fotografico Civici musei d’Arte e Storia di Brescia. The Santa Giulia Museum is an example of the implementation of the idea of “museo diffuso” developed Andrea Emiliani and Fredi Drugman in the 80s. img. 5.11 — Santa Giulia, city history museum of Brescia, Italy. Axonometry of the ancient monastery restored to host part of the museum. The museo diffuso, a term that is actually impossible to translate in English, is a kind of museum that aggregates different places and complementary functions. It is a system of cultural places that does not only include other museums, local cultural services and centres (such as libraries, schools, universities), but also archaeological and historical sites, witnesses of local material culture and industrial remains – which are considered the roots of this culture – and any kind of local cultural resource relevant for the cultural life and identity of the territory. This museum is not constrained by a geographical definition. It has a physical site, but, as a matter of fact, it is a “network-museum”, rather than a museums’ network: it reaches out beyond its own walls, involving and interacting with the whole territory and cultural institutions it refers to, broadening its cultural horizons and its collection by including people and places, local, historical, and material cultural, tangible and intangible heritages. It is a ‘civic project’, a museum with a social utility and cultural and political dimension whose aims are to: recreate a link between the museum’s collections and the contexts they originate from; rekindle memories of places and traditions by enhancing the rich cultural heritage of the territory it refers to; act both as a place of identity making and as a modern ‘access portal’ to the territory, making the most of local resources, also in a touristic and promotional point of view, in a fruitful collaboration between public and private institutions (Drugman 1981). 126 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 127 img. 5.14, 15 — The Amsterdam Museum, Netherlands © Amsterdam Museum. img. 5.16 — Ghent City Museum. The Abbey Refectory, restored and included in the museum itinerary © Phile Deprez. Courtesy of STAM. The museum is located in the old city orphanage restored and opened to the city (restoration project by Van Kasteel and Shippers). According to the aim to “give back this urban space to the citizens by truly opening it up,” the architects realised extra windows and some huge show case like openings in the wall walls of the orphanage (Kistemaker 2008). city’s history and representing its identities as bonds with and enabled by people’s relations to, with and within the city’s places over time, and thus contributing to restoring the sense of city places at a time of rapid urban change. City places are the very roots of a city museum, and might become a powerful starting point for the museum itself to help people rediscover them, the history of those who lived and live them, the events which have taken, and still take, place there, and the memories embedded in every corner of the city. his means giving a sense to places in order to better understand acterise its development in the past as well as today. Other meaningful suggestions can be provided by the Bologna city museums or the Brescia city museum, developed according to the Italian model of the “museo diffuso” (Lanz 2013). 128 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 129 hangen demonstrates how the use of these new technologies not only allows and foster but actually requires, also a deep rethought of the visual, communicative and epistemologic approaches to history and storytelling to really make a diference (Sandahl et al. 2011). img. 5.17 — The MAS Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp, Belgium 2011: VIew of the city from the bouleverd © Filip Dujardin. Courtesy of MAS them, and thus better live them, as well as deciding whether to preserve or change them, respecting history, which is not mere subordination, but rather an awareness that this is the precondition for conscious choices concerning the future of the city. Hence the museum’s activities and policies, as well as its architecture, exhibition design and communication tools, can contribute to furthering the rediscovery of the city and its places, and to nurturing in the city’s inhabitants a sense of belonging to the city and its communities despite their ethnic origin or place of birth, creating the basis for an inclusive idea of “citizenship” and ultimately contributing to the development of the city from many points of view. æ towards flexible and open models: the temporary dimension As mentioned above city museums in this process of rethinking are faced with the challenge of representing the city altogether, accounting of multiple perspectives, including plural voices and allowing alternative interpretations, including in the story those who have traditionally been excluded. hey are thus currently attempting to develop tools and communicative strategies that can both relect the new purpose of the museum in relation to its new mission and role, and help them in such a shift. Flexibility and openness seem to be among the main features required. New information and communication technologies may represent one possible response; they are changeable, can allow multiple entry points, include plural voices, overlap several layers to the display, make archives and collections available to a wider public, and encourage participation. However, it currently seems that the ICT are not really a solution or, at least, not as important as they could be. In fact, the costs of these devices, their maintenance and updating should be carefully considered as well as the problems related to the technological divide, while their integration with museum messages and exhibition design still need to be explored further— the design process for the Wall of the Museum of Copen- he survey demonstrates that an another strategy, more frequently implemented by city museums, is to work with temporary exhibitions to deal with current city issues and with sometimes hot and diicult topics. Here, curators can explore new topics and experiment with new strategies and tools, while designers are free to develop new communication and exhibition solutions. Temporary exhibitions are lexible both in terms of content and communication strategies, and thus may be more appropriate than other tools for representing highly contemporary topics and may also obviate the risk of the rapid obsolescence of the museum’s messages due to their relatively short duration. Temporary projects can be an excellent opportunity for museums to tests new curatorial approaches—such as co-curating and community involvement—to foster dialogue, and encourage visitors engagements. Moreover temporary projects provide the opportunity for the museum to work with its collections by reinterpreting them and displaying objects which are usually stored, and occasionally enlarge them by acquiring new items, and implement new collecting strategies, such as participative collecting, loans, or digital collecting. Several city museums are working extensively with temporary projects in this sense. Some of them are intended as actual pilot projects, leading to a more extensive revision of the museum’s permanent display, as in the case of the Museum of London, or the Amsterdam Museum. he Amsterdam Museum for example, in 1985 started to explore the topic of migration through several temporary exhibitions, which then led to the decision to include this topic in the new permanent display in 2000 when the new permanent exhibition on the contemporary city was opened. he museum continues to this day to develop temporary exhibitions and programmes with the aim of problematising the history of the city and dealing with contemporary issues (de Wildt 2012). he new Galleries of Modern London of the Museum of London on their side are the result of a long process of relection on issues related to diversity, migrations, and the identity and history of the city of London, carried out by the museum since the 1990s and marked by several projects and temporary exhibtions.8 he Musée d’Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg has also worked extensively with temporary exhibitions since its opening in 1996. Since then, it has promoted several exhibitions in accordance with its mission of representing history “as the visualisation of the political, cultural and social development of the city, in order to stimulate the public to dialogue with its cultural heritage” ( Jungbult 2008: 77). Some of these exhibitions have also been achieved by exploring new working 8 Examples are the “Peopling of London” project, (1993–1994); the project “Belonging: Voices of London’s refugees” (2003); the Symposium “Reflecting Cities”, held at the Museum of London in 1993, and several programmes focused on “diversity strategies” carried out in the 2000s, such as “London Voices” (2001-2004) or the “Reassessing What We Collect” project: all these projects ultimately informed most of the thinking behind the new permanent galleries. 130 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 131 img. 5.18 — The exhibition “My Town: a celabration of diversity”, Schuttersgalerij, Amsterdam Museum 29.06. 2012 - 1.02.2013 © Amsterdam Museum. img. 5.19 — Museum of London, display “our Londinium”, roman section, 2012. Photo by Francesca Lanz models, such as the possibility of virtual exhibitions and cooperation with other historical and city museums throughout Europe and the world. As the former deputy director of the museum, Marie-Paule Jungbult, states, transnational networking proved to have several positive aspects; beyond having an evident economical impact on the exhibition budget because of the possibility to share some expenses, it provides the museum staf with an important opportunity to improve their skills, enhances the visibility of the museum, also at an international level, and gives the curators the possibility to widen the exhibition contents, and encourages them to explore diicult topics in a less restrained way. On the other hand, the problems of archiving such events can make them less efective in the long term, and their message can be lost and forgotten more quickly, in particular when they have no impact on the museum’s permanent display and message. However, the beneits of temporary exhibitions are considerable and numerous, and these experimentations can provide interesting stimuli and insights for the development of new approaches and communication strategies. New and more lexible exhibition tools and techniques, which can easily allow changes and upgrades to museum content, also need to be explored and developed. his should also involve serious relection on exhibition sustainability, in terms of costs, environmental impact, and recyclability, especially at this time of deep economic crisis and change. Some museums, for example, are already working on hybrid solutions by developing long-term temporary exhibitions and short-term permanent displays, as with the “Becoming a Copenhagener” exhibition at the Museum of Copenhagen9, or the new Roman section of the Museum of London “Our Londinium”, which was opened in 2012 and will last for two years. his is co-curated, with several young people contributing to the update to the Museum’s Roman gallery exploring the parallels between Roman London and today’s city, and represents an interesting experiment to create an exhibition comprising installations which are based in and around a pre-existing permanent gallery. he idea of working simultaneously on two diferent levels, one based on the permanent display, the other temporary and thus more lexible and changeable, has also been explored by other museums, and could be implemented further in city museums, opening up interesting possibilities10. 9 The Museum of Copenhagen is gradually replacing the former permanent chronological galleries with shorter-term thematic and issue-oriented exhibitions. 10 Among others, examples are provided by the “Passports” exhibition at the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, where particular attention is devoted to the representation of different communities on a temporary basis; the experience of the Design Museum in Milan, where the collections are re-displayed every year according to a new interpretation of the scholar and designer who curate the new exhibition; the exhibition “Ospiti Inaspettati” (Milan 2010), a temporary exhibition of contemporary European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 133 132 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.20 — The Museum of London, Sacker Hall, an hybrid space functioning as cafe, information hub, place for temporary exhibition. This space is the conceptual and physical fulcrum of the whole exhibition. A led circular curtain displays information and video art work commissioned every two years by the museum. With a highly adaptive character it reflects the ever changing and questioning approach of the museum. Photo by Francesca Lanz. At the same time the important role of temporary exhibitions and other programmes requires that a particular attention is devoted in the design of the museum’s areas for workshops, didactic activities and temporary exhibitions. he latter in particular need today more space than in the past; these spaces have to be well connected with the other exhibition areas and museum’s facilities, but at the same time they should be independent, in order, for example, to be capable of hand out diferent visitors lows and allow frequent refurbishments without interfering with the museum’s everyday work. he implementation of temporary exhibitions as well as new type of exhibition and communicative tools and interfaces (as computer terminals, art installations, video based displays, etc...) seems to be actually furthering the development of new spaces, which are poly-functional, multi-purpose, and more lexible in their destination and uses—we may call them hybrid or adaptive spaces—which relevance and architectural features are currently under deinition. æ Further cues of reflections img. 5.21 — MAS, Antwerp. The Visible Storage, ocasionally used to host temporary exhibitions often organized by a group of young people collaborating with museum (MAS in Young Hands) © Filip Dujardin, courtesy of MAS. img. 5.22 — Gent City Museum, “the expanding city room” © Phile Deprez, courtesy of STAM. This space is meant as a temporary exhibitions room and an area hosting debates and meetings. It currently hosts a web-based exhibition on the contemporary city (including a video game on the problems and concerns of the contemporary city), a terminal where visitors can create their own movie on the city, and, in the center, a relax area where some screens display videos about the contemporary city. he changes briely outlined above, are nurturing signiicant change in city museums, a change that is ongoing and full of promising perspectives and diicult challenges. It is not the purpose of this section to draw any conclusions, but rather to outline some early insights for further relection and investigation. æ New narratives and approaches to storytelling. First of all, it is worth mentioning that, within the context of the scenario outlined above, both new and renovated city museums are trying to bring in new approaches, including new strategies for storytelling and the representation of history, as well as a rethinking of their narratives and communication. In this sense, most are reinterpreting the city’s history in relation to a broader perspective, looking at the local city’s history within a European or even global context, and with reference to contemporary issues. Hence, the museum’s narrative is often structured on two levels, one which is very locally based and strictly related to the city and the immediate vicinity, and another which extends beyond the national context, by consciously expanding its vision and adopting transnational values. At the same time many city museums are attempting to move away from a purely chronological approach and are beginning to narrate the city’s history from the present, or including frequent references to contemporary matters along with the historical narration. In some cases, they have decided to develop a thematic, diachronic display, which is organised around some main topics—often presented as the cornerstone of the city’s identity and part of its intangible heritage—and explored through the city’s history. his method in particular, characteristic of temporary design pieces displayed in four historical house-museums in Milan; or the experimentation of the inclusion of contemporary artworks in historical museums, as in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, or in the Museum of the Romanian Peasant in Bucharest under the direction of the Romanian artist Horia Bernea. 134 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) exhibitions and recently implemented in permanent displays, seems to have given rise to new and multiple interpretations of the history, connecting the past more directly with the present, while the ilter of the past may simultaneously help to address some current city issues which may be diicult or contested. Broadly speaking, it would seem possible to identify an overall shift from an object-focused to a content-oriented approach to storytelling. Consequently, new—or revisited and implemented—techniques should be used to efectively convey the messages and exhibit new objects—which can sometimes be very diicult both in terms of their physical or intangible forms, and as far as the embedded values and stories are concerned—, allow multiple interpretations and, at the same time, avoid misunderstandings. æ he role of exhibition design. Exhibition design may play a fundamental role in the transformation processes that city museums—as well as many other contemporary museums— are nowadays facing. As Sharon Macdonal pointed out in her article relecting on the role and potentialities of museums to articulate new identities in a post-national and trans-cultural perspective, “visual and spatial features of museums also have implications for conceptions of identity” and such issues need to be tackled “through aesthetic strategies (...) as well as through content” (2003, 3). he nineteenth century model, she continues, “entailed a detachment of the viewer—thinking of themselves as outside or above that which was represented” ofering “the idea of a privileged, objective view point” (ibid.). If the exhibition design and the museum’s organization of that time relected the same premise of objectivity and reality and a traditional conception of identity as unique, homogeneous and consolidated, some current trends in museological as well as museographical approaches can be seen as the results of a overturning of this state of being: the increase of projects and activities oriented at involving and engaging the museum’s visitors; the ever major attention paid to visitors surveys and studies; the penchant in displaying personal stories or the development of participative programmes and curatorial approaches as well as, from a design and communicative point of view, the implementation of particular exhibition tools and devices that can foster the interaction, encouraging an even physical participation of the visitors, and creating a sympathetic connection between them and the museum narration. he “viewers” becaome the “user”, who is no more detached from what is represented, but actively part of it, touching, listening, choosing, playing a role in the exhibition and in the making of its contents. In considering the current evolution of contemporary museums it is important not to underestimate the crucial importance of the connections which exist between the museum’s design and the museum’s contents, and the intellectual and expressive aspects of the exhibition design itself. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 135 æ From repository of city history to laboratories of citizenship. he shift of the focus of city museums from city history to the contemporary city and the reconiguration of their role from repository of civic memory to agent of urban development also entails a gradual disappearance of the idea of total representation and supposed objectivity of the museum. An increasing importance and attention is paid to the signiicant identity, social and political work which city museums can carry out within the city having and declaring at the same time, their stance and transmitting their outlook through their activities, exhibitions, design and architecture. Migration and cultural diversity are also recurrent areas for relection in this process of rethinking. Migration is usually interpreted as a movement of ideas and people, whose experiences, skills, and backgrounds have always enriched a city’s economy, identity and culture; it is often presented as the catalyst and pre-condition for a town’s growth and change, or the history of the physical, economic and social development of the city is traced in relation to the various immigration lows over time. Migration is sometimes included in the museum as the core of new temporary exhibitions, programmes and activities, or at others as a stand-alone gallery—having much in common in terms of communication strategies, narratives and approaches with many new Migration Museums. At other times, it is embedded in the main story, either as a parenthesis or as part of the thread. It is usually presented through highlighting the cases and personal stories of migrants11 as examples of the current ethnic and social diversity of the city, using pictures, personal items, audio and video recordings, focusing on particular groups—such as guest workers or refugees, or a city’s ethnic groups. In doing so city museums are eventually reconsidering their understanding of civic social identity—even challenging approaches and purposes— eventually furthering an idea of “citizenship” that is not based on legal or bureaucratic rationale, on ethnic origin or place of birth. Against an oicial deinition of “citizenship”, intended as “the particular legal bond between an individual and his or her State, acquired by birth or naturalization, either by declaration, choice, marriage or other means under national legislation”12 they promote an idea of citizenship as a multifaceted sense of belonging and participation, an open category, a sense of entrenchment, “civic connoisseurship”, identiication and active citizenship in and with the public space. Hence, city museums, as they are currently evolving, thanks to their long tradition and experience of working locally with other cultural and social actors, due to their local roots, community engagement, closer links with places and people, and their ability to establish a privileged and enduring 11 An interesting trend in this sense is the re-elaboration of the very idea of city’s “citizen” which is enlarged beyond its juridical definition including every people living in the city and being part of the civic community, despite their origins, religions, birth or culture. 12 From the Eurostat Glossary http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/ Glossary:Citizenship (accessed 8 April 2013). European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 137 136 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) relationship with the communities and other cultural actors settled in the urban territory, may efectively become spaces where encounter and dialogue among diferent identities can take place, where the interferences between local and global emerge, and discussions about potential frictions materialise. In this way city museums can contribute, even more than other institutions, to the reconiguration and dissemination of a multifaceted sense of belonging and participation and to the promotion of a sharper awareness of an inclusive European identity. Francesca Lanz Choi Rebecca M. 2009. “Reconstructing Urban Life.” Places 21 (1): 18-20. Accessed February 2013 http://places.designobserver.com/toc.html?issue=717 CFM (Center for the Future of Museum). 2012. TrendsWatch 2012: Museums and the Pulse of the Future. Washington DC (USA): American Association of Museums. Accesed Febraury 2013 http://www.aam-us.org/docs/center-for-thefuture-of-museums/2012_trends_watch_inal.pdf ?sfvrsn=0 De Wildt, Annemarie. 2012. What identity in a European super-diverse city in a global world? Paper to the conference organised by the International Centre for Cultural & Heritage Studies of the Newcastle Univeristy: ‘Placing’ Europe in the Museum: people(s), places, identities, Newcastle University (UK), September 3-4. Ferrara, Beatrice, ed. 2012. Cultural Memory, Migrating Modernity and Museum Practices. Milan: Politecnico di Milano. æ acknowledgements he author would like to thank all the curators, directors, architects and scholars who contributed to this essay and the whole chapter with their help and suggestions, and who provided useful information and materials. In particular, heartfelt thanks to Mario Bellini, Lorraine Bluche, Catherine Cole, Jan Gerchow, Lars De Jaegher, Marie-Paule Jungblut, Jakob Parby, Italo Lupi, Frauke Miera, Marlene Moulieau, Massimo Negri, Guido Vaglio Laurin, Maria De Waele, 3XNielsen Architects, Wilkinson Eyre Architects and Elena Montanari for her valuable help. Flaming, David. 1996. “Making City Histories.” In Making Histories in Museums, edited by Gaynor Kavanagh, 131-41. Lodon-New York: Leicester University Press. Galla, Amareswar. 1995. “Urban Museology: an ideology for reconciliation.” Museum International 47 (3): 40-5. Jalla, Daniele. 2007. “MuseoTorino: rilessioni a partire da un’esperienza in corso di museo di sotria della città.” In La vita delle mostre, edited by Adriano Aymonino and Ines Tolic, 175-83. Milan: Mondadori. ———. 2010. “Il Museo della città presente.” Rivista MuseoTorino (0): 7-13. http://www.museotorino.it/site/magazine Jones, Ian, Robert R. MacDonald, and Darryl McIntyre, eds. 2008. City museums and City Development. Plymouth: Altamira. æ references Allen, Jamie, and Eleonora Lupo, eds. 2012. Representing Museum Technologies. Milan: Politecnico di Milano. Amendola, Giandomenico. 1997. La Città Postmoderna. Roma: Laterza. Basso Peressut, Luca, Gennaro Postiglione, and Francesca Lanz. 2012. “Contemporary Museums in an Age of Migrations: the reinterpretation of European cultural heritage.” In Progress in Cultural Heritage Preservation edited by Marinos Ioannides et al., 857-64. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer. Basso Peressut, Luca, and Clelia Pozzi, eds. 2012. European Museums in an Age of Migrations. Milan: Politecnico di Milano. Bertuglia, Cristoforo Sergio, and Chiara Montaldo 2003. Il museo della Città. Milano: Franco Angeli. Boeri, Stefano. 2012. L’Anticittà. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Capello, Carlo , Pietro Cingolani, and Francesco Vietti. 2011, eds. Turin Earth. Città e nuove migrazioni. Torino: Museo Difuso della Resistenza, della Deportazione, della Guerra, dei Diritti e della Libertà. Jones et al. 2012. Our Greatest Artefact: the City. Istanbul: CAMOC. Accessed February 2013 http://www.works.com.tr/camocourgreatestartefact/ Jungblut, Marie Paule. 2008. “he city museum of Luxembourg: a democratic institution of the 21st century,” in “Musei della Città,” ed. Donatella Calabi, Paola Marini, and Paolo M. Travaglini, special issue, Città e Storia 3 (1-2): 7786. Kavanagh, Gaynor and Elizabeth Frostick, eds. 1998. Making City Histories in Museums. London: Leicester University Press. Kistemaker, Renée. 2006. City Museums as Centres of civic dialogue? Amsterdam: Amsterdam Historical Museum. ———. 2008. “he origins of the Amsterdam Historical Museum and its relations with the Rijksmuseum,” in “Musei della Città,” ed. Donatella Calabi, Paola Marini, and Paolo M. Travaglini, special issue, Città e Storia 3 (1-2): 37-50. Lanz, Francesca. 2013. he City Museum as a Civic Project: insights from Italy. Paper to the conference organized by the International Centre for Cultural & Heritage Studies of the Newcastle Univeristy: ‘Placing’ Europe in the Museum: people(s), places, identities, Newcastle University (UK), September 3-4. Lohman, Jack. 2006. “City Museums: do e have a role in shaping the global 138 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) community?” in “Urban Life and Museums,” special issue, Museum International 58 (3): 15-20. Macdonald, Sharon J. 2003. “Museums, national, postnational and transcultural identities” Museum and Society 1 (1): 1-16. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 139 UNESCO. 1995. “City Museums.” Special issue, Museum International 47 (3). UNESCO. 2006. “Urban Life and Museums.” Special issue, Museum International 58 (3). Martinotti, Guido. 1993. Metropoli. Bologna: Il Mulino. UN|DESA. 2012. World Urbanization Prospects. New York: United Nations. http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/pdf/WUP2011_Highlights.pdf McIntryre, Darryl. 2007. “Rappresentare le storie urbane: i musei della città e l’allestimento espositivo.” In La vita delle mostre, edited by Adriano Aymonino and Ines Tolic, 135-144. Milan: Mondadori. UN-HABITAT, 2008. State of the World’s Cities 2010/2011 - Cities for All: Bridging the Urban Divide. London: UN-HABITAT. http://www.unhabitat. org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=2917 Mason, Rhiannon, Chris Whitehead, and Helen Graham. 2012. “he Place of Art in the Public Art Gallery: A Visual Sense of Place.” In Making Sense of Place, edited by Ian Convery, Gerard Corsane and Peter Davis, 133- 43. Woodbridge (UK): Boydell and Brewer. Whitehead, Christopher, Susannah Eckersley, and Rhiannon Mason. 2012. Placing Migration in European Museums: heoretical, Contextual and Methodological Foundations. Milan: Politecnico di Milano. Merriman, Nick. 1997. “he Peopling of London Project.” In Cultural Diversity: Developing Museum Audiences in Britain, edited by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, 119–48. London: Leicester University Press. Miera, Frauke, and Lorraine Bluche. 2012. Polyphony in an urban history museum: he new audio archive of the Kreuzberg Museum as one step on the road to a participatory and inclusive contemporary collection of the city of Berlin. Paper to the conference organized by the School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow: Migrating heritage: networks and collaborations across European museums, libraries and public cultural institutions, University of Glasgow, UK, December 3-4. Monlieu, Marlene. 2012. Cities as Brands: Surveying On-line City Branding in the Practice of City Museums. Paper to the CAMOC conference: City Museums: Collisions I Connections, Museum of Vancouver (Canada), October 24-27. Prevelakis, Georges. 2008. “City Museums and the Geopolitics of Globalization.” In City museums and City Development, edited by Ian Jones, Robert R. MacDonald, and Darryl McIntyre, 16-26. Plymouth: Altamira. Postula, Jean-Louis. 2012. Deining the “city museum”. he creation process of a new museum category. Paper to the CAMOC conference: City Museums: Collisions I Connections, Museum of Vancouver (Canada), October 24-27. Rykwert, Joseph. 2000. he seduction of Place. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sandahl, J., et al. 2011. “Taking the Museum to the Streets.” In Museums and the Web 2011: Proceedings edited by Jennifer Trant and David Bearman. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. Accessed December 13, 2012. http://conference.archimuse.com/mw2011/papers/taking_the_museum_to_the_streets Sassen, Saskia. 1991. he Global City. Princeton: Princeton University Press ———. 1994. Cities in a world economy. housand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. Tisdale, Rainey. 2012. he Branded City Museum. Paper to the CAMOC conference: City Museums: Collisions I Connections, Museum of Vancouver (Canada), October 24-27. ———. 2012b. “Lessons from the Community Center” CityStories (blog), March 20. http://raineytisdale.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/lessons-from-thecommunity-center/ European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 141 140 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) City Museums: do we have a role in shaping the global community? æ jack lohman Jack Lohman, is an educator and museum administrator. He is Professor of Museum Design and Communication at the Bergen National Academy of the Arts in Norway (since 1997) and Chairman of the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland (since 2008). He is Editor in Chief of UNESCO’s Museums and Diversity publications series and a member of the International Advisory Board of the National Institute of Museums in Rwanda. He has been Chief Executive Oicer of the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria since 26 March 2012. Lohman is a former Chairman of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) UK (2002-2008) and a former member of the UK National Commission for UNESCO Culture Committee (2002-2010). From 1985 to 1994 he worked for English Heritage, developing museums and exhibitions both nationally and internationally. In 2000 he was appointed the Chief Executive Oicer of Iziko Museums of Cape Town, South Africa, an organization consisting of ifteen national museums including the South African Museum, the South African Maritime Museum and the South African National Gallery where he led the creation of a new museum institution and the transformation of the national museum sector. Before taking up his present appointment, Jack Lohman had been Director of the Museum of London since August 2002, and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s 2012 Birthday Honours for his work at the Museum of London. previous page — Museum of London. Children look at cases in World City Gallery. © Museum of London. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 143 142 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) We live in an age of profound cultural transition, a time in which the complexity of our multicultural world confronts us with challenges, which have taken on an urgency and intensity quite unlike anything we have experienced in recent history. It is a time when hardly any of our city museums are free from having to undergo deep soul-searching as to their meaning and role. he past decade or so, in particular, has been a period of deep crisis marked by tension and clashes between and within nations. Such conlict has variously been described as a clash of “civilizations”, of “cultures”, of “world-views” or “values”. It is a tension which is ongoing and which deepens in intensity daily. he role of culture in the twenty-irst century has become central to the discourse on how an increasingly ‘global’ world can survive without the threat of some being swamped by the overpowering cultural force of others. It is also a time in which the managing of cultural diversity has become a skill and a competence, which is sought after in just about every sphere of human endeavour. Most sensible and fair-minded people acknowledge that learning to live with diversity is essential to peace and human development. Respect for and understanding of diference, cultural sensitivity, freedom of cultural expression, cultural identity and cultural rights occupy a substantial space on the global political agenda. his is the age of identity politics in which the conlicting interests of preserving cultural identity, and that of absorbing and being absorbed by prevailing dominant cultures, clash with bloody force. hese clashes are not new. It is not the irst time that people have been divided along the faultline of cultural diference. Human history is littered with tales of cultural conlict resulting in conquest and annihilation but also of cultural encounters resulting in human development and progress. æ globalization: not a new process “Globalization”, though a modern term used to describe the consequences of extraordinary rapid technology-driven, information-based advances over the past two decades, is not a new phenomenon. It is, in fact, one of the oldest processes known to humankind. It began when our forebears set out from Africa to populate the planet half a million years ago. he story of globalization is that of the development of humankind itself. It is the story of the meanderings and coming together, the exchanges, the giving, the taking and the sharing in the long process of human encounters and achievements. Human memory is appallingly short and the speed of change, which is the hallmark of the current experience of globalization, gives us little time for relection and recollection. And so we fall prey to the amnesia of our age, and ascribe uniqueness and particularity where it is not deserved. We point to the manifestations and proofs of our new global era with a sense of wonder and self-admiration—global trade, the global economy, global investments and global information systems and networks. Some of us even describe ourselves as “global citizens”, members of that unique band of wanderers who consider themselves free of the shackles of nationalism and who choose to believe that national borders, passports and immigration oicers are minor irritations along the global highway. So when Richard Parker, Senior Fellow at the Shorenstein Centre, John F. Kennedy School of Government Faculty at Harvard, and an Oxford economist, reminds us that, while there is much that is undeniably new about the world in which we live, there is little new about what he refers to as the “long-established patterns and achievements”1 upon which much of this “newness’”is built: “Even those larger features we think of as most distinct about our own ‘global’ era today—the immense trade lows, or the constant information of the worldwide web, or the electronic inancial markets that send billions of dollars coursing around the globe— all have a longer and deeper heritage than most of us understand.”2 Parker cites as an example, current US international trade which, though the total volume has increased, when measured as a percentage of gross national product, is virtually at the same level it was under heodore Roosevelt because the US economy has grown proportionately. Similarly, in the case of international inance and global capital markets, we forget that the “golden age” of trade and investment happened, not in the last ifty years but in the latter half of the nineteenth century. he signiicance of Parker’s argument is that, unlike those who would have us believe that we live in a unique and unprecedented period of human history, we can in fact look for what he calls “patterns and connections (…) trends and similarities” and we are able to tap into the rich traditions of the past, the experiences and values of our mutual ancestors and our faith to “shape this world as those before have tried to do.”3 But increasing diversity and consequent conlict mark the spirit of the infant twenty-irst century, leaving hardly a corner of our world untouched. here is a growing sense that “this is not going to go away.” he times are indeed “a-changin”, and “a-changin”, in a way that seems bent on destruction. What is equally disconcerting is the confusion, which has been created, particularly in the West, among institutions which once thought they knew the way things workedand were clear about their role in society. Religious institutions are an interesting example of this. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was little doubt in the minds of most mainline church leaders in the West that Christianity was strong and on the verge of spreading its message to every corner of the earth. he spirit of optimism and faith which spurred the Church on well into the second half of the twentieth century has given way (in the most part, if somewhat reluctantly) to acceptance that the world is religiously pluralistic and that the “Christian West” no longer has meaning other than as a historical deinition of a bygone age which will probably never be seen again. 1 Parker, Richard. 2002. “From Conquistadors to Corporations: Wanna do something about globalization? You might start learning a little history”. Sojourners Magazine 31, (3). 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 145 144 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) of territorialism and an increase in a sense of collectivism and a shared reality. he world is thus woven together by the global forces of media, communications, information and technology. But the beneits for some, more often than not, work to the detriment of others. he divide is clearly deined between the West and the Rest. he power of global integration is felt by the Rest as threatening, as overpowering, a threat to the uniqueness of the already marginalized masses. On the other hand, we are witnessing the ever-increasing struggle for particular cultural, ethnic, religious and other identities. he centrifugal forces of narrow group identities, of blood and belonging, the deep ties of language, religion and race all conspire to mitigate against the forces of “centripetalism.” img. 5.24 — Museum of London, City Gallery. Book of Tributes 7 July 2005. Photo by Francesca Lanz. æ museums and diversity However, in spite of all this, religious traditions still have the ambivalent power to be agents of both healing and destruction. Fundamentalism manifests itself in almost every religious tradition, fuelling intolerance of that which is diferent. In recent times, the expanding plurality of cultures, values and norms has led to conlict and exclusion. Forgotten is the wisdom of theologians such as Max Müller who taught that those who know only one religion, one culture, one way of life, know none, not even their own. his thought is echoed in UNESCO’s position on cultural diversity. In a recent statement we read: “among UNESCO’s chief missions is ensuring space for and freedom of expression to all the world’s cultures. It considers that, while each culture draws from its own roots, it must fail to blossom without contact with other cultures. It is not therefore a matter of identifying and safeguarding every culture in isolation, but rather of revitalizing them in order to avoid segregation and prevent conlict.” he statement concludes: “this cultural dialogue has taken on a new meaning in the context of globalization and of the current international political climate. hus it is becoming a vital means of maintaining peace and world unity.”4 Because we are all by both nature and nurture cultural beings and our institutional life is an expression of our corporate cultural identity, none of us is free of cultural inluence, nor should we be. he events of 11 September 2001 have reminded us that ignorance of our diversity and diferences, wilful or not, holds the seeds of mass destruction as surely as any nuclear weapon. he world is caught between opposing currents or forces with regard to this issue. While opposing, they are also interrelated. On the one hand, there is what is called the “centripetal force” of globalization which refers to the phenomenon of the world’s cultures being increasingly thrown together, leading to an undermining of a sense 4 Intercultural Dialogue: UNESCO Culture Sector website: http://portal.unesco.org/culture/. Museums exist within this complex global environment, and are not spared the pressures and challenges to transform and ind a role and meaning. We are not able to stand apart from the societies in which we exist, to interpret and relect diverse society to itself. In another statement on culture, UNESCO has this to say: “a museum works for the endogenous development of social communities whose testimonies it conserves while lending a voice to their cultural aspirations. Resolutely turned towards its public, community museums are attentive to social and cultural change and help us to present our identity and diversity in an everchanging world.”5 his role and deinition of museums has come a long way since their formal establishment 200 years ago as places for the display of artefacts and for study. Today, museums are deined as “non-proit-making, permanent institutions in the service of society and its development, and open to the public, which acquire, conserve, communicate and exhibit, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment.” his broadening of deinition has shifted our role from being merely a “stage” to being “actors” on the broader stage of life itself where we are part of the larger cast made up of societies and nations and where together we develop the plot for our future. In this sense we are more than “actors.” We are “interactors” who present the multiple, diverse interactions between nature, culture, history, art, craft and indeed everything that makes us who we are. he world in which we play this role is characterized by an extraordinary juxtaposition and diversity of peoples, cultures, traditions, ethnic, political and religious diferences thrown together as never before. he historian, Arnold Toynbee, identiied this phenomenon as Volkwanderung, the swirling movement of individuals, peoples and cultures in pursuit of a diferent and better life. Within given national societies, both new arrivals and older ethnic or cultural groups struggle to express their diferences, their uniqueness, while being brought face to face with others doing the same. he old hegemony of dominant cultures is breaking down, 5 Ibid. 146 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) bringing with it a sense of dismay and threat. Even the United States, the only superpower left, despite its own multicultural nature and the inordinate inluence of its culture on the rest of the world, is inding it diicult to live in this new order. What we are witnessing today, in the face of this perceived threat, is a growing intolerance for diference and conlict. When faced by a threat of this nature, we have, as a society, three responses to choose from. One is to assimilate. Assimilation is, at heart, the defeat of one by the other, a capitulation to the dominant culture. It is how many minorities perceive the dilution and co-option of their cultures while the majority prides itself on being “tolerant.” In this way, much, if not all of the richness of diversity is lost or driven underground, there to be perceived as undermining and subversive by the majority. he other response is that of exclusion. We build borders around ourselves and our cultures and require that others stay outside them. he third way is to acknowledge diference as equal and as having the right to co-exist within a neutral public space, while pursuing diference and expressing it within private spheres of individual social reality. his is what is known as liberal coexistence. Despite its best intentions, the avoidance of open conlict and the balance of mutual self-interest in public programmes, liberal coexistence can lead to isolation and fragmentation. It is entirely dependent upon mutual tolerance, an agreement to live beside each other, not to threaten each other. In all these responses, diversity, rather than being protected, is sacriiced for the sake of a perceived unity and an avoidance of conlict. he commitment to promote ‘the fruitful diversity of cultures’ for a more open and creative world in the new twenty-irst century context, expressed in the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2 November 2002), is based upon its conviction that “respect for cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue is one of the surest guarantees of development and peace.” he recognition of the centrality of culture in peace-making, the pursuit of full liberty, individual and societal meaning and expression, provides cultural institutions such as city museums a rare opportunity. his is “foreign territory” to many of us working in museums. he challenge to museums to engage in issues such as the building of national identity out of the fragments of diverse groups, to be agents for change and peacebuilding, and help to address the challenge of poverty reduction are all part of a brief which somewould consider beyond our ambit and capability. here is therefore a need to engage the discourse within the museum community itself, lest there be a feeling that we are being asked to step in where others have failed. We need to grapple with these questions honestly, allowing our own fears and concerns to be expressed. We need to be assisted in confronting our own cultural agendas, in facing our own limitations. How are we coping with diversity within our own environments? How open are we to the “other” point of view on issues which are precious to European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 147 us? How will we conduct these debates and with whom? How will we be assisted in dealing with the potential conlict which will inevitably arise from the discussion? What is the extent of our accountability and to what and to whom are we primarily responsible? here will be those who will have no doubt and will need no convincing of the rightness of this role and there will be those who will be anxious as to what the implications for themselves and their institutions might be. here will also be those who will have very real diiculties and even be resistant to engaging in the discussion. his is the nature of our own diversity as a community of museums—a diverse community within diverse communities. I am personally of the view that cultural institutions and museums, and city museums in particular, do indeed have a critical role in all of this. I have been fortunate to be part of such an endeavour in South Africa in the restructuring of museums in that once fraught country where diversity was the cause of deep divisions. I am very aware that nation-building out of the material of the past is not possible without a willingness to face that past squarely, while at the same time acknowledging the power of its legacy to survive in the present and into the future. It is this legacy, the baggage of the past, the unresolved issues, the unexpressed fears and the uncritical assumptions, the imposition of what others think to be best, that undermine our highest hopes and best intentions. Without dealing with our own issues regarding diversity, we will do no better than others who have tried before us. he challenge for us as a community within a community is to be honest and courageous in the acknowledgement that if we are to play a role in which all the richness of city culture can contribute to the development of people in their totality, then we must be true to the challenge of being more open to diversity ourselves: the people who direct museums, who work within their walls, who conserve, curate and exhibit. We must be what we wish to become and what this world in all its global richness can and must be. Source: Museum International, Vol. 58, no. 3, 2006, pp. 15-20. (All rights reserved). European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 149 148 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) International Networking Projects and the Web Interview with Marie-Paule Jungblut æ Marie-Paule Jungblut Historian, completion of studies (History, German philology, Psychology) at the University of Göttingen and European University Institute in Florence. Former deputy director of the 2 Museums of the City of Luxembourg and senior curator of the Luxembourg City History Museum, since February 2012 she is director of the Historisches Museum Basel. Curator of the European Museum Schengen. Associate lecturer at the museological institute of the University of Liège. Chair of International Committee for Museums and Collections of Archaeology and History ICMAH) 2004- 2010. Organization of international meetings as well as publications in the ield of museum studies. he Musée d’Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg opened in 1996. It is housed in four restored residential houses dating from the 17th to the 19th century, still bearing archaeological traces from the Middle Ages. he aim of the restoration project, which turned this historical building into the city museum’s venue was, on the one hand to study the historical evolution of the buildings, bringing into light and enhancing its archaeological remains, while at the same time enriching the architecture and the museological aspect of the premises and provide the museum with all the modern facilities needed by such an institution. A “loating” glass façade and a panoramic lift that passes through the entire height of the museum is a characteristic feature. he lift, thanks to its transparent previous page — The Luxembourg City History Museum (1996). Architecture by Conny Lentz (Luxembourg); structural project by Gehl & Jacoby et Ass.; museographical project and exhibition desing by Adeline Rispal (Repérages Architects, Paris). 150 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) walls and reduced velocity, allow visitors to see the rock foundations on the lower levels and to enjoy a panoramic view of the Grund district and Rham plateau on the upper levels, providing the visitor with an overview of the city’s development, from its irst settlement to the country’s independence in 1839 and thus becoming a part of the exhibition path itself. he exhibition illustrates the more recent history of the city through ive themes: City and Power, City in Motion, City and Environment, City and Facilities and City in Europe, all of which form a link between past and present. he Luxembourg City History Museum “understands its mission of representing history as the visualisation of the political, cultural and social development of the city, in order to stimulate the public to dialogue with its cultural heritage.” Since its opening, the museum has extensively worked with temporary exhibitions according to this vision and as a strategy to deal with diicult and contentious topics, aimed at fostering dialogue between history and the present. Most of them have also been used to explore diferent curatorial approaches and experiment with new media, ICT, and new working strategies, as transnational networking and other forms of interdisciplinary cooperation. In this interview, Marie-Paule Jungblut, former deputy director of the museum, talks about this experience, its beneit and potential. What’s the role today, in your opinion, of a contemporary city history museum like the Musée d’Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg? he mission of the Luxembourg City History Museum is to preserve the city’s history, making it accessible to people today and preserving it for future generations. It is committed to serving audiences of all ages with educational exhibitions and programs that are both thought provoking and entertaining. he Museum focuses primarily on the city of Luxembourg, and also seeks to place the city and its people in an international context relecting its location at the centre of Europe, and connecting the local story to the stories of humans worldwide. Why should city history museums use the Internet and other new Information and communication technologies? One of the main duties of history museums today is to combine the safeguarding of cultural heritage, inextricably linked to such an institution, with contemporary and innovative presentations and communication forms. Collections should thus be freed from the “dust of history” and historical objects should be revealed in their signiicance for the present. With the use of timely forms of communication (such as Web 2.0 or Augmented Reality) and new thought approaches, museums can open up to whole new audiences. Contemporary products enhance the image of history museums and provide them with the additional advantage of being able to ofer sponsors an attractive platform for their presence. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 151 Some of the exhibitions promoted by the museum have recently been developed in cooperation with other history and city museums around Europe and worldwide, and sometimes also with multidisciplinary teams. Why cooperate? What are the benefits of such a working strategy? In view of the sophisticated commercial products that are on today’s market, curators of history museums are often not conident enough in developing digital products themselves. he result is that either they won’t contemplate the idea for want of money or, should funds not be an issue, they entrust the development of digital products entirely to commercial companies. he risk then is that the end product clearly bears the hallmarks of the enlisted production company. Alternatives are national and transnational co-productions between history museums and interdisciplinary partnerships with educational establishments. hese bring about not only an added value in terms of content of the products and a reduction in costs, but also signiicantly enhance the external image of the participating houses. he individual museums are able to position themselves on an international stage. Furthermore, cooperation projects give curators the chance to further their professional development through exchange with colleagues. Since its opening, the Luxembourg City History Museum has amassed a wealth of experience in transnational cooperation projects, in terms of both “real” travelling exhibitions and web-based projects. Could you talk to us about some of these experiences? he irst digital product that the Luxembourg Museum launched together with the Helsinki City Museum and the DASA Working World Exhibition between 2003 and 2006 tackled the question of what makes a good European citizen, namely “he Real Citizen.” he participating curators set themselves the challenge of developing a product that would address the questions of young people. An additional technical challenge was also to make the product suitable for the visually impaired. his resulted in a range of technical constraints that led to the product being rather static in design. img. 5.26 — The on-line exhibition, “Explore Poverty”, conceived by The Luxembourg City History Museum in collaboration with the Minnesota Historical Society, the Helsinki City Museum, the DASA Arbeitswelt Ausstellung, and implemented by the Koln International School of Design. http://www. explore-poverty.org 152 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 153 In your experience, what aspects are fundamental for successful cooperation? img. 5.27 — The on-line exhibition “explore Poverty”. The exhibition is implemented also in some social media and this external page, which acts as a “virtual space apart”, displays the ongoing discussions on twitter and facebook. http://www.explorepoverty.org First of all, trust. In a transnational cooperation with partners with heterogeneous content, the diferent partners need to be able to rely on each other to raise the agreed money, to provide the material in good time and, most importantly, to place their trust in the leadership of the manager. In the case of “Explore Poverty”, the four museums reached an agreement, which contained a rough concept regarding contents and which also laid down the distribution of roles, a time schedule and the inancial framework for the project. Since three of the four partners were from Europe, it was agreed that the design would also be developed in Europe. As it was decided not to work with a professional company, but to “risk” working with design students, trust played a very important role. he work with 20 students gave access to a broader creative repertoire, but the partners did not know at the beginning what they were going to get and therefore needed to trust one another that the decision that was made would overall prove advantageous to the project. he second cooperation project was brought to life in the context of an actual exhibition on the subject of poverty. he project “Explore Poverty” (www.explore-poverty.org) involved ive diferent institutions from four countries and two continents. Each treated their subject according to their content orientation. he content was provided by the Luxembourg City History Museum, the Helsinki City Museum, the DASA Working World Exhibition and the Minnesota Historical Society. For the design the four museums worked with students and professors from the Cologne International Design School. hrough working with the young design students from Cologne, the (conventional) exhibition curators were forced to come to grips with the communication forms prevailing on the Web 2.0. he aim was not to publish a classical exhibition catalogue on the net. he curators from the Helsinki City Museum, from DASA and the Luxembourg City History Museum knew each other from several previous cooperation projects, which also included the website, “he Real Citizen”. hey had already developed a working method in the context of this previous project, which they transferred to the new project. Each museum appointed a so-called producer, who was to be responsible for the preparation of images, ilms and texts within each house. hey also chose a project manager, who was to be in charge of coordinating the project. he responsibility of the project manager consisted of sourcing the material from the producers and conveying it to the students of the Cologne Design School. he challenges the manager faced varied in nature. On the one hand, the manager had to build up trust over thousands of kilometres, while also organising the communication between participants and overcoming cultural diferences. On the other hand, there were technical diiculties that needed to be solved with regard to data communication. hen “communication” is another fundamental aspect to create trust and motivation and to keep this up over a longer period of time, in addition to exchanging emails and creating an Internet platform for the transfer of digitised material and video conferences, “real” meetings are vital. his was conirmed in both the transnational Internet projects that Luxembourg City History Museum, DASA and the Helsinki City Museum have been involved in. While there is no doubt that the Internet these days ofers fantastic opportunities for the technical exchange of information, when it comes to reaching an agreement on content and aesthetic issues, human contact is indispensable. In the case of the “Explore Poverty” project, for instance, several “real” meetings were held at the Cologne International Design School. First the students presented four diferent websites, which were discussed. he team then agreed on one project, which the entire student group went on to develop. Trust and open communication allow cultural diferences to be overcome to a certain extent. he curators had to clarify at the outset how far the project could go in order to tackle a subject as diicult as “poverty” and therefore it also necessary to come to an agreement regarding the socalled “metadata” of the objects. Does this cooperation also affect the exhibition contents? Yes it does: not all city museums, in fact, share the same self-understanding of their social role. Many curators do not have the courage to tackle “diicult” subjects of recent history. Cooperation projects result in one’s own cultural heritage being viewed with a more discerning critical eye. Case Studies European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 157 156 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Museum of London London, United Kingdom 1976, 2010 he Museum of London was funded in the 1960s by merging two earlier museums, the Guildhall Museum (1826) and the London Museum (1912). he new Museum of London opened in 1976 and since then has operated as a social and urban history museum. From 2000 onwards the museum has carried out several major renovation projects both from a programmatic and architectural point of view, which have led the museum to rethink its mission, practices, narratives and communication strategies, widen its activities, refocus its objectives and reorganise and enlarge its collections and spaces (Capital City Project). he museum currently comprises two venues—the Museum of London and the Museum of London Docklands, as well as a commercial archeological service, the MOLA Museum of London Archaeology. Overall, the museum attracts over 400,000 visitors per year and holds the largest archaeological archive in Europe. he museum’s mission is to “inspire a passion for London […] through increasing public awareness, appreciation and understanding of London’s cultural heritage, its people and its stories.” img. 5.28 — Museum of London, Galleries of Modern London, Expanding City Gallery and printing press © Museum of London. In 2003, the new museum venue, the Museum of London Docklands, was inaugurated. It is housed in a listed early-19th-century sugar warehouse at Canary Wharf, and displays the stories of the port, the River hames and the local communities of the East London riverside. Among its 11 permanent galleries, the London, Sugar & Slavery gallery is one of the most noteworthy with regard to the MeLa topics. hrough historical objects and documents, as well as personal histories, works of art, music, videos and short movies created for the gallery, it examines London’s involvement in transatlantic slavery with interesting references to new types of slavery in the contemporary city, racism and the contribution of Africans and other communities to London’s culture and wealth. he Docklands museum also develops educational programmes, activities, exhibitions and workshops aimed at exploring and representing London’s East End, one of the most multicultural and multilayered areas of the city. he museum building itself is part of the collection; the West India Dock and the warehouse complex which has been renovated to host the museum are, in fact, a physical manifestation of London’s corner of the so-called “trade triangle”. As a inal step in this renovation project, the Museum of London was re-launched in 2010 with the opening of the new Galleries of Modern London. At the same time, the museum’s contents, exhibition design and spaces were reviewed and rethought in detail, and the result was an outstanding contemporary city museum. æ openness as a way of working he Museum of London opened in 1976 in a new building at London Wall within the Barbican Estate. he museum was designed by Philip Powell, Hidalgo Moya and Partners, who also conceived part of the exhibition design with Higgins, Ney & Partners. When the Museum of London was inaugurated it was the subject of much debate and criticism. Critics agreed that the diiculty in actually inding and getting to the museum was one of the major issues, a problem that earned it the title of “the most retiring public building in London.” In fact, the problem was mostly due to the urban features of the site, which is characterised by a system of high walkways created in the 1960s and ‘70s by the City of London with the aim of separating pedestrians and cars, supposedly for mutual beneit. Other common criticisms were related to the exhibition design and display, thought to be overburdened with objects and information, and conceived without a hierarchical rationale. he building characterised by concrete struc- European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 159 img. 5.31 — Museum of London, display of the coach of the Lord Mayor before the recent renovation project. December 2005. Photo by: User:J ustinc. tures and a white ceramic tile façade, interrupted by a window facing onto the remains of the Roman and Medieval wall—unfortunately overwhelmed by the museum and the walkway design. he exhibition developed around the inner courtyard, arranged along a spiral route on two levels connected by a ramp; it was organised chronologically and divided into ten sections corresponding to speciic historical periods. he exhibits were mainly four-square showcases, with a base containing the technical equipment, and a movable glass cabinet. he overall exhibition design, the exhibit system and the architectural project, with its open-plan layout and free-standing columns, were conceived to guarantee a lexibility of the interior arrangements and the possibility to easily amend them. he four-year renovation project carried out by the museum, resulting in its re-launch in 2010, needed to address this issue of context. he re-launch was the inal step in a long and complex process of rethinking the museum’s narratives and approaches, which lasted more than ten years and led to the redesign of the museum’s spaces and the transformation of the lower loor galleries. Wilkinson Eyre Architects were entrusted with the architectural renovation project, while the design of the new galleries was developed by an in-house team with an intimate knowledge of the museum’s collections. he design team consisted of Leigh Cain (Head of Design and Exhibitions), Gail Symington (Head Designer) and was led by the museum director himself, Jack Lohman, who studied architecture and is a professor of Museum Design and Communication at Bergen National Academy of the Arts in Norway. A previous project by Wilkinson Eyre to roof over the internal courtyard was dropped by Lohman when he took on the position of Museum Director in 2002, in favour of a less iconic and eye-catching but more practical project. he inal design respects and understands the original building and, at the same time, is aimed at enhancing it, reconiguring and expanding its spaces, and increasing the museum’s connection with the city. Wilkinson Eyre scheduled the reorganisation of vertical and horizontal circulation low around and within the museum, including a new staircase tower and the design of the new museum entrance, whose canopy, which projects over the existing city highway, is designed to improve the visibility of the entrance, and so raises the proile of the museum. he project also provided additional space for shops and other facilities, including the new City Gallery. his is a glass-wall extension added to the museum’s north wing, which contains the Lord Mayor’s Coach, and is devoted to the contemporary city. his is a space conceived of as a kind of “museum shop window”, facing the img. 5.32 — Museum of London, Exterior of City Gallery © Museum of London. img. 5.33 — Museum of London, Galleries of Modern London. General view of Expanding City © Museum of London. in the previous page — Views of the Museum of London from the street and the upper walkway. Photo by Francesca Lanz, September 2012. 160 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.34 — Museum of London, Galleries of Modern London. Oral history war room © Museum of London. img. 5.35 — Museum of London, Galleries of Modern London. World City gallery © Museum of London. img. 5.36 — Museum of London, Galleries of Modern London, Capital city Gallery: the river of ideas © Museum of London. From the panel “Capital concerns. 7.5 milions Londoners and raising ...! “50 resident communities of over 10.000 people from 33 different nations. 300 languages spoken. 14 major faith practised.” European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 161 London Wall, bringing the museum down to the street and symbolically opening it up to the city. his architectural solution can be seen not only as a gimmick to signal the presence of the museum—the entrance to which is still hardly visible—but also as an architectural metaphor for the idea of openness characterising the new museum approach and its desire to establish a straightforward relationship with the city and its citizens. In addition, the Wilkinson Eyre project also redesigned the Museum’s Weston heatre as a multipurpose location for cinema, performances and talks, and connected it via a hanging glazed staircase to the Clore Learning Centre, a new space completed in 2009 in accordance with the museum’s mission to further develop its educational outreach programmes and work closely with schools. he design of the new Galleries of Modern London is an important part of this major renovation project which has afected not only the museum’s spaces and its exhibition design, but also entailed a deep rethinking of the museum’s social role and its approach to storytelling. he Galleries of Modern London are the result of a long process of relection on issues related to diversity, migrations, and the identity and history of the city of London, carried out by the museum since the 1990s and marked by several major milestones, starting with the “Peopling of London” project. As Nick Merriman, initiator of the project, points out, the “Peopling of London” project was aimed at “highlighting the neglected history of London’s diverse populations by placing contemporary communities in a long-term historical context” and demonstrating that London “has always had a culturally diverse population from various parts of the globe”. he project, which led to an exhibition run from November 1993 to May 1994, was a new departure for the Museum of London and ignited much debate. his has also informed subsequent work at the museum. his new vision is well represented in the entrance panel of the Galleries of Modern London where visitors can read: “Two themes run through our story: London and the world. For the past 300 years, London’s fortunes have been tied up with people, goods and ideas from overseas. his story is about London’s relationship with the rest of the world. People and change. People are at the centre of the story. hrough London’s past people have shaped the city’s fortunes and in turn have been changed themselves. Like any great city, London never stands still. Its buildings rise and fall. Its character evolves. he choices Londoners made in the past afect us all today – just as our choices will help shape London’s future.” Such an introduction declares that what the museum displays is not the story of London but one possible interpretation of London’s history, in the light of the contemporary city and looking towards its future. he museum stands on what story it chooses to tell. Migration is a central topic of this story and it is embedded— sometimes explicitly, other times deductively— into the entire narration, promoting the idea that this is something London should be proud of, rather than a “problem.” London’s contemporary, multifarious identity and its distinctive features are described as being the result of diferent cultures, life styles, religions, sexual habits, languages and fashions, resulting from the migration of people to and within London, throughout history as well as today. Considerable efort has been made to avoid grouping together or categorising London’s inhabitants according to ethnic groups, revisiting the idea of migration as a widespread movement of people, which thus enlarges the borders of London’s “imagined community” to all those who live in the city and contribute to its development, regardless of whether they are foreign-born, temporary residents or the long-term settled. he Galleries present cultural diversity as part of the city’s wealth, enriching its cultural, social and economic life, and ultimately promote, with clear political implications, a positive view of migrants and migration. he exhibition design of the galleries has been developed by the museum’s team in accordance with this vision and with the aim of ensuring the best integration between the message, the European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 163 162 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.37 — Museum of London, Plans 1976, project by Philip Powell, Hidalgo Moya and Partners. Source: Architectural Review, Vol. CLXII, no. 695, 1977, p. 27. Plan at level 5, entrance. 1. Cinema / lecture hall 2a. High level walkway 2b. Future high level walkway 3. Void 4. Entrance concourse 5. Sales area 6a. Pedestrian bridge 6b. Proposed pedestrian bridge 7. Temporary exhibition 8. Temporary exhibition store 9. Entrance hall to office block Bastion House 10. Introductory area 11. Prehistory 12. Roman gallery 13. Dark gallery 14. Medieval London 15. Reformation 16. Late Tudor 17. Early Stuart Plan at the lower exhibition mezzanine level. 1. Kitchen 2. Cafeteria 3. Void img 5. 38 — Exhibition layout, drafted from the informative material distributed at the museum, 2001. source: Bertuglia and Montaldo 2003. 4. Public wc 5. Lord Mayor’s coach 6. Treasury 7. Late Stuart 8. Eighteenth-century 9. Nineteenth-century 10. First World War 11. Twentieth-century London 12. Second World War 1. Cafeteria 12. Early Stuart 2. Families and schools area 13. Stuart Period 3. Foyer 14. Eighteenth-century London 4. Temporary exhibitions 5. Temporary exhibitions 6. Prehistory 7. Roman gallery 15. Nineteenth-century London 16. The Empire’s capital 8. Late-Roman period 17. Early twenty-century London 9. Saxon Period 18. Second World War 10. Medieval London 19. London Today 11. Tudor London img 5. 39 — Exhibition layout, drafted from the informative material distributed at the museum, 2012. 164 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) collection and the exhibition design itself. As Jack Lohman declared “the design and architecture of the museum should be as varied and surprising as the locations in which they stand. Our new Galleries of Modern London have given us a wonderful opportunity to showcase how creative design can bring a new diversity of content and experience into the heart of the museum (…) London speaks through these galleries and (…) space has been created to make the city’s many voices heard.” While previously the displays hardly reached recent times, with the opening of the Galleries the whole ground loor of the museum is today completely dedicated to the story of modern and contemporary London and its inhabitants, from the Great Fire in 1666 to the present. Innovative lighting systems and the latest conservation technology, as well as multimedia installations, interactive devices and new technologies have been used in the new exhibition design to enhance and virtually expand the objects displayed, which, after careful selection, constitute the key element of the new exhibition. he museum’s collections are in fact extremely heterogeneous and diverse, as were the collection strategies of the two previous institutions which formed the foundation for the creation of this Museum. he museum today owns more than two million objects, and its curatorial practices now seek to make collecting a more collaborative process. Several programmes have been implemented to collect recent history and build an oral historical archive with the contribution of many Londoners. Contemporary collecting projects have also been developed, and new criteria regarding the acquisition of items donated to the Museum have been deined. In the Galleries, more than 7,000 objects are on display—a selection from the museum’s collection, enriched by new objects, as well as music, audio and video materials. he collection is supported by multimedia contents to provide additional information for an in-depth visit, and to allow visitors to explore exhibits in detail and follow their own interests. Original objects are displayed whenever possible, with an interesting integration among historical documents, re- productions, reconstructions and technological devices. One example is the small room devoted to Charles Booth’s map of London poverty of 1888-89, where original pages are on display and a reproduction of the map is used to cover the loor and walls of the room, which includes an embedded touch screen allowing visitors to explore a digital version of the map. Some exhibits have been conserved as they were—this is the case of the Victorian Walk, a historical reconstruction of an old London street with original shops façades and interiors—while other rooms and cases have been redesigned. Immersive spaces and historical reconstructions abound; visitors can step inside a real 18th century prison, listen to witnesses from the Second World Ward in a suggestive space with a suspended bomb, or walk in a Georgian pleasure garden featuring original dresses, illuminated by a sophisticated lighting system that simulates the low of time, furnished with several original objects, and animated by a ifteen-minute ilm of a theatrical performance. Some original cases, where possible, have been updated, implemented and reused, while others have been redesigned with innovative materials and display concepts—timber panels with images digitally printed directly on them, resin looring embedding images and including walkable cases, walls made of glass reinforced concrete for the 20th century gallery and solid acrylic surface material for the new cases. hese are designed to be integrated apparatus which hold objects, bear labels—sometimes carved into them—, act as highly tactile touchscreens using projectors instead of traditional monitors, and at the same time organise the space without dividing or fragmenting it. he new galleries are organised into three chronological sections developed around the central Garden Court. In the last section the narration is structured around several main topics which can be read as the cornerstones of the city’s identity, and which are used to recount London’s more recent history, represent its current distinctions and challenges, and stimulate debate about its future. he exhibition ends in the new City Gallery and in the Sackler Hall. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 165 his space is where Powell and Moya previously displayed the Lord Mayor’s State Coach. his is a central space, visible from diferent points along the exhibition path, and intended to be a visual fulcrum of the space and a spatial and metaphorical point of orientation within the exhibition. Despite its cardinal position along the museum’s visit low, due to its position and the architectural layout, this was a fairly dark space. Wilkinson Eyre removed the ramp connecting the museum’s two levels, replaced it with a step in the north-west corner, and redesigned the façade to the inner garden, bringing light inside and opening up new views onto the surrounding buildings, and thus transforming this space into the core of the museum. he functional destination of this space is representative of the shift carried out by the Museum of London in its approach and understanding of its role. he Sackler Hall is deined as a contemporary “information hub” and a café, but actually it can be described as a hybrid multifunctional open space. At one end of the hall, a bank of computer pods ofers more information about the objects on display and in the stores, and so widening access to the museum’s knowledge, and allowing personal and individual browsing and data gathering. he space is also equipped with relaxing booths, an area hosting changing temporary exhibitions on London creativity, and a 45-metre LED screen loop displaying information and video art work commissioned every two years by the museum in partnership with Film London, making this museum area an actual public city space. synergies with other cities in the world”, and, irst and foremost, it should “not only provide access but genuine openness to all voices, adopting openness as a way of working”. In the renovation of the Museum of London, the architectural project increased the space by 25 percent to include the new function and facilities required in a new contemporary museum and, at the same time, supported the new exhibition master plan, which was fashioned according to a new vision of the museum’s role. Here, the architecture, the exhibition design and the museum narrative relect the idea that, as Jack Lohman recently said at the 2012 CAMOC Conference, a [city] museum should “not only [be] taking energy from the city in which it is, but also creating new energies and Ross, Cathy. 2006. “Capital city–changing the story.” In City Museums as centres of civic dialogue? Edited by Renée Kistemaker, 40-44. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Historical Museum. Francesca Lanz æ references he bibliography on the Museum of London is very wide and extensive; here below have been listed only the main references with regard to the issues mentioned in this brief dossier. Bertuglia, Cristoforo Sergio and Montaldo, Chiara. 2003. “Il Museum of London.” In Il Museo della Città, 54-62. Milan: Franco Angeli. Collicott, Sylvia L. 1994. “he Peopling of London, London, November 93-May 94.”History Workshop (38): 261-263. Helen Denniston Associates. 2003. Holding up the Mirror: Addressing cultural diversity in London’s museums. London: London Museums Agency. Kaur, Raminder. 2005. Unearthing our Past: Engaging With Diversity at the Museum of London. Merriman, Nick. 1995. “Hidden history: the Peopling of London project.” Museum International 47 (3): 12-16. Merriman, Nick. 2007. “he Peopling of London Project.” In Museums and their communities edited by Sheila Watson, 335-357. Abingdon: Routledge. Sheppard, Francis. 1991. he Treasury of London’s Past. London: Museum of London. Young, Lola. Our Lives, Our Histories, Our Collections. http://www.museumolondon. org.uk/Collections-Research/Research/YourResearch/RWWC/Essays/Essay2/ (Accessed April 2013). 1977. Architectural Review 162(695): 16-28 European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 167 166 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Københavns Museum Museum of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark 1981 he Museum of Copenhagen was established at the turn of the 20th century. Since 1925, its collections—originally consisting of works of art, models, interiors and photographs related to the history of Copenhagen—were exhibited in the attic of Copenhagen City Hall. As the collections grew, more space was needed, so in 1956 the museum moved into the former premises of the Royal Shooting Society, a mansion built in 1787 and located in the western city district of Vesterbro, close to the city’s central station and not far from Copenhagen city centre. his venue still hosts the museum’s permanent galleries and temporary exhibitions today, while oices and archives are located in separate buildings. he museum is owned by the Municipality of Copenhagen—the Copenhagen City Council is the museum’s main subsidy provider, although the museum also receives state-subsidy from he Heritage Agency of Denmark on an annual basis. Its board of management consists of the City Council’s Culture and Leisure Committee, and the museum is run on the basis of 4-year contracts between the museum and the municipality, with the shared objective of contributing to the cultural environment and permanent cultural heritage of the city. he museum also acts as the local archaeological authority, with responsibility for archaeological matters in Copenhagen and Frederiksberg and with the aim of “ensuring that the city’s development occurs while bearing cultural insight and public memories in mind.” In 2010 the museum changed its name from Københavns Bymuseum to Københavns Museum or Museum of Copenhagen, chosen because it was perceived to be simpler as well as more selfexplanatory than its former name. img. 5.40— Museum of Copenhagen, exhibition “Becoming a Copenhagener”, November 2010 to December 2013 © Anne Mette Kruse, courtesy of Museum of Copenhagen. he museum’s collections, knowledge and communication have been traditionally focused upon the city’s development and life of the citizens, as well as on some major events and personalities of Copenhagen’s history, documenting the history of Copenhagen from the 12th century to the present day. In recent years, however, the Museum of Copenhagen has been undergoing major changes, seeking to reposition and redeine its role within the contemporary urban context. his process started in 2005, mainly as a consequence of the desire to reach more people and become more relevant to the life of Copenhagen’s citizens. Firstly, besides the programmes and activities promoted by the museums, this shift is relected in the new museum’s mission, which was reformulated in 2005 and states: “the Museum of Copenhagen must participate in the strengthening of the individual citizen’s sense of identity—and thus enhance the development of a feeling of ‘belonging together’ in the city.” Subsequently, the archaeological excavations connected to the new City Ring Metro—begun in 2009—have also played a central role in accomplishing this shift. he archaeological responsibilities involved in preparing for the metro have, in fact, led to growth within the museum alongside the recruitment of new staf members with new competencies and specialised skills. Since 2008, therefore, the museum’s repositioning process has accelerated, becoming more complex, reorienting the museum’s strategy, and promoting practices and projects aimed at fostering dialogue and “participating in contemporary discourse on the ever-changing nature of the city and its inherent plurality.” æ shifting perspectives he transformation process that the museum of Copenhagen is currently undergoing should be related, on one hand, to the overall European scenario and the evolution of city museums and, on the other, to the cultural and political context of both Copenhagen and Denmark. Since the beginning of the twenty-irst cen- 168 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) tury, Danish cultural policy has been aimed at economic and national revitalisation; over the last ten years, especially, the cultural discussion has, to a large degree, focused on what constitutes “Danishness,” Danish cultural heritage and national identity, as coherent narratives in a multicultural world. Documents such as the Danish Cultural Canon (2005) were aimed at stimulating and consolidating national identity as a force for social cohesion and cultural assimilation of public dialogue, discussions and activities on identity and nationality. At the same time, strategic plans such as Culture for All (2009) gave more importance to improving the national aspect of social cohesion in local societies. At the end of 2011, a new government took oice. he new governmental programme, A Denmark hat Stands Together, states that Denmark is a country “where diversity thrives” and where respect between people, regardless of their background, is promoted. he identity values introduced by the new government, as well as the economic crisis, have given rise to a debate on paradigms of identity displayed in public cultural policy, and the role of the arts and public cultural policy in the contemporary societies dominated by migration, globalisation and Europeanisation. Copenhagen has always diverged from the national political vision, at least as it has been set up over the past decade. he municipality grounded its policies on the self image of a green and sustainable city, inclusive and well-integrated, with room for everyone—a vision which is also clearly relected in recent policies, such as the Copenhagen integration policy 2011-2014 and the related Programme for engagement in CPH 2011-2013. Diversity is seen as an asset, and the idea of “citizenship” reconsidered; it is meant as inclusion, a “sense of belonging and integration,” as a “dynamic” and mutual process of “involvement” and “engagement”, based on mutual understanding and respect rather than on homologation and assimilation. Over the last three years, he Museum of Copenhagen has informed its vision and practices according to this agenda. As the new museum director, Jette Sandahl, recently declared, the museum is “struggling to deconstruct the grand totalising meta-narratives of chronology, of male power, and of privilege shared by so many other city museums.” he museum’s eforts are currently targeted at re-examining its paradigms and turning towards a more luid concept of identity in the belief that the museum “as scientiic institution” has to “learn to contain and encourage diverse interpretations, doubts, disagreements among people, and unsolved dilemmas.” Hence the museum is looking for new methods to “shift perspectives” and include multiple voices, foster dialogue and encourage participation, reach out from behind its walls to create a closer relation with all citizens, and take part in all city discourses. he plan is a very ambitious one, especially during the current period of serious economic crisis. he Copenhagen Museum is thus reorganising resources and trying to rethink its spaces as much as possible, taking into consideration also the constraints ensuing from its being hosted in a historical, protected building. In 2010, Brisac González completed a design proposal for the new premises of the museum within the conines of the historical building Christian IV Bryghus, located in the city centre close to the new Danish Royal Library (Schmidt, Hammer and Lassen architects, 1999) and the Danish Jewish Museum (Daniel Libeskind, 2004), but the museum had to give up this project due to external obstacles beyond their control. Today, most of the museum’s permanent galleries within its historical venue, have been rearranged in order to host temporary or semi-permanent exhibitions, in the attempt to implement a more lexible approach to exhibiting. Currently, only a small part of the old “permanent galleries” (dating back to 1996) remains on the second loor; the second and the third loor display exhibitions devoted to the history of Copenhagen, while a special temporary exhibition programme has been established, and related events are mainly hosted on the museum’s ground loor, which previously hosted the gallery on medieval and renaissance Copenhagen. Temporary exhibitions are developed by the European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 169 museum to further exploit and enhance its collections, on the one hand by providing an opportunity to reinterpret them in a new light, while on the other, allowing the possibility for their enrichment through the acquisition of new objects—usually related to the contemporary city. Furthermore, the museum is developing a number of new outreach projects aimed at entering into dialogue with the citizens of Copenhagen and foster communication and participation; these projects sometimes also lead to short temporary exhibitions. Examples of these experimental strategies and new approach include diferent kinds of initiatives, such as the exhibition “As I Am–lgbt in cph,”, the history of Copenhagen’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and transvestite population, or the project “Collecting Nørrebro,” an on-site local project involving young people, and aimed at collecting new and alternative stories from the everyday life of Nørrebro, a city neighbourhood that embodies most of the traditional conlicts in Copenhagen, but also the renewal and the emergence of new cosmopolitan hybrid cultures. he two major projects which probably represent, in the most paradigmatic way, the shift the museum is attempting to perform are the exhibition “Becoming a Copenhagener” and “the WALL.” æ Becoming a Copenhagener is a semi-temporary exhibition hosted on the ground loor of the museum; it was planned to last for two years, from November 2010 to December 2012, but has recently been extended for another year because of its relevance to the city’s identity and for how well it represents of the museum’s new approach. he exhibition focuses on immigration to Copenhagen, “presenting immigration as the catalyst and pre-condition for the town’s growth and change” and interprets the current practices of migration and globalisation against the background of the city’s history and traditions. It is grounded in the belief that the identity and cultural heritage of Copenhagen reaches be- yond its geographical borders, and is shaped by the absorption and transformation of the other multifarious and hybrid cultures of many different people coming to it. “In the discourses of museums—says Jette Sandahl—identity is most often linked to received interpretation of history and the past, but in real life, people seem to be less interested in where they come from, and more concerned with what is to become of them. In that context identity can be seen more in terms of choices, more in terms of where people want to go, who they want to be—as a striving, as hope for the future.” he aim of this exhibition is therefore to look at local history from the perspective of its relevance to the city’s future and, while focusing on migration, the exhibition wishes to trigger relection on the cultural heritage of the city of Copenhagen, in both the past and the present. At the same time, it seeks to address a discourse about “who the Copenhageners are” and their identity, in relation to a wider relection of what it means to be (or not be) a “Dane,” which is a rather contested and taboo discussion at national level in Denmark. Being a “Copenhagener” is thus presented as something diferent from being a “Dane,” as a matter of choice, an open process of becoming, rather than a closed category. he design of the exhibition has been developed by an in-house team. It is conceived as an object-based exhibition. Notable curatorial work has been carried out in choosing and reinterpreting the objects of the museum’s collections and exploring how they could give new responses to new questions. he objects on display mainly come from the museum’s collections, complemented by temporary loans from some immigrant citizens, pictures, videos, and some art works, completed by several labels and panels. he exhibition has also provided the museum with the opportunity to enlarge its collections, by acquiring some new objects related to the contemporary city, and migration in particular. he exhibition traces the history of physical, economic and social development of the city, in relation to the various immigration lows over the course of time, from the origins 170 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.41 — Museum of Copenhagen, exhibition “Becoming a Copenhagener” © Anne Mette Kruse, courtesy of Museum of Copenhagen. Section “WantedUnwanted”: display on the Roma settlement including historical and recent pictures, a video and newspapers articles. From the panel: “(...) In the 16th and 17th century, it was decreed by law that Roma people, or gypsies, as they were known, were lawless and must be expelled from the realm (...) The severe legislation meant that the Roma people had almost disappeared from the city by the end of the 18th century (...) in 1972 a group of Roma people was allowed to settle on Amager Common. This created a heated debate. Since then the common has several times been the site of new Roma settlement causing renewed discussion of Roma presence in the city. img. 5.42 — Museum of Copenhagen, exhibition “Becoming a Copenhagener” © Anne Mette Kruse, courtesy of Museum of Copenhagen. Sections “Cosmopolitan Copenhagen.” img. 5.43 — Museum of Copenhagen, exhibition “Becoming a Copenhagener” © Anne Mette Kruse, courtesy of Museum of Copenhagen. Section “Urban Communities.” From the panel: “ (...) Copenhagen consists of a number of small, interconnected parts in the form of districts, individuals and communities that simultaneously reflect a local uniqueness and function as centers in complex, global network. Communities based on music, culture, home, language, civic virtue and resistance create and remodel the city’s many different cultures and help newcomers find their feet. At the same time, they reach beyond the city as a locality and connect the urban as a phenomenon together across borders and nationalities. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 171 of the city up to the present day. It focuses on the relationship between migrants, the city of Copenhagen and the citizens of Copenhagen, and is divided into four thematic sections— “Arrivals”, “Wanted–Unwanted”, “Cosmopolitan Copenhagen”, and “Urban Communities”: this organisation is an attempt to develop the topic thematically rather than following a pure chronological approach. Moreover, this has helped the curators deal with some diicult topics—such as the Roma settlements—by framing them within a historical perspective. he exhibition is full of stimuli, its aims and contents are fascinating and outstanding, and the project as a whole is a remarkable starting point for the development of a new museum narrative. However, it seems that some topics have not been fully developed and some messages are too hidden and/or diicult to understand. his partial failure in conveying the exhibition’s core messages, in our opinion, can be traced back mostly to the meagre design of the exhibition—this, perhaps, also due to a lack of resources. A more articulated and researched exhibition design could have contributed to communicating the multiple messages of the exhibition and evoke its multiple layers, while a kind of synergy with the museum’s other ongoing project “the WALL”, could help to foster and allow multiple interpretations of the exhibition itself, enriching further its contents and relating them to the opinions of citizens. æ he WALL is a 12-metre long. 2-metre high interactive multimedia installation, consisting of four multi-touch plasma screens, mounted in a customized shipping container which will travel around the city for period of four years. hrough an interface which consists of a mixture of historical documents from the museum’s archive and collections and contemporary photographs of the city, users can explore the city’s history and be informed about its present. hey can comment, download documents, and add personal stories through diferent media and supports (e.g. uploading private documents such as photos, videos, music or texts; voicing opinions in a video-blog; recording videos and pictures) both on site through the WALL interface, and from home via the WALL website. It is diicult to deine what “the WALL” is. It is a communicative tool from the museum; it is a travelling urban exhibition on city history; it is a way to knit together places and their history, and to strengthen the relationship between the city museum and the city itself; it is a tool to foster participation and dialogue; it is a repository, an archive, and an endless open catalogue of the museum’s collections, digitalized and made available to a wide public; it is a strategy for documenting the contemporary city and a participatory collecting practice; it is an exploration of how to represent the contemporary city and its history in the light of Contemporaneity, based on subjective rather than objective multiple, multi-layered and alternative, cognitive maps; it is also a metaphor for the museum’s changing orientation towards dialogue and use of participation in the description and creation of cultural heritage. he ideation of “the WALL” was an interesting interdisciplinary process in itself, and involved theoretical relections as well as investigations into the use of new technologies, graphic and communication design. However, in our opinion, some issues are still unresolved. For example, although Jette Sandahl declared that most of the museum’s work will low through the WALL in one way or another, it is not clear today how the WALL will eventually inluence the museum’s practices, and how this one-to-one relationship could be practically implemented. Other concerns are related to the production and maintenance costs of this tool—they are unknown, but most likely not inconsiderable—and with the handling of the potentially huge amount of heterogeneous information collected through the WALL. Several design aspects could also be improved, such as some physical problems in viewing the big screens, the light relection from the screens, and the relationship between the wall and the city’s real physical locations that host it. he design process of the WALL focused mostly on European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 173 172 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.44 — The WALL © Museum of Copenahgen. The WALL is the result of collaboration between the Museum of Copenhagen; the Gibson International production company from New Zealand; the Danish graphic studio Spild af Tid; the ProShop Europe installation company. The WALL has been made possible due to the financial support of Copenhagen City Council, The Labour Market Holiday Fund and The Heritage Agency of Denmark. In addition, a number of private individuals, businesses and institutions are also contributing to the WALL. img. 5.45 — the WALL © Caspar Miskin, courtesy of Museum of Copenahgen. From the introductory panel on the WALL: “The WALL is a dialogue about Copenhagen—its inhabitants, history and contemporary challenges. It is a rediscovery of the capital, a rallying point at street level where citizens can exchange memories, visions and mixed feelings about the city we live in. Through the WALL you can tell your own stories about the different neighbourhoods and their strengths and weaknesses, heroes, scapegoats and magical spaces. Or you can stroll back into history and explore the stories, themes and images already at the WALL. The WALL is a celebration of the city and its diversity, our lives and our tales.” img. 5.46 — the WALL © Caspar Miskin, courtesy of Museum of Copenahgen. conceptual aspects of graphic projection and the technological implementation of the ideas on which it is founded, neglecting the architectural impact of the equipment and its possible interaction with the physical spaces it was to occupy. In this way, the WALL remains rather indiferent to the context in which it is inserted. Inasmuch as it is an itinerant urban installation for the various squares and districts of the city, more attention could have been paid to developing a physical relationship with these spaces, embellishing and characterising them in such a way as to go beyond being merely a digital device for dialogue, and becoming a physical meeting place, capable of fostering a dynamic and a synergy not only with its self-created virtual space, but also within the urban space which hosts it. However, these notes do not in any way diminish the value of the WALL. It seems to have the ability to include multiple voices and collect diferent points of view, overcoming monolithic and unique narrations and rediscovering the complexity and multiplicity of contemporary culture. As with all experiments, it needs time to bear fruit. As a practical experimentation on the epistemological shift in the collecting, communicating and exhibiting practices of museums—a shift fostered by new ways of conceiving, producing and consuming knowledge generated by the contemporary, global, multicultural and digitalized world—“the WALL” is a high-potential and future-oriented pilot project, opening new perspectives for the strategies and practices of city museums. Francesca Lanz æ references Sandahl, Jette. 2012. “Feeling at home? A city with room for everyone?’” In Our Greatest Artefact: the City edited by Ian Jones et al. 89–105. Istanbul: CAMOC. ———. 2006. “he Interpretation of Cultural Policy, by and for Museums: a museum as an embodiment of cultural policies?” Museum In- ternational 58 (4): 29-36. ———. “A better city calls for a much better museum?” Filmed October 25, 2011. Conference talk video, 38:19. Posted by DenGamleByMuseum November 17, 2011. http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=5qbDmYd5Mlk Sandahl, Jette., et al. 2011. “Taking the Museum to the Streets.” In Museums and the Web 2011: Proceedings edited by Jennifer Trant and David Bearman. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. Accessed November 29, 2012. http://conference.archimuse.com/mw2011/papers/taking_the_museum_to_the_streets Selmer, Joergen. 2006. “Towards new target groups. Refugees and businessmen in Copenhagen.” In City Museums as Centres for Civic Dialogue? edited by Renée Kistemaker, 103-6. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Historical Museum. 174 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 175 Palazzo Pepoli. Museo della Storia di Bologna Bologna City History Museum, Bologna, Italy, 2012 Palazzo Pepoli. Museo della Storia di Bologna is the city history museum of the city of Bologna, in Italy. It was inaugurated in 2012 as the inal step in a project started in 2003, called Genus Bononiae: Museums in the City. Genus Bononiae is a project under the management of the Bank Foundation CARISBO intended as a civic cultural network of historic buildings and cultural centres spread throughout the urban area, with the aim of creating synergies among museums, libraries, galleries, and other local cultural centres and initiatives. “To better describe and understand the genus and stock of the Bolognese people from yesterday and today, Genus Bononiae. Museums in the City follows a path through the city and narrates its history, life, arts and dreams; it uses the streets of Bologna as corridors and the buildings and churches as rooms, blending into the existing institutional structure, and ensuring a full link with other museums, art galleries, as well as the other cultural, economic and social initiatives which animate the local community” (from the Museum website). img. 5.47 — Palazzo Pepoli, Bologna city hisotry museum. The foyer with the tower of time. Courtesy of Mario Bellini Architects and Genus Bononiae On the one hand Genus Bononiae is based on the exploitation of the already working system of civic and cultural institutions of the city, on the other, it is directly involved itself with eight historic buildings which have been renovated and rehabilitated for public use, each of which has an inherent historical and artistic value and hosts a cultural centre. he Biblioteca d’Arte e di Storia di San Giorgio in Poggiale (Art and History Library), is hosted in a deconsecrated 16th century church owned by the Bank Foundation and restored in 2009 by the architect Michele De Lucchi to turn it into a library. he library houses the collection of art and history books of the Bank Foundation, a newspaper and journals archive and a photographic archive. San Colombano is a historical holy complex comprising a range of buildings aggregated over the centuries, beginning from the 7th century, which was purchased and restored by the Bank Founda- tion in 2005. Besides the historical and artistic value of the church itself and its decorations , since 2010, the site has also hosted a collection of ancient musical instruments, a specialised library and several musical events including performances using instruments from the collection. Santa Maria della Vita is a monumental site dating back to the 13th century and includes a hospital, a church, a sanctuary and an oratorio. he complex is currently owned by the local healthcare centre and is one of the most important examples of Baroque architecture in Bologna. Moreover, it hosts several important historical works of art and the Museum of Health. he Palazzo Fava, one of the most important historical palaces in Bologna, is today used as an Exhibition Centre. It is also possible here to admire the frescoes by the Caracci and part of the collections from the CARISBO, as well as exhibitions from other important public and private collections. he network also the Casa Saraceni, a Renaissance palace that today is the headquarters of the Bank Foundation and whose ground loor is used for art exhibitions and other cultural events; the church of Santa Cristina which was inaugurated and opened to the public in 2007 to house an art collection and be a centre for music; San Michele in Bosco, a large, historic “belvedere” overlooking Bologna, managed by the bank Foundation since 2007; and inally, the Palazzo Pepoli, the city history museum, which is the core of this project. æ contents-objects-display a balanced equilibrium he Bologna city history museum was inaugurated in 2012 and, unlike most of city museums, especially in Italy, is a private museum, run by the CARISBO Bank Foundation. It is housed in a medieval palace dating back to the 13th14th centuries, which has been restored and transformed into the city museum. he restoration took seven years and was the project of 176 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.48 — The Genus Bononiae network. Courtesy of Massimo Negri and Genus Bononiae. “Genus Bononiae, a cultural, artistic and museum itinerary in the historical center of Bologna. img. 5.49 — Palazzo Pepoli. External view of the historical palace restore and turned into the city history museums. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 177 Mario Bellini Architects, who designed and put in place the museum exhibition in partnership with the architect Italo Lupi, who curated the graphic design, the multimedia design studio Studio Base 2, and Massimo Negri, who was entrusted with the museological and scientiic side of the project. In 2003, Mario Bellini won the competition to design and build the museum, including the restoration and interior design. he restoration work focused irstly on the implementation of measures to strengthen the building, several ceilings, Gothic arches and rooms. Consequently, special attention was devoted to the restoration of each room and its décor which had been damaged by time and later additions. he whole project, according to Bellini’s working method, aimed at preserving and enhancing the ancient building, and creating a synergy between the historic building and the new use to which it would be put, along with the related facilities. he most important new structure is the central glass and iron tower, located in the inner courtyard, which has been covered so it can be used as an entrance hall and connecting hub along the exhibition paths. he tower includes the stairs and elevators needed to connect the diferent loors for a coherent visit low. he museum is on two loors of about forty rooms in total organised into several sections, which tell the story of the development of the city and its culture from the Etruscans to the present day. On the ground loor are the reception facilities and the irst exhibition rooms. Passing through the central tower, metaphorically interpreted as a tower of time – the time of the visit, the time we are exploring the museum, and time as a scientiic and philosophical ield of exploration for many major Bolognese historical scholars—the exhibition continues on the upper loor, while the mezzanine contains oices, educational rooms and temporary exhibition spaces. he narration is chronological, using key episodes, symbolic igures and anecdotes, and occasionally interrupted by some cross-cutting themes designed to represent a particular fea- ture of the city in a diachronic way. Examples are, among others, the thematic room devoted to the Forma Urbis—the urban historical development of the city and its morphology—where a portion of an original Roman street is displayed with a reconstruction of a portion of Bologna’s porch and old city shop signboards; the the city of water room—an immersive installation evoking some of the underground sections of the Aposa river and explaining audio-visually the relationship between the city, its economy and culture and the local water system; or the City of Languages section—devoted to the development of the Bolognese dialect, its evolution, preservation and relationship with Italian languages and other languages and dialects. In one of these thematic rooms, a series of selected daily news items from local newspapers are displayed and collected in a database which may be browsed via touch screens. his is one of the few references to the city’s everyday life, together with the last three rooms of the exhibition: Your museum—where citizens can temporarily display their own small collections associated with a memory, a special moment or an emotion; he people of Bologna speak—where it is possible to listen to talks from a number of distinguished Bolognese igures from the contemporary worlds of politics, culture and sport; and Sentimental Journeys—where a computer terminal provides access to a geo-tagged blog called Percorsi Emotivi (in the blog site members can express a thought, a suggestion, or a memory connected to a certain place in the city) and where a city map, designed to be used to attach comments to about beloved places in the city, ultimately functions as a kind of visitors’ book. he entire narration is made up of a combination of objects, images and multimedia elements. Actually, the museum collection mainly includes objects already owned by the Bank Foundation and therefore is not particularly large. he curator made thus the choice to set up what he describes as a “narrative museum”, focused on storytelling, rather than being collection-oriented. In this way, the exhibition display and the graphic design play a funda- 178 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.50 — Palazzo Peopoli, Bologna city history museum, “the coronation of Carlo V” © Francesco Radino, courtesy of Mario Bellini Architects, Massimo Negri (Genus Bononiae). An ancient line-drawing frieze depicting the honour parade for the coronation of King Charles V, has been reproduced on free-standing tempered safety glass elements through a film treated with silk-screen printing. Using projections, sounds and other tools drawn from scenography and theatre language, here the visitor is immersed in the historical event, which is not literally reproduced, but rather suggested through metaphor and a dream-like experience. img. 5.51 — Palazzo Peopoli, Bologna city history museum, “Forma Urbis” © PaoloRighi, courtesy of Massimo Negri (Genus Bononiae). img. 5.52 — Palazzo Peopoli, Bologna city history museum, “the People of Bologna Speak” © Francesco Radino, courtesy of Mario Bellini Architects, Massimo Negri (Genus Bononiae). European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 179 img. 5.53 — Palazzo Peopoli, Bologna city history museum, “ the City of Water” © Francesco Radino, courtesy of Mario Bellini Architects, Massimo Negri (Genus Bononiae). img. 5.54 — Palazzo Peopoli, Bologna city history museum, the central tower, “the tower of time” © PaoloRighi, courtesy of Mario Bellini Architects, Massimo Negri (Genus Bononiae). The tower consists of a steel varnished structure with glass wall-plugs. These glass walls are covered by a film treated with silkscreen printing, which is progressively dense from the bottom up. Therefore, the tower’s ground floor is transparent, while the highest level is coloured white and very bright, thus giving an idea of the dematerialisation of the entire structure. 180 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.55 — Palazzo Peopoli, Bologna city history museum. Dispaly cases in the section “Bologna on stage: the secular life” © Francesco Radino, courtesy of Mario Bellini Architects, Massimo Negri (Genus Bononiae). img. 5.56 — Palazzo Peopoli, Bologna city history museum. Dispaly cases in the section “After Unification of Italy ” © Francesco Radino, courtesy of Mario Bellini Architects, Massimo Negri (Genus Bononiae). European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 181 mental communication role, illing information gaps and contributing to building and conveying the messages. he museum uses diferent communication tools, drawing on theatrical languages and scenography, creating immersive spaces and historical reconstructions, using the exhibition apparatus and graphic communication to visualise concepts and integrate information, and implementing messages through the use of ICT and multimedia devices. he museum’s storyboard, curated by Massimo Negri, has been developed alongside the interior, graphic and multimedia design of the exhibition, in a successful partnership, where all the diferent competences have been mutually inluential and have contributed to implementing and shaping the museum’s contents. he exhibition apparatus its in the existing spaces, detached from the walls and composed of self-bearing elements which include all the necessary technical facilities, including the electrical and lighting systems; they are stand-alone elements, custom designed for the museum by Mario Bellini and freely placed in the space according to a diferent geometrical and spatial grid from that of the building. he exhibition elements are based on diferent variations of the initial concept of a three-dimensional cage made up of a squared white glazed steel frame hosting the collection’s objects and the related information panels (designed by Italo Lupi using texts, drawings, images and other graphic communication tools). hese “cages” host the artworks and give them their own individual space, isolating them within the narration and, at the same time, drawing attention to them. In the inal part of the exhibition, where the narration is very dense and temporally compressed, the need to highly synthesise these contents and also display several very heterogeneous objects—including pictures, newspapers, comics, photos, fabrics, and much more—led to the design of a diferent version of these same cages, which here dilate within the space, becoming a sort of “room inside the room” where objects and graphic supports are displayed. hroughout the exhibition some backlit double-faced pan- els, framed by the same steel cage, report the general historical narration through texts and images; they are more than just a label, and are capable of dialogue and creating a communicative unit with the other elements of the exhibition. his exhibition design system creates an intimate unity between the objects and the communicative support (images and texts) as a visual tool devoted to storytelling. At the same time it is lexible and reversible, and guarantees both the respect of the historical context (the palace’s room), and an optimal illumination and preservation environment, custom designed for each speciic object. Palazzo Pepoli, as far as its narrative approach is concerned, is a traditional city history museum, whose organisation follows a linear timeline from past to present. It does not deal with contemporary city issues, such as the urban or social development of Bologna, it hardly reaches contemporaneity and talks little about, or with, Bologna’s multifarious inhabitants. It rather stands out among other newly restored city museums around Europe due to its exhibition design and its organisational structure. he whole narration of the museum is grounded in visual communication, whether based on original objects, reconstructions, replicas, texts or images. he visit to the museum and the transmission of its contents are meant as a mental, physical and emotional experience, and the collection’s objects are intended to be nodes in the complete narration, a narration which provides them with a context and which is, in turn, validated by the objects themselves. he link between the story told and the objects themselves, is entrusted to the museum’s communication and conveyed by the display. he result is a coherent exhibition design, characterised by a well-balanced combination of information, objects, multimedia installations and traditional exhibits, capable of being exhaustive but also of leaving space for personal interpretation. A further innovative aspect of this museum is the relationship between the museum and the city, including the link between the museum European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 183 182 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.57 — Palazzo Peopoli, Bologna city history museum. Plans of the ground and first floor and longitudinal section. Courtesy of Mario Bellini Architects. D 18 33 Exposition E Facilities A B 7 8 Offices Distribution C1 Ground Floor 15 14 13 34 C2 16 D 17 18 19 21 20 22 32 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Mid Floor Space for temporary exhibition and educational activities 33 A. Entrance. The painted city Courtyard B. The tower of time 1-2-3. Estruscan Bologna 4. The via Emilia 5. The stone and the word 6. Medioeval Bologna 7. The protagonist 8. Forma urbis 9. the Battle of Fossalta 10. “The stolen bucket”. Wars among the families 11-12 the Bentivoglio First Floor 2 4 5 3 1 A 6 Reception B 7 9 10 11 8 12 Il caffè del museo Il caffè del museo La Bottega del museo Guardaroba 13. The coronation of Charles V in Bologna 14. The Council in Bolonga 15. Bologna on stage: the sacred C. Multimedia Space D. 3D Virtual Theatre 16. Bologna on stage: the secular life 17. Bologna the “learned”: the arts 18. The science 19. Literature 20. The city of water 21-22. Music 23. The arrival of Napoleon 24. 1848-1861 25. After Unification of Italy 26. 1898:Aemilia Ars 27: Futurist in Bologna 28. Marconi and modern industry 29. Neither near, nor yet so far 30. Your Museum 31. The people of Bologna speak 32. Sentimental Journeys 33-34. City of languages E. Room of Culture and its venue, the other building of the Genus Bononiae Network, and the entire historic city centre. he Genus Bononiae project states its aim thus: “[...] to tell the history of the city through a variety of instruments: direct acquaintance with the places of the city, permanent expositions and the integration of the physical witnesses of the past and the present, through a continuous and structured programme of activities”. he city museum is thus the core of this narration, and, at the same time, its very collection is virtually enlarged by including the palace hosting the museum, the buildings of the Genus Bononiae network, and the city as a whole with its cultural resources and physical places. hese links result both in programmatic and curatorial aspects as well as in physical and museographical solutions. he palace’s rooms, for example, have not been modiied and have been carefully restored in order to make the building itself part of the museum’s collection – the historic columns at the entrance, enclosed by light glasses incipiently underline the building’s pre-eminent role. he Palazzo Pepoli, unusually for a new museum, does not have many of the facilities which today characterise most of the new and renovated museums. Indeed it has no conference room or library, and very little space for temporary exhibitions; this is because all these functions are hosted in the other buildings of the Genus Bononiae network, coherently with the idea of creating a museum of the city within the city. In addition, the museum also seeks to create cultural links with the city, through “educational activities” carried out in cooperation with the various city museums, “loans” of works and inds, and “scientiic cooperation initiatives” launched by the many museums and cultural entities of the city of Bologna. hese links are established not only through the museum’s programmes and activities but also within and by the exhibition itself. Particular attention has been paid, in fact, to graphic communication, in order to create a link with Bologna through references to places – such as maps and pictures – and through cross-references with other museums of the city dealing with speciic top- ics mentioned in the exhibition – such as some “video points” which present those civic museums connected to a given theme, and graphic signals called “balloons” which highlight several temporary events in the city which are related to a given museum topic. his networking method, its communication strategies, and its dual aim of creating a cultural system both for the people of Bologna and for the promotion of tourism in the city via beneicial partnership among various agencies – including both private and public sectors, diferent kinds of museums, and other local cultural institutions and resources – transform this into a both stimulating and highly suggestive project. Francesca Lanz 184 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 185 Historisches Museum Frankfurt History Museum Frankfurt, Germany 1878, 2015 he Historisches Museum Frankfurt (History Museum Frankfurt) has its origins in collections of the city and citizens of Frankfurt am Main, dating back to the 16th century. hey were originally housed in the municipal library, the “chamber of curiosities” of the old imperial city of Frankfurt. Founded between 1861 and 1878 on the basis of civic initiatives, the Historisches Museum is the oldest museum in Frankfurt inanced by the municipality. During the 19th century it was a kind of “universal museum” for the city of Frankfurt, which is still present today in its collections. Despite the fact that, since the early 20th century, part of the museum’s collections have coalesced into many new museums in Frankfurt, they still comprise more than 630,000 objects, including paintings, prints and drawings, photos, sculptures, textiles, furniture, musical instruments, coins, armour, pottery, toys, scientiic instruments industrial historical items. Since the 1970s, the museum has developed into a “museum-family”. he Children‘s Museum (Kinder Museum Frankfurt, founded as a department in 1972, with its own dedicated site since 2008), the Museum of Caricature (Caricatura Museum Frankfurt, founded as a department in 2000, with its own building since 2008 ) and the Porcelain-Museum in Frankfurt-Höchst (Höchster Porzellanmuseum, since 1994, in its own building). Before the new museum project was launched in 2008, the museum family attracted between 90,000 and 130,000 visitors per year. he museum has a tradition of “re-inventions” or reforms during its long history. he general concept behind the museum was last exten- img. 5.58 — History Museum Frankfurt, Exhibition “Ostend//Ostanfang”, (East End // East Beginning: A District In Transition) 2011. >> Debut exhibition of the Historisches Museum Frankfurt’s “Mobile City Lab”, which continues to collaborate with members of the town society to realize exhibitions on current topics in the urban space. Portrait series of thirty Ostend personalities by Stefanie Kösling © hmf, photo by P. Welzel. sively revised in 1972. With the slogans “place of learning versus temple of the muses!” and “culture for everyone”, the Historisches Museum launched a process by which the museum would become, irst and foremost, a place of learning open to all strata of the population. he socio-historical issues of historical scholarship of the time became the new guidelines for the content-related work carried out by the museum staf. he museum became a disputed institution in the 1970s. In the city of Frankfurt it was heavily criticised by the conservative citizens for the “critical” and left-wing impetus of the new exhibition and the sheer quantity of textual information contained within it. On the European museum scene, on the other hand, it was one of the most visited and “quoted” examples of the new museology of the 1970s. his leading position among German museums for cultural history was already lost by the 1980s, when new ideas of scenography and new building concepts generated more attractive museums. he conceptual and didactic innovations had been accepted and adapted quickly in most of the museum concepts in the 1970s and 1980s. Nowadays, forty years later, the Historisches Museum is once again renewing its underlying concept in relation to the challenges posed by contemporaneity and the development of the city; it is thus restoring its buildings, redesigning its exhibitions and rethinking its spaces, and constructing a new museum venue. æ a new concept for the 21st century As in 1972, new construction measures are currently providing an opportunity for change. he historical buildings have just been restored and were re-opened in 2012. Norbert Diezinger (Diezinger Architects), an ex-collaborator of Karl-Josef Schattner in Eichstätt, has achieved far more than merely a technical modernisation and embellishment of the façades. he unique 186 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) ensemble of ive historical monuments from seven centuries (12th to 19th centuries) has now been made visible and understandable from both the outside and the inside. Every monument, heavily damaged during World War II, has its own staircase; the identities of the ive buildings have also been strengthened by the materiality and colour of loors, walls, ceilings and windows. Modern additions are clearly recognisable. In addition, the new exhibitions are arranged according to the features of the ive buildings, and comment on their history. he planned new construction (by Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei architects, LRO, Stuttgart) is aimed at creating a striking museum architecture , which is also capable of merging with the complex urban-architectural situation on the Römerberg. he new building is the result of an international competition held between 2007 and 2008, involving 50 architects. he competition was greatly inluenced by aspects of urban planning. Indeed, since 2005 a vigorous debate about the future of the historical city centre has led to the decision to “repair” the historic city centre by demolishing structures erected in the postwar-period and the construction of new buildings recalling the pre-modern history of the oldest quarter of the city. hus, within the concept of LRO architects, the old museum buildings are completed by a new one which joins up the fragmented “Saalhof ” to an adjacent court building. Divided by a new museum square, and following the tradition of the old streets (in an east-west direction) of the quarter, a larger exhibition building will be placed at the southern end of Römer place. Its double-beaked form, with sandstone façade and two gabled slate roofs, has an ambiguous efect. At irst glance it is not clearly recognisable as a modern or historical building, and if historical, it could be a church or an industrial building. his ambiguity is an interesting quality, linking the new building to the history of the place, as well as the cultural message of the museum. he construction measures are due for completion in 2015. After opening, the new museum complex will ofer c. 6,000 m2 of exhibition space, compared to 3,200 m2 in 2008. here will be 1,000 m² of special exhibition space in the basement of the new building, supplemented by about 500 m² for a new exhibition format called “city-lab exhibitions” on the top loor. In the old buildings, 240 m² will be devoted to the children’s museum, and an additional 40 m² for changing presentations within the new permanent exhibition “Collectors and Donors of Frankfurt”. All in all, there will be almost 1,800 m² for temporary exhibitions and 4,200 m² for permanent exhibitions. he renewal will afect not only the museum’s spaces but also its focus and approaches, transforming the museum from a specialised historical museum into an actual city museum. It aims to become a centre of information, relection and discussion about Frankfurt, ofering the multi-faceted explanations and backgrounds of the city’s past as a frame of reference. As a forum for the important topics concerning municipal society, it will contribute to the process by which that society comes to an understanding of its present and future. With its collections, exhibitions and events, the museum will place as much emphasis on reacting to the present as it does to raising questions about the past and the future. In doing so the museum will adopt a new participatory orientation, which takes the wealth of its visitors’ experience and knowledge seriously and makes use of it as an integral element. It will address itself speciically to the numerous new citizens from a wide range of the world’s cultures, as well as to the international guests visiting the trade-fair town and transportation hub that is Frankfurt. Many new perspectives of the museum concept will result in the permanent exhibition “Frankfurt Now!” which will address questions such as: Who or what makes Frankfurt what it is? Who actually lives here? How do diferent people experience Frankfurt? Do we all live in the same city, or are there many diferent “Frankfurts”? Such an exploration of the present-day town requires new forms of museological work. he museum proceeds on the assumption that every one of the city’s 700,000 residents is an expert European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 187 on Frankfurt and invites them to share their expertise at the new Historisches Museum. To this end, the means are being created for a new participatory exhibition series called the “City Lab”. Here, with the participation of various groups and initiatives of the local society, exhibitions on changing subjects will be developed. hese subjects will not be determined by the museum, but either proposed directly by the groups themselves or worked out jointly. he museum’s thematic spectrum will thus be expanded to include the urban society’s knowledge and experiences of its own city. he Kinder Museum (Children’s Museum) with its 40-year experience in multi-generational and interactive museum practice plays an important role in the development of the City Lab and the other interactive formats in the new museum. It will be reintegrated into the new museum site by 2015 and will be responsible for the installation of multi-generational ofers in all of the new exhibitions. It also has a leading role in designing and modifying the participative strategies of the museum – inding partners in the local/regional society, framing partnerships with these groups or initiatives and organising the setting-up of exhibitions. Moreover, since 2011, a series of experimental projects outside the museum sites have been launched in order to collect experiences with this kind of work, and create a growing network of partners of the museum within the city – examples include a project in 2011 about a changing city quarter, the “Ostend”, which presented 38 contributions from participants, or, in 2012, a project concerning the oldest public swimming pool in Frankfurt, the “Stadionbad”, founded in 1925, together with a swimming club. to participate in their work. he new concept of the Historisches Museum responds to this trend by its participative approach, as well as by a wide range of interfaces in the exhibition media, which can be commented on or enhanced by the visitors themselves. All of the museum‘s digital sources will be combined by 2015 into a “museum portal” to be accessed in the museum or via the Internet, where all the information may be commented on by the users. Secondly, the new concept takes into account the fact that the museum’s audience has changed since 1972. Frankfurt is currently the city in Germany with the highest degree of cultural diversity; only a minority of its citizens were born here, 44 percent have a migration background (either they or their parents come from other countries), and 25 percent carry a foreign passport. In this multicultural city, society it is no longer the nation or national traditions which form the common ground; rather, it is the city which is shared and created by its inhabitants. In addition, Frankfurt attracts a lot of visitors from other countries, particularly from outside of Europe due to the international airport acting as a gateway to Europe for Asian and American tourists. hirty percent of the museum visitors in 2008 came from other countries, with an increasing proportion of non-European visitors, another 30 percent came from other regions of Germany and 40 percent from the local region. he challenge is thus to combine exhibitions which attract the local and regional people, who are all in diferent ways “experts“ of their town, and also put together attractive ofers to the increasing number of tourists with hardly any knowledge of the town, or even of European culture. Finally, this new participative strategy takes two recent developments into account – irstly, the new techniques of creating knowledge enhanced by the World Wide Web, in particular by the so-called “Web 2.0” which, with “usergenerated content“ such as Wikis, crowd-sourcing and other tools, have changed the public’s attitude towards institutions such as museums, libraries and archives. More visitors want to comment on the work of the museum or even As a result, within its renovated and new buildings, through collaboration with the other museum’s branches, such as the Children’s Museum, and via new exhibition design, the new museum opens a wide range of views on Frankfurt, in diferent formats, directed towards the diverse needs of visitors. In the recently renovated old museum buildings of the “Saalhof ”, the museum ofers three exhibitions focusing on the historical museum’s buildings 188 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 189 img. 5.59 — History Museum Frankfurt, plans of the new museum Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei architects, LRO, Stuttgart. in the next page, img. 5.60 — History Museum Frankfurt. Section of the new museum. img. 5.61 — Detail of the exhibtion layout for the section “Frankfurt Now!” img. 5.62 — 3D computer model of the area devoted to the diplay of the city’s model. HMF | HISTORISCHES MUSEUM FRANKFURT Schnittperspektive Stand 02.04.2012 LRO Lederer Ragnarsd—ttir Oei GmbH & Co. KG img. 4.67 — Museums Section European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 191 190 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) and collections, while the exhibitions of the new museum will be focused on the city itself. hese exhibitions will be designed according to the above mentioned context and approaches, and put together in collaboration with diferent scenographers who have been engaged to create diverse environments and establish a variety of styles in the museum. (he designers for the new permanent exhibition on the city‘s history “Frankfurt Once?” are Gillmann and Schnegg, who already designed the renewed exhibition in the old museum’s buildings, and while the Kossmann DeJong studio will be responsible for the introductory installations at the entry level and the large space dedicated to the present day city “Frankfurt Now!”). the top loor will also ofer a spectacular view of the town. he courtyard level beneath the museum square will receive visitors with two installations – the “Frankfurt Harbour” and the “Frankfurt Models”. he “Frankfurt Harbour” is an impressive archaeological ind in the grounds between the old and new buildings, dating back to the late 12th/early 14th centuries. Visitors can see the archaeological remains and explore their history and meaning with several digital devices. he second installation will relect on the identity of Frankfurt, questioning what kind of city it is: here, eight images of Frankfurt will be presented in the form of artistic town models, selected by the audience and put in place by an industrial robot in the cellar. Jan Gerchow In the big exhibition house, temporary exhibitions will be presented on 1,000 square meters of the courtyard level. On the irst and second upper levels, comprising a total of 2,000 square meters, the permanent historical exhibition “Frankfurt Once?” will spread out in four thematic sections – “Townscapes”, “Citizens’ Town”, “Money Town” and “World Town” – rather than presenting the city’s history chronologically, while the entire double-gabled attic loor will be devoted to the exhibition “Frankfurt Now!”, presenting contemporary Frankfurt and its future issues, and to the “City Lab” space that will host temporary exhibitions based on the museum collection and created with the participation of local residents. With its large panorama window and 84 additional windows, Overall, this important museum transformation is based on the belief that, as a contemporary city museum, it should tell not only the city’s history, but also explain the present and discusses the future of the city. It should also help the citizens and guests to read the city; it presents itself as the place for the urban themes of Frankfurt, as a kind of city “laboratory” or city “forum” and thus involves its visitors actively. In this sense, the renewed Historisches Museum aims to become a 21st century “universal museum” for the city of Frankfurt. Acknowledgements his essay is the result of two presentations given at the conference “Exposer l’histoire des villes et des territoires. Pratiques muséales du XIXe au XXIe siècle” (Maison d’Histoire de France, Paris, June 6 -7, 2012) and at the conference “City Collision | Connection” (Museum of Vancouver, Canada, October 24h-27, 2012). æ references Gerchow, Jan. 2009. “Historisches museum Frankfurt - Stadtmuseum für das 21. Jahrhundert“, in CURA 2009, 6-22. Historisches Museum Frankfurt: Frankfurt. Accessed December 18, 2012. http://www.historisches-museum. frankfurt.de/iles/cura_2009.pdf – – –, ed. 2012. CURA 2012: Die Renovierung des Frankfurter Saalhofs. Historisches Museum Frankfurt: Frankfurt. Accessed December 18, 2012. http://www.historisches-museum. frankfurt.de/iles/cura2012_broschuere_screen. pdf Gerchow, Jan, Susanne Gesser, and Angela Jannelli. 2012. “Nicht von gestern! Das historisches museum frankfurt wird zum Stadtmuseum für das 21. Jahrhundert“, in Das partizipative Museum. Zwischen Teilhabe und User Generated Content. Neue Anforderungen an kulturhistorische Ausstellungen, edited by Susanne Gesser et.al.,22-32. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. Hofmann,Detlef, Almut Junker, and Peter Schirmbeck, eds. 1974. Geschichte als öfentliches Ärgernis oder Ein Museum für die demokratische Gesellschaft. Das Historische Museum in Frankfurt a.M. und der Streit um seine Konzeption. Fernwald, Wißmar: Anabas. Lederer, Arno, Jórunn Ragnarsdóttir, and Marc Oei. 2011. “Die Neubauten für das historische museum frankfurt, in CURA 2011, edited by Jan Gerchow, 12-21. Historisches Museum Frankfurt: Frankfurt. Accessed December 18, 2012. http://www.historisches-museum.frankfurt.de/iles/cura2011.pdf Ostend // Ostanfang. ein Stadtteil im Wandel, ed. by historisches museum frankfurt, Susanne Gesser and Katja Weber, Frankfurt am Main 2011; Mein Stadtionbad – eine Ausstellung mit Schwimmbad, ed. historisches museum frank- furt, Susanne Gesser and Sonja hiel, Frankfurt am Main 2012. 1982. Die Zukunft beginnt in der Vergangenheit. Museumsgeschichte und Geschichtsmuseum. Frankfurt am Main: Historisches Museum. Gerchow, Jan. 2012. “Stadt- und regionalhistorische Museen”, in Museen zwischen Qualität und Relevanz. Denkschrift zur Lage der Museen, edited by Bernhard Graf and Volker Rodekamp, 341-8. Berlin: G+H Verlag. An online-publication of the museum database is in preparation for 2015/16; so far the museum-website www.historisches-museumfrankfurt.de (in English and in German) with a summary description of the collections, gives basic information. Here is also available a list of publications of the museums, comprising exhibition and collection-catalogues. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 193 192 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) MAS - Museum aan de Stroom Antwerp, Flanders, Belgium 2011 he MAS Museum aan de Stroom has been deined in diferent ways, as a cultural heritage forum, promoting integrated local heritage policies and coordinating diferent collections, organisations and practices; as a landmark, catalysing the image of a developing district through the visibility of its eye-catching monumental form, but also fostering and orienting the local cultural programme; as a vertical city walk, guiding visitors through a sequence of diferent lively public spaces, which almost become a new city centre. MAS ofers a complex experience, providing a multi-faceted presentation of the history of Antwerp, which is a history of migration–of people, objects and ideas– because of its world port identity. Among the few newly-built Belgian museums in recent decades, it is now the youngest and largest in Antwerp, bringing together the collections from the former Ethnographic Museum, the National Maritime Museum and the Folklore Museum, along with part of the art collections from Paul and Dora Janssen and from the Vleeshuis Museum. he large size of the collection managed by MAS – it includes 470,000 pieces– and its heterogeneous character – it gathers together archaeological inds, folkloric and exotic objects, ship models, paintings, photography and ethnography from the former colonies – ofer the possibility to promote different exhibitions on a variety of themes. img. 5.63 — The permanent exhibition dedicated to the “Display of Power. On Prestige and Symbols” © Jeroen Verrecht, courtesy of MAS. he museum was designed by the Dutch architects Neutelings Riedijk and inaugurated in May 2011. It is located in Antwerp’s Het Eilandje (“the little island”) neighbourhood, an area that is currently undergoing massive transformations. It is a riverside zone of warehouses, factories and docks from the Napoleonic era, not far from the city’s historic centre, where the museum stands with its highly iconic architecture that makes it a recognizable part of the urban fabric and a local landmark. he mission of the Museum aan de Stroom focuses mainly on the narration of the history of the city, though the institution is not deined merely as a “city museum” – as also indicated by its name, literally “Museum by the River”, referring to the location of the building, as well as to the ancient appellation of Antwerp (which was also known as “Stad aan de Stroom”), and celebrating the crucial role of the Scheldt in local development. he evolution of the identity of the city has indeed arisen from its story as world port, and fostered by an excellent geopolitical location. Since the 16th century, it has been a place for the meeting and exchange of diverse cultures. Nowadays, Antwerp is still, after Amsterdam, the Western European urban centre with the largest number of diferent nationalities – more or less 170, including a lourishing Jewish community, signiicant Moroccan, Chinese, Turkish and Eastern European groups, and several representatives from India and the Middle East. he declared task of the Museum aan de Stroom is to present the long history of exchanges between the city and the world, in order to highlight the factors and events that produced and enhanced the development of the port, the urban area, its population and peculiar cultural system. he institution thus promotes a glo-cal mission, recounting the stories “about Antwerp in the world and the world in Antwerp.” hough MAS does not label itself as a “city museum”, its features, contents and purposes allow its identiications as a contemporary city museum, proving how the encompassment and the role of this institution are currently questioned and constantly redeined both in theory and in practice. æ the city in the world–the world in the city he museum building is a 10-storey high tower, 194 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.64 — The MAS tower © Filip Dujardin, courtesy of MAS. img. 5.65 — The vertical boulevard, intended not only as a space for distribution but also for exhibitions and cultural activities © Filip Dujardin, courtesy of MAS. img. 5.66 — The panoramic terrace on the MAS rooftop © Filip Dujardin, courtesy of MAS. next page, img. 5.67 — The starting point of the vertical boulevard articulated around the escalator, characterised by transparent walls made of undulating glass panels, which allow a panoramic and everchanging view of the city © Filip Dujardin, courtesy of MAS. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 195 196 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) conceived via a combination of a showcase of the city’s history and a public space. he plan ensues from the aggregation of a large “black box” dedicated to a speciic themed exhibition and a vertical boulevard developed around the escalator, which is not merely a distribution area but also a living public place, where cultural activities and temporary installations take place. he extension of the museum’s heritage also triggered the idea of a “Visible Storage”, located on the second loor of the tower; designed as a sequence of open-view storerooms, this space is meant to preserve the objects that are not being exhibited and ofer the opportunity to look behind the scenes of a history of active collecting. he architectural layout of the diferent loors apparently remains constant–it is unaltered on loors 3 to 8, where the temporary and permanent exhibitions are displayed, and changes slightly on the lower and higher levels, where the services (reception, café, ateliers, oices, restaurant and a conference room) are concentrated. Nevertheless, every box is rotated through 90° compared with the previous one. his rotation, that has a signiicant inluence on the design of the spiral tower, may be perceived through the moving position of the escalators, and the evolution of the point of view on the city. he diferentiation between exhibition and distribution spaces – one avoids daylight, while the other is characterised by a transparent wall, made of six metre-high curtains of undulating glass–contributes to the individuation of two diferent realms. One is related to the past, the “black boxes” which immerse the visitor into a chapter of the city history, the other to the present, the boulevard projecting an ever-expanding and ever-changing view on the city, the port and the river. his pattern fosters a diferentiated visit model: the public may choose which of the exhibition areas to explore, and in which order, and thus have the option of viewing a part of the whole story or constructing a personal path. his possibility is also due to the organisation of contents via a thematic structure. he history of the city and its relationships with the world are presented in four permanent exhibitions, “Display of Power”, “Metropolis”, “World Port” and “Life and Death”, with the support of major and minor temporary exhibitions. Visitors could even decide not to enter the exhibition boxes and remain in the public space, which is freely accessible until 10 pm. he MAS boulevard, which culminates in the panoramic terrace on the 60-metre high rooftop, is indeed meant to be a lively public space and a reference point for the cultural life of Antwerp. he connection with the city develops at diferent levels, since the museum operates beyond its walls through the construction of physical, symbolic and institutional relationships. It invades the urban surroundings with the square – characterized by a mosaic loor designed by Luc Tuymans, who reproduced a Dead Skull from an old plaque on the façade of the Cathedral of Our Lady, thus evoking a connection between a Golden Age and a contemporary Antwerp icon – and the pavilions at the foot of the building, where public events and open air exhibitions take place. It manages an outdoor collection, composed of sixteen cranes located near the Scheldt quay (declared listed monuments in 2002), representing the incredibly rapid technological developments in port activities over the last century. It contributes to the organisation of further collections across the city. It enhances cooperation with other local institutions (he Flemish Literature Archive, the City Conservation Library, the History Department of the University of Antwerp). Furthermore, MAS is taking part in the history of the city itself. he spiral tower has become a landmark in the urban context – contributing to the requaliication of the image of the Het Eilandje District, Antwerp’s old port area, which is currently undergoing a signiicant renovation, and adding value to the north-south cultural axis that connects the area with the inner city, linking several “cultural stepping stones” – as well as an icon within the cultural scene. Not only is it recognized as a dynamic meeting place and the catalyser of a rich cultural programme, but it has also contributed to a general regeneration programme conceived at the end of the 20th century, when Antwerp (like other cities in Flanders) was associated with degeneration, cohabitation problems and criminality. he latter were defeated via new urban development, the realization of major infrastructural and cultural works (including the Court designed by Richard Rogers and the Red Line Star Memorial) and the enhancement of innovative cultural poli- European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 197 cies, fostering social cohesion between people with diferent backgrounds through cultural activities and promoting mutual understanding and intercultural dialogue through education. he presentation of the city’s history through transversal thematic investigations, rather than a chronological narration, allows exploration of the multi-layered traces of these exchanges and the complex contributions of the commercial, social and cultural lows to the local identity that are illustrated by the heterogeneous integrated collections (combining pre-Columbian art, ethnology, maritime heritage, etc.). he “Display of Power” illustrates the objects, the symbols and the stories representing the diferent forms of prestige, domination and control that have inluenced the history of Antwerp – from the image of the various rulers during the Dutch Revolt, to the notion of rank that has always characterised relationships in Japan, from the prestige of African rulers from the 16th to the 19th century, to a collection of Indonesian weapons from the colonial period. he four sections are displayed around four pavilions – in order, an upright dome over a golden cross, a dome over a perfect red-painted square, a suspended dome with luorescent orange recesses, and a temple designed by Maori artist, George Nuku, presenting its vision of Polynesian heritage in Western museums. he pavilions are equal in size but not in shape, with exterior walls adorned with portraits of the respective rulers. he representation of Power, which has been a crucial issue in the development of such an economically and politically alluring city, depicts the contacts (and conlicts) among Antwerp and the world, highlighting exchanges but also denouncing abuses and misunderstandings (including those fostered by the colonial museums). he section dedicated to the “Metropolis” illustrates the evolution of the port city, highlighting its multicultural identity. By exploring its past as a world-class mercantile centre, and its contemporary development through the efects of its international kudos, migration lows and globalised culture, the exhibition attempts to analyse the relationships between “Here and Elsewhere”, starting from the pictures and posters of the 1894 World Fair, where the colonial heritage was exhibited as an exotic trophy, emphasizing the mysterious nature of these far-away cultures, and ending with the photos by Karin Borghouts, illustrating the contemporary “Multicoloured City”, where the local population is characterised by the assimilation of an intercultural composition. he exhibition space is articulated through a sequence of rooms circumscribed by a transparent wooden construction, supporting a variety of city portraits and simulating the layout of a traditional museum, but providing a more lexible and reversible architectural solution. he exhibition presenting Antwerp as a “World Port” explores the growth of the small settlement into one of the largest international hubs, emphasising the role of the city as a crossroads and meeting place, and illustrating the development of intercultural connections, especially through the contacts with Belgium’s former colonies. he undivided exhibition space, whose vast dimensions bring the visitor face-to-face with the enormous scale of the port area, displays various documents recounting the port’s expansion, trade and shipping, and the people involved in it. he “Life and Death” theme explores the global religious and philosophical diversity within existential meanings, from the rituals of ancient Egypt to the perception of ancestors in Africa, from death as life in Melanesia, to rebirth in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, and inally to eternal life promised in the three religions of he Book. he exhibition highlights diferences as well as common beliefs about life and death in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. he presentation of the variegated and dynamic identity of Antwerp is not only focused on its past. he museum uses the history of, and the traces arising from, international connections and exchanges to tell new stories, to depict the present and to envision the future. he ever-changing development of the city is relected in the enhancement of semi-permanent display strategies, based on annual revisions of the settings and the objects selected (also related to a collection turn-over project) and on the implementation of minor temporary installations within the permanent exhibition areas. he constant revisions of proposed content, 198 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.68 — Vertical section of the tower, highlighting the spiral development of the vertical boulevard developed around the escalator © Neutelings Riedijk Architects. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 199 img. 5.70 — The gallery dedicated to the permanent exhibition illustrating the “Life and Death. On Men and Gods,” displayed on the seventh and eighth floors © Filip Dujardin, courtesy of MAS. img. 5.71 — The gallery dedicated to the permanent exhibition illustrating the “World Port. On Trade and Shipping,” displayed on the sixth floor © Jeroen Verrecht, courtesy of MAS. img. 5.69 — Plan of the fifth floor, illustrating the typical layout of the exhibition areas © Neutelings Riedijk Architects. img. 5.72 — The gallery dedicated to the permanent exhibition illustrating the “Metropolis. On here and elsewhere,” displayed on the fifth floor © Jeroen Verrecht, courtesy of MAS. 200 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.73 — The gallery dedicated to the permanent exhibition illustrating the “Display of Power. On Prestige and Symbols,” displayed on the fourth floor © Filip Dujardin, courtesy of MAS. img. 5.74 — The temporary exhibition “Masterpieces in the MAS. Five Centuries of Images in Antwerp”, displayed from May 2011 to December 2012 in the second floor gallery © Filip Dujardin, courtesy of MAS. img. 5.75 — The Visible Storage, providing the visitors with a rare opportunity to look behind the scenes of the museum © Filip Dujardin, courtesy of MAS. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 201 which is also encouraged by the assignment of an entire loor to temporary exhibitions and by the frequent renovation of the artworks displayed in the public boulevard, allow the Museum aan de Stroom to include the ongoing history of Antwerp and to play an active role in the promotion of the local contemporary heritage. he attempt to enhance the presentation of the city through an up-to-date vision is also fostered by the integration of diferent “voices” in the displayed narration. his strategy is enhanced through innovative activities and tools that are conceived to encourage the involvement of a diversiied audience, that is, a plurality of the population representatives, by inviting them to actively contribute to the conceptualization and installation of the displays – for example, the museum is developing new projects to potentiate the participation of young citizens, such as the “MAS in Young Hands” project (also supported by the European Youth Capital programme held in Antwerp in 2011), which allows a group of teenagers to contribute to the deinition of some exhibitions, to experience interactions with artists and curators, to add objects to the collection, etc. – or by implementing special temporary exhibitions that are not meant to present the local history, but rather to explore the diferent cultural references that are present in the city (because of the migrant communities) and which have contributed to its development – the section dedicated to the “Metropolis” is currently closed by a room dedicated to “Home Call”, an installation curated by anthropologist Ann Cassiman, describing the cycle of life and death of the Kasena, the population of northern Ghana who represent a signiicant part of the people living in Antwerp (the city’s second biggest African group after the Moroccan one): through eloquent photographic and video documents, the exhibition juxtaposes the presentation of family homes in Ghana with the lives of the Ghanaians who migrated to Belgium, highlighting ancestral traditions, a sense of belonging and cultural diferences, and illustrating the efects of globalization on the material and immaterial cultural settings. By presenting the local history through the lens of the history of world cultures, emphasising the role of diversity that has always contributed to the development of the city and highlighting the exchanges and the connections between objects, people and ideas, the Museum aan de Stroom represents a relevant instrument contributing to an inclusive deinition of the complex local identity, enabling individuals and groups to gain recognition, enhancing citizenship, and thus reducing social tensions and fostering intercultural dialogue. Elena Montanari æ references Neutelings, Willem Jan, and Michiel Riedijk. 2005. Neutelings Riedijk Architects. At Work. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Ruyters, Marc. 2010. MAS and “Dead Skull” by Willem Jan Neutelings and Luc Tuymans. Last accessed December 5, 2012. http://www.mas.be/docs/Stad/Bedrijven/Cultuur_sport_recreatie/CS_Musea/MAS/MAS_Interview%20Neutelings%20and%20Tuymans.pdf. Ruyters, Marc. 2012. “Conversation with Cart Depauw, Director of the MAS in Antwerp.” (H) ART magazine. Last accessed on November 5. http://www.kunsthart.org/nl/21/35/gesprek-metcarl-depauw-directeur-van-het-mas-in-antwerpen.aspx. Schramme, Annick. 2010. Museums and Local Governments: Sustainable Partnership and Development. he case of the city of Antwerp. Last accessed November 5, 2012. http://www.encatc.org/cultmanagement-city/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ Annick_Schramme_CitiesSustainability.pdf. Van Gerrewey, Christophe. 2010. “An Architecture of Distraction.” OASE Journal for Architecture 81: 111-120. Last accessed November 5, 2012. http://oase.tudelft.nl/article/view/81111. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 203 202 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Ortsgespräche. stadt–migration–geschichte. Vom halleschen zum Frankfurter tor Local chats. city–migration–history: from hallesches to frankfurter tor. Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum, Berlin, Germany 2012 he Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum documents the history of this borough of Berlin, formed in 2001 by merging the former East Berlin borough of Friedrichshain and the former West Berlin borough of Kreuzberg, two of the most dynamic, culturally lively and multicultural district of the city. he museum has been created after the merger of the two districts, joining the former museum of Friedrichshain (originated in the late 1980s) with the Kreuzberg Museum, conceived in 1978 as a local museum of urban development and social history, and opened in 1990. he Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum is hosted in the original premise of the the former Kreuzberger Museum, in a typical factory buildings in Adalbertstrasse completely restored and complemented by a new stair tower and lift and new facilities. In January 2012 a new permanent exhibition of the district museum of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg opened; it has been curated by Frauke Miera and Lorraine Bluche, and funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Capital Cultural Fond) within the project “Migration macht Geschichte” (“Migration makes History”). æ city history, people, places, memories img. 5.76 — FriedrichshainKreuzberg Museum, Berlin, Germany 2012, exhibition “Local chats. city–migration–history: from hallesches to frankfurter tor”. Photo by Ellen Röhner. Main objective was to overcome the dualism of ‘general’ history versus the history of the ‘others’ in the exhibition, and to create, instead, a space in which the recollections of migrants, their descendants and locals are interwoven with each other – complementing, contradicting or pre- sented side by side. Migration history was to be told as an integral component of urban history and what was shown to be understood as manyfaceted, many-voiced and discursive. In other words, the idea was to tell the history of a city district as the history of all its inhabitants – as a history of migrants, their descendants, locals and the recently immigrated: as an inclusive and multi-perspective city history. In order to put this idea into practice, we irst decided on a topographical approach. We made particular places in the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg into the main hubs or structuring elements of the exhibition. We assumed that the linking of urban development and migrational processes can be especially well shown at speciic places in the city. People meet at such places, they imprint and change these places in the course of decades and centuries. Diferent experiences and perceptions, common characteristics, conlicts and change come together there. he strength of this topographical approach lies in the fact that the various contributors speak on the same subject in each case – namely their recollections, their associations with certain places. he interviewees are not thereby reduced to certain real or ascribed attributes. Migrants and non-migrants alike have the chance to speak on equal terms as agents in city life. Secondly we involved members of the glocalcommunity1 in a variety of ways in the exhibi1 With the expression glocal community we mean the people, groups and organisations in the catchment area of a museum of urban history who should, or in the ideal case would be in communication or discourse with the museum: that is, regardless of social categories, education, ethnic or religious attribution, migrational background, European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 205 204 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.77 — FriedrichshainKreuzberg Museum, Berlin, Germany 2012, exhibition “Local chats. city– migration–history: from hallesches to frankfurter tor”. Photo by Ellen Röhner. img. 5.78 — FriedrichshainKreuzberg Museum, Berlin, Germany 2012, exhibition “Local chats. city– migration–history: from hallesches to frankfurter tor”. Photo by Ellen Röhner. img. 5.79 — FriedrichshainKreuzberg Museum, Berlin, Germany 2012, exhibition “Local chats. city– migration–history: from hallesches to frankfurter tor”. Photo by Ellen Röhner. tion and collection process. During the phase of exhibition preparation we sought and carried on dialogue with a large range of people who are politically, socially and culturally active in the district. At the beginning of the project we carried out a series of workshops which gave rise to an exhibition advisory board, which met every three months. In the workshops and the advisory board meetings we brought the concept and each further sequence of the main steps of our work up for discussion and developed these in dialogue with those involved. he places chosen for the exhibition were decided in this way, among other aspects. Furthermore, numerous Kreuzbergers and Friedrichshainers contributed their voices to the exhibition, particularly regarding more recent district history. Supported by our volunteer allies we conducted interviews with more than one hundred people which were added to the exhibition in the form of audio interviews and video interviews, quotations etc. In addition, some of the interview partners have contributed objects. Moreover, visitors have a variety of opportunities to leave their own traces or perspectives in the exhibition since its opening. Especially the opportunities for contributive participation2 during the running term symbolise the idea of the non-exclusion and discursiveness of story telling and the space created in the exhibition for reminiscence. Within the exhibition “local chats” we have laid the foundation for a completely new collection stock: an audio-archive of the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg is being created here currently to ofer place-related multiple perspectives, on everyday history.3 gender or sexual orientation, physical or intellectual abilities. 2 On the categories of participation see Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum, Santa Cruz, CA: Museum 2.0, 2010. We have described elsewhere our systematic approach to forms of participation as curators in our project “ortsgespräche“, cf. Lorraine Bluche and Frauke Miera, “’Geteilte’ Erinnerungsräume. Zur Vision eines Inklusiven Museums aus kuratorischer Sicht. Die Ausstellung „ortsgespräche“ im Kreuzberg Museum” in Partizipative Erinnerungsräume. Dialogische Wissensbildung in Museen und Ausstellungen, ed. Felix Ackermann et al. (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2013, forthc.). 3 The exhibition “local chats” extends over two floors. On the first floor six places are shown in their historical depth in detail and – in particular concerning the more recent history – the different perspectives of inhabitants on these places are presented. In this For this part of the project we asked about thirty local inhabitants to give us their personal city tours. We asked them for places in the district where they enjoy or dislike being, which have particularly inluenced them, and which they see as typical for the district. Every interview partner described 5-8 places in the district from their individual viewpoint. hese are everyday, personal stories about the irst lat, the irst German course, places of individual politicisation, about places of refuge or threat, about places of spare time pleasure and personal meetings, and stories in which events of overriding historical importance combine with subjective experience. While choosing interview partners – migrants and non-migrants – we consciously took care to illustrate not only a large range of local people, but also to allow people whose voices are not usually heard in a museum to have a chance to speak. So beyond the apparent norm those who speak here include the illegalised or undocumented, children, youngsters, old people, one deaf person, homosexuals and of course people with the most varied migrational backgrounds. Some of the interviews were carried out in German, some in the respective native languages of the interview partners. All interviews were transcribed, translated if necessary and afterwards cut in order to generate stories which relate to speciic places. Moreover, the stories were translated into English and recorded for listening. Altogether we have collected about 150 stories on about 120 places in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. In the exhibition the visitors and guests enter an oversized city map of the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, on which c. 120 numbered and multi-coloured raised spots each mark a place. One or more stories from our interview partners are concealed at each place. he visitors receive an iPod, specially programmed for this purpose, which leads them around the city map and at the same time makes the respective local stories audible, readable and visible, that is: at article we refer to the second floor. 206 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) each place you can hear the appropriate audiotrack, read the transcript of that track and look at current photographs. he multiplicity of perspectives on history and the city becomes clear in various ways. On the one hand, the visitors learn something about the varied, individual characters and biographies of those interviewed via the personal tours. On the other hand, the tours overlap at various points: here the visitors can hear several stories from diferent points of view relating to the same place. Taken as a whole, a sort of dense and yet at the same time diferentiated description of the district is created by its inhabitants. Frauke Miera and Lorraine Bluche img. 5.80 — Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum, Berlin, Germany 2012, exhibition “Local chats. city–migration– history.” Photo by Ellen Röhner. in the other page img. 5.81 — Exhibition “Turin Earth: Cities and new migrations”, Diffused Museum of Turin, 2009. Courtesy of Museo Diffuso della Resistenza della Deportazione della Guerra, Turin dei Diritti e della Libertà. æ Map and mapping a visual and conceptual tool he above mentioned exhibition triggers some relection on the potential role of recent experiments with geo-tagging and other approaches to personal and emotional mapping in city museums as a visual, metaphorical and cognitive tool that can provide city museums with an interesting ield for experimentation. Indeed, maps are inherently visual and cognitive tools, open to multiple interpretations and uses. hey are particularly suited to examining the history of people and places through the overlapping of diferent levels of analysis, content and meaning. Whether they are virtual or real, drawn on a museum wall or downloaded to a mobile phone, maps are, in fact, increasingly present in museums, in a variety of ways. A city map is used to visualise and browse the contents of MuseoTorino, the museum of the city of Turin launched in 2011. It deines itself as a “virtual museum with a real collection: the places of the city” and as a “participatory museum.” Citizens and visitors can add contents, according to the idea that since “the city is evergrowing and changing, its means of representa- European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 207 tion [i.e. the city museum] should change and evolve as well.”he museum itself consists of a web site, where over 2,000 places have been catalogued and visualised on a city map, using the most advanced database programs, such as web 3.0, semantic web, and the system of open linked data. It is possible to browse the map with several keywords or through diferent topics, and citizens and visitors can add information about places and contents, or add new places to the museum catalogue. Diferent kinds of maps—including an interactive instrument based on Google Earth and mind maps created by immigrants—were used to represent new city geographies, borders and nearness in the exhibition “Turin Earth: Cities and new migrations”, promoted by the Difused Museum of Turin in 2009 and aimed at encouraging relection on the social and cultural changes in the city caused by recent migrations, human rights and citizenship consciousness. A “walk-on-able” city map drawn on the loor of a room in the above mentioned exhibition at the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum structuring the exhibition’s contents. Historical and contemporary maps are also being included in the permanent displays of many city museums to enrich and contextualise the story they tell and the objects displayed, and to connect them to the historical and contemporary places of the city outside the museum. An interesting example is in the previously presented Ghent City Museum; here, an aerial photograph of the contemporary city welcomes the visitors as an introduction to the exploration of the city’s history starting from its present. In this room it is also possible to access the digital project “Views of Ghent” which allows an exploration of the city’s development over time, comparing diferent historical maps and views that depict how the city’s streets and buildings have changed in appearance and function over the centuries, telling the stories of places and people who lived and worked through the ages in the city, and ofering an in-depth exploration of related objects from the museum’s collection. Many other outstanding examples of the role of maps could be mentioned, some of which are based on the use of geo-blog to build sentimental and emotive maps of the city, such as the “Percorsi Emotivi” (Sentimental Journeys) project, a geo-tagged blog where members can express a thought, a suggestion, or a memory connected to a certain place. he blog is also included in the Bologna City History Museum with the aim of representing the ever-changing and growing identity of the city. In the inal room of the exhibition, there is a computer terminal to access the blog and an aerial photograph of the city, which is designed to be used for attaching comments to the city’s places, just as in the blog, but which functions mainly as a very interesting kind of visitors’ book. Maps have proved to be a valuable tool, not only to represent the complexity of contemporary reality, but also to investigate and read about it. In a city museum they can fulil several roles, including helping to connect and re-link people and places, contemporaneity and history, the museum and the city. Francesca Lanz 208 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 209 STAM - Stadsmuseum Gent Ghent City Museum, Ghent, Belgium 1928 (reopened in 2010) STAM, the new Ghent City Museum, opened its doors to the public on the 9th October 2010, but it has a much longer history. Its origins date back to 1823 when the Commission for Monuments and Cityscapes was formed in Ghent. Ten years later, the Commission initiated the founding of an archaeological museum, the ‘Musée Historique’. Members of the commission donated the irst pieces of the collection themselves, and other collectors soon followed suit. his resulted in a highly heterogeneous group of objects—charters, manuscripts, coins and medals, archaeological relics, glass and ceramics, paintings, sculptures, pictures of cityscapes, furniture, musical instruments, and so forth. Ghent was the only unifying factor; a large number of the objects illustrated public life in the city before 1800, which naturally attracted the interest of the city council. In 1884, the museum was given its own building and curator and opened up to the public. In the early 20th Century, the city council decided to give the museum a new home in Bijloke Abbey, but these plans were considerably delayed by the First World War. he Bijloke Archaeological Museum was inally opened in 1928. he idea of setting up a new, contemporary city museum in Bijloke Abbey emerged in the late 1990s. By 1997, operations at Bijloke Archaeological Museum had been severely scaled down. A new purpose was sought for the building and its contents. In 2000, Gent Cultuurstad (Ghent Heritage Unit) was founded. One of its main tasks was to create a new city museum. Bijloke Museum closed its doors for the last time on the 11th September 2005 and the new museum opened in 2010. img. 5.82 — STAM Stadsmuseum Gent, Museum Hall © PhileDeprez, courtesy of STAM. he STAM museum is located on the Bijloke site, a place closely linked to the history of Ghent. An inirmary was located here for over 750 years. his function ended in the early 1980s when, over the next few years, the site was transformed into a venue for cultural activities. Today, this includes the Bijloke Music Centre and art classes organised by Ghent University College. he opening of STAM was the inal phase in this re-purposing of the site. he permanent exhibition circuit is located in Bijloke Abbey, the oldest parts of which date from the 14th century and a new wing designed by the city’s architect Koen Van Nieuwenhuyse, has been built; it hosts the museum’s entrance, the reception, the museum café, a terrace and the introduction space. During the planning stage for the new museum, several critical decisions had to be made regarding how the permanent collection would be displayed. STAM tells the story of Ghent chronologically but the story begins in the city of today; we move from the present to the past and then back to the present. For STAM, the city itself is its real treasure. he museum is conceived as a gateway to Ghent and aims at encouraging visitors to go out and discover the city for themselves, to form a new understanding of it. Wherever possible, the story is related through original objects and documents. his was—and is—only made feasible through working closely with other heritage institutions in Ghent and further aield. It was decided at an early stage that the permanent collection would be complemented by interactive multimedia displays, thereby increasing visitor involvement in the museum. A special role has been devoted to temporary exhibitions. æ city museums and contemporary urbanism: temporary exhibitions at stam STAM’s permanent exhibition takes the form of a chronological circuit that tells the story of Ghent. For its temporary exhibitions, it was decided to take a very diferent approach. STAM sets out to expand its scope as a dynamic city 210 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.83 — Museum Assonometry. The renovation project included the design of the museum’s entrance and the construction of a new building. This new wing hosts the museum’s hall including facilities as the ticket office, the bookshop, and the cafe. At the first floor a balcony overlooking the entrance and the double-high bookshop, leads to a new exhibition space (the introductory room) and, through a glassed gangway, links the new wing with the exhibition itinerary within the abbey. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 211 museum devoted to Ghent by exploring the general theme of urbanisation past and present. In a world where over half of the population lives in cities, it is vital to increase understanding of the growth, development and functioning of urban centres. A quick look at recent temporary exhibitions shows how the topic has been addressed in very diverse ways since the opening of STAM. Ghent may be included at times, but not necessarily. he opening exhibition Belichte stad (Enlightened City, 9 October 2010 – 1 May 2011) used documents, diaries, scale models, paintings, photographs and installations to explore how light and darkness inluenced the development of the city and urban society. STAM hosted two temporary exhibitions in 2012: Edmond Sacré and he Graveyard. hese had utterly diferent subject matters and approaches to their subjects, which perfectly illustrates STAM’s commitment to a broad spectrum of topics and media. img. 5.84 — Entrance to STAM © Phile Deprez. Edmond Sacré, Portrait of a City (18 November 2011 – 22 April 2012) showed the work of the multifaceted Ghent photographer Edmond Sacré. Sacré photographed the city around 1900, when the historic centre underwent a huge metamorphosis and the modern city of Ghent emerged. His photographs have had a major inluence on how people perceive the Ghent of that period. For example, Sacré was the irst to photograph the three historic towers of Ghent from the angle that has become so familiar to us and that is used to this day as the classic image of the city in tourist brochures. he project he Graveyard. Cities on the Edge (17 May 2012 – 4 November 2012) by architect/ artist Filip Berte links into this theme. Berte concentrated his project on three cities on the geographic fringes of Europe: Melilla, Tbilisi and Chișinău. he fourth city featured, Brussels, plays the role of symbolic landing place in Europe. Berte spent a long time in the four cities, speaking with asylum seekers, refugees, the homeless, border guards and so on. he project thus focuses on the role of cities in an era of migration, refugee inluxes and globalisation. In he Graveyard, Melilla, a Spanish enclave in Morocco, symbolises the outermost southern border of Europe. Together with Ceuta, another Spanish enclave, Melilla is a piece of Europe on the African continent. his relatively small city of approximately 76,000 inhabitants exerts a strong pull on refugees, adventurers and migrant candidates hoping for a better life in Europe. he city, and by extension Europe, is separated from the rest of the African continent by massive iron barriers. In 2005, this ‘wall’ was besieged at various times, resulting in reinforced border security. Chișinău is the capital of Moldova, a country with 3.6 million inhabitants and one of the poorest countries in Europe. his former Soviet republic remains in an unstable state of transition and reform. Insecurity is partly due to the unresolved conlict on its territory concerning the breakaway region of Transnistria. his area was part of the former Soviet Republic of Moldova, but in 1991 refused to declare itself independent along with Moldova. Transnistria is only recognised by a few other dissident and unrecognised states, such as Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed region between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Tbilisi is the capital of Georgia, also a former Soviet republic, and home to 4.5 million souls. he key concepts of transition and transformation inform Filip Berte’s approach to this city. Georgia is another state in a fragile transitional period. Two unresolved conlicts, in the dissident regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, have left many refugees living in the former Soviet hotels, Abkhazeti and Amirani. Following the implosion of the Soviet Union and the iercely fought civil wars around Abkhazia (1993 and 2008) and South Ossetia (1991-1992 and 2008), hotels and abandoned buildings were occupied by groups of refugees and IDPs (internally displaced persons). he impossibility, to date, of returning to their native countries has led to these temporary refuges gradually becoming permanent homes for these people. 212 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.85 — Ground Floor of Ghent City Museum. Courtesy of STAM. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 213 214 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) img. 5.86 — STAM, Photo of the Middle Ages exhibition room © Phile Deprez. The permanent exhibition is chronological in lay-out, which uses a combination of historical documents, orginal objects, multimedia contents and interactive devices. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 215 img. 5.89 — Insolation simulator at the Enlightened City exhibition © Phile Deprez. img. 5.87 — The permanent exhibition © Phile Deprez. img. 5.90 — Edmond Sacré, Portrait of a City © Phile Deprez. img. 5.88 — The use of ICT in the permanent exhibition © Phile Deprez. img. 5.91 — Tbilisi waiting room © Phile Deprez. 216 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 217 img. 5.92 — Photographic installation by Filip Berte Photo of Chisinau, Ulmu, Cultural Centre © Phile Deprez. img. 5.94 — The courtyard of the convent © Phile Deprez. img. 5.93 — Waiting room in The Graveyard © Phile Deprez. img. 5.95 — Installation with film of Chisinau © Phile Deprez. European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 219 218 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Brussels, in many respects the European capital, occupies a special place in he Graveyard. he city not only functions as the European capital but as a symbolic landing place in Europe. With its large numbers of homeless and shelterless people, asylum seekers, would-be migrants and refugees, it represents the social fringes of European society. By introducing this perspective, the link between Brussels and cities such as Mellilla, Tbilisi and Chișinău is made perfectly clear. he Graveyard is a highly personal art installation that makes use of urban environments (images and sounds). he phenomenon of urbanisation is approached from an artistic, architectural perspective in order to generate a discussion about this topical issue. he architectural is infused into his work. In the ilm Melilla, the barrier wall between Europe and Africa plays a pivotal role. A wall is the most basic element of a house, but here the wall determines who belongs in Europe and who does not (Koen Van Synghel). he exhibition at STAM forms part of Filip Berte’s larger project Eutopia, which he began in 2006, and which is also an architectural concept. he title is a contraction of ‘utopia’ and ‘Europe’.he project’s full name is he House of Eutopia. As the title implies, Europe is the working area for a project that interprets its subject’s diverse geographical, political, historical and cultural background from a primarily intuitive perspective. he inal stage will involve the construction of a European house in a symbolic setting, that is, the European Quarter in Brussels. he house will consist of ive installations, each telling a diferent tale and focusing on life in the Europe of today; it relects on notions of place, territory and identity. he rooms are mobile and can travel to exhibitions throughout Europe. he irst two rooms of the House (Protected Landscape and Collective Memory Mass Grave) have already been shown several times. he third room, he Graveyard, is in the garden of the House and was on show to the public for the irst time at STAM. Berte is currently in Berlin working on the fourth room: he Blue Room. he House of Eutopia project will be completed by the summer of 2013. æ setting up the graveyard by filip bette in stam In comparison with most other museums, where the artist has an ‘empty box’ at his or her disposal, the STAM exhibition spaces are relatively small (the majority approximately 50 m²) and rather imposing. here are nine spaces around a cloister that are sometimes accessed from the corridor, but which can also be reached from an adjoining room. here are many prominent, original features, such as ireplaces and ornate plaster-work on the ceilings. When it came to setting up he Graveyard in STAM, Filip Berte abandoned the usual circuit layout. Where other exhibitions had followed a logical, clockwise circuit around the cloister, Berte chose to close of parts of it to make this impossible. Upon arrival, the visitor was immediately obliged to go outside and cross the central courtyard to where the exhibition began. A panel with an introductory text stood in the open air and visitors experienced a surround soundscape of noises from the four cities. he contrast between ‘inside and outside (Europe)’ repeatedly occurs in Berte’s work, and here it was extended to the layout. Each city had a separate room devoted to it where a ilm was projected. To enter the room, the visitor had to pass through a waiting room where viewing boxes with photographs and matching soundscapes were set up. For every two cities there was one waiting room. he visitor could choose when to visit each city; there was no mapped-out route or chronological order for visiting the exhibition. Starting times for the ilms were timed so that the visitor had plenty of time to move from one room to another without missing the beginning. he exhibition also included a room with graphic works and a viewing box. here were two desks, one where the visitor could consult Filip Berte’s blog and the other with a ilm of Koen Van Synghel, a renowned architecture critic, giving his interpretation of he Graveyard. Berte did not hide the exhibition spaces behind panels or sheets. One could enjoy the architectural details of each room yet without these features impinging on the exhibition. Some altera- tions were made, with the placing of some walls and door frames, but the exhibition consisted mainly of free-standing elements. Everything was built in such a way as to leave the evidence of construction and assembly visible. he concept of Eutopia and he Graveyard were not developed with the spaces at STAM in mind. he artist rose to the challenge of itting his story into a 17th-century building by making a few discreet and thoughtful modiications. æ why host the graveyard in a city museum? It could be asked if an exhibition such as he Graveyard really belongs in a city museum. It is certainly not as straightforward a subject as the photographs of Edmond Sacré. Filip Berte trained as an architect. His work shows a spatial approach to topics. here are no spoken words in his ilms – no testimonies, interviews or eyewitness accounts. What you do see are the buildings in which people live, the interiors of small apartments, crowded or empty public spaces and so forth. he photographs displayed in the exhibition had the same aesthetic; there was hardly a soul to be seen. Soundtracks accompanied the ilms and photographs. Sound artist Ruben Nachtergaele, who accompanied Berte on his travels, made ield recordings and then transformed them into soundtracks for the ilms and soundscapes for the photographs. Berte took four cities as the starting point for his project, a line of approach that immediately interested STAM. By bringing together images and sounds from these cities in an ingenious way, Berte draws the audience into the experience and, as one journalist put it, ‘ills your head with questions about the sense and the non-sense of Europe, about trends in the world and what, if any, the solutions may be.’ (Griet op de Beeck in De Morgen). In many respects, these two exhibitions are the complete opposite of each other. While Sacré’s consisted of original period documents that, at times, provide a nostalgic image of Ghent, he Graveyard cast its gaze further aield, with artistic and architectural images of other cities employed to tell a troubling story. But what they have in common its the STAM mandate for temporary exhibitions – the city in the broadest sense of the word. Maria De Waele and Lars De Jaegher Index of Authors European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 225 Index of Editors and Authors Luca Basso Peressut Luca Basso Peressut, Architect, PhD in Architectural Composition (IUAV, Istituto Universitario di Architettura, Venezia), he is Full Professor of Interior Architecture, Exhibition Design and Museography at the Politecnico di Milano, and member of the Academic Board of PhD in “Architecture of Interiors.” He is co-founder and director of the Level II Master course “IDEA in Exhibition Design.” He is Director of the International Workshop of Museography and Archaeology “Villa Adriana-Premio Piranesi” held in Tivoli and Rome since 2003. He is member of the Scientii c Committee for the National Conference of Interiors 2005, 2007 and 2010, and member of the Scientiic Board and co-organizer of the international conferences IFW-Interiors Forum World. He is member of the Scientiic Board of Museography of Ediir Publisher and consultant for the architectural magazine Area since 1997. Francesca Lanz Francesca Lanz holds a PhD in Interior Architecture and Exhibition Design and a MS in Architecture. Since 2006 she has been collaborating to several research projects and teaching activities teaming up with diferent departments of the Politecnico. Since 2009 she’s Temporary Professor in interior design at the School of Architecture and Society of Po- litecnico di Milano, and a post-doc researcher in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies where currently collaborates to the EU funded project MeLa serving as Assistant Project Coordinator, Dissemination Manager and appointed researcher. Gennaro Postiglione Gennaro Postiglione is Associate Professor of Interior Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano. Researches focus mainly on domestic interiors (questioning relations among culture of dwelling, domestic architecture and modernity), on museography and on preserving and difusing collective memory and cultural identity (connecting the museographic issues with the domestic ambit). In this ield he carried out several research projects amongst wich: “he Atlantic Wall Linear Museum”, “Abarchive – archivio borghi abbandonati”, “One-hundred houses for one-hundred architects of the XX century”. Besides, he has a speciic interest in the architecture of Nordic countries. From 2004, he is promoter of PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE @ POLIMI, an interdisciplinary research & operative group that puts the resources of Architecture in the service of the Public Interest and from 2006 is promoter of IFW-Interior Forum World , an academic network and a web platform for research edited by the PhD in Interiors at POLIMI. 226 — European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Lorraine Bluche Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc ut enim erat, quis rhoncus tortor. Praesent quis sodales neque. Integer suscipit leo a nisi vehicula eu vestibulum ante sagittis. Etiam vel lacus tellus, eget iaculis nulla. Nullam vel ante non odio pulvinar interdum eget id nunc. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec tempor mollis lorem, non mollis enim auctor vitae. Maecenas rutrum, tortor nec adipiscing aliquam, nibh dolor laoreet risus, quis venenatis justo sapien id nisi. Aenean erat libero, auctor et feugiat a, feugiat id dolor. Nullam eget libero mauris, id ullamcorper mauris. Morbi at sapien nunc, in convallis sapien. Maecenas luctus vestibulum nulla ut congue. Nullam tortor lacus, pulvinar non accumsan bibendum. dia projects. Previously, he worked as a spatial planner at the town and country planning department of the Provincial Government of West-Flanders, as a cultural technologist in the Ename Centre for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation and as a multimedia designer at Visual Dimension. Maria De Waele Dr. Maria De Waele studied contemporary history at the University of Ghent. She also worked for several years at this university, as a researcher and later as an assistantprofessor, specializing at irst in foreign and international policy. She joined the STAMteam in 2005, and worked extensively a.o. on the development of the multimedia application ‘Views on Ghent’. Anna Chiara Cimoli Anna Chiara Cimoli graduated in History of Art from Università Statale in Milano, and specialized in Museology at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. She holds a PhD in History of Architecture and Town Planning from Politecnico di Torino. After partecipating to the scientiic research about History of Architecture at Politecnico di Milano, she was curator assistant at Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation in Milan. She was editorial coordinator at FMR-Art, where she cooperated to the publication of the FMR journal. Jan Gerchow Her research work also focuses on didactics in Museums; she plans and leads intercultural workshops within Museo del 900 in Milan. She currently is integrating didactic activities and the scientiic research within the theme dealing with exhibitions. Jan Gerchow is a German historian and director of the Historical Museum Frankfurt. He studied history, German language and philosophy at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg and the University of Durham. In 1984 he received his doctorate in Freiburg on the memorial tradition of the Anglo-Saxons. Between 1985 and 1990 Gerchow worked at the Freiburg Chair of Medieval History I, as a research assistant. In 1990 he moved to the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen , where he served until 1993 as a research consultant. In 1993 he took the position as head of the Department of History of the Middle Ages and the early modern period on Ruhrlandmuseum food. Since April 2005 Gerchow is director of the Historical Museum of the City of Frankfurt. Lars De Jaegher Frauke Miera Lars De Jaegher studied history and environmental planning at the University of Ghent. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc ut enim erat, quis rhoncus tortor. Praesent quis sodales neque. Integer suscipit leo a nisi vehicula eu vestibulum ante sagittis. Etiam vel lacus tellus, eget iaculis nulla. He joined STAM in 2009 focusing on urban history, city development and also multime- European Museum in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) — 227 Nullam vel ante non odio pulvinar interdum eget id nunc. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec tempor mollis lorem, non mollis enim auctor vitae. Maecenas rutrum, tortor nec adipiscing aliquam, nibh dolor laoreet risus, quis venenatis justo sapien id nisi. Aenean erat libero, auctor et feugiat a, feugiat id dolor. Nullam eget libero mauris, id ullamcorper mauris. Morbi at sapien nunc, in convallis sapien. Maecenas luctus vestibulum nulla ut congue. Nullam tortor lacus, pulvinar non accumsan bibendum. Elena Montanari Elena Montanari is architect and Ph.D. in Interior Architecture and Exhibition Design. She graduated from Politecnico di Milano, where she is currently Temporary Professor of Interior Design at the School of Architecture and Society, and Research Fellow at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU). Since 2005, she has been collaborating to didactic activities and contributing to various national and international research projects, developing a versatile, multi-scaled and interdisciplinary approach to the investigation of diferent ields. MeLa* - European Museums in an age of migrations Research Fields: RF01: Museums & Identity in History and Contemporaneity examines the historical and contemporary relationships between museums, places and identities in Europe and the efects of migrations on museum practices. RF02: Cultural Memory, Migrating Modernity and Museum Practices transforms the question of memory into an unfolding cultural and historical problematic, in order to promote new critical and practical perspectives. RF03: Network of Museums, Libraries and Public Cultural Institutions investigates coordination strategies between museums, libraries and public cultural institutions in relation to European cultural and scientiic heritage, migration and integration. RF04: Curatorial and Artistic Research explores the work of artists and curators on and with issues of migration, as well as the role of museums and galleries exhibiting this work and disseminating knowledge. RF05: Exhibition Design, Technology of Representation and Experimental Actions investigates and experiments innovative communication tools, ICT potentialities, user centred approaches, and the role of architecture and design for the contemporary museum. RF06: Envisioning 21st Century Museums fosters theoretical, methodological and operative contributions to the interpretation of diversities and commonalities within European cultural heritage, and proposes enhanced practices for the mission and design of museums in the contemporary multicultural society. Partners and principal investigators: Luca Basso Peressut (Project Coordinator), Gennaro Postiglione, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Marco Sacco, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy Bartomeu Mari, MACBA - Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain Fabienne Galangau, Laurence Isnard, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, France Mark Nash, Mela Davila, he Royal College of Art, United Kingdom Perla Innocenti, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom Jamie Allen, Jacob Back, Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, Denmark Christopher Whitehead, Rhiannon Mason, Newcastle University, United Kingdom Iain Chambers, l’Orientale, University of Naples, Italy European Museums in the 21st Century: setting the framework (vol 2) Published by Politecnico di Milano © February 2013, The Authors