Museums and the Citizenship of Hate The Michael Volkerling Memorial Lecture 2021

Abstract

This article asks if and how national museums today, which have in recent decades adopted a remit for social rights activism, have an obligation to engage with a broad spectrum of political participation and expression, including contemporary forms of far-right extremism and white grievance politics. How can museums engage with and respond meaningfully to the upsurge in acts of violence perpetrated in the name of structural, collective, and personal ideologies based on hate, xenophobia, and racism? Responding to these questions requires museums to move beyond acts of symbolic national commemoration and grapple with the human expressions and experiences of hate. Drawing on current museum scholarship and practice that is increasingly open to embracing research into studies of emotion and affect, as well as activism and its shifting narratives, the article concludes that the task of curatorial activism should be focused on effecting processes of structural—internal, institutional—change. Furthermore, this process can lead to the understanding that our forms of being human are not just related to our interpersonal interactions in the private sphere but also influence all aspects of civic and institutional life—including the ones that raise difficult questions or unpalatable truths about who we are, individually, and as citizens of the worlds to which we contribute.