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Museums as a public space of belonging?

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Chapter 1
Museums as a public space of
belonging?
Negotiating dialectics of purpose, presentation,
and participation
Susannah Eckersley
Introduction
The chapter addresses the idea that the museum is a public space (Benhabib,
1992) in the dual sense of both being symbolically representative as an institu-
tion of the demos and acting as a place where contrasting and varied concepts of
belonging may be negotiated and tried out. The chapter examines how the dia-
lectic between belonging and dierence described by Benhabib plays out in the
political and public sphere of museums that address topics of belonging. Using
exhibition and display analyses, interviews, and observations in museums across
Germany addressing topics of migration, refugees, race, and discrimination, the
chapter is structured around three key elements of such museum work, bringing
qualitative empirical data to bear on theoretical and conceptual questions con-
cerning the notion of belonging and dierence in contemporary European society
– in particular, theories of democracy and public space, of contact and encoun-
ter, and of transformative actions. In doing so, it highlights the power dynamics
at play in the attempts of museum actors to transform the public space of the
museum which they represent into a site for staging and examining claims of
belonging. The analysis draws outs the layered ways in which museums address
belonging: rstly, through museum professionals’ understanding of the role of
museums; secondly, through the display strategies chosen by them for museum
exhibitions; and thirdly, through the institutional practices used by them to engage
with specic communities.
Understanding what a museum is, or is expected to be, is at the core of under-
standing how and why museum practices are the way they are. While many muse-
ums in Germany have taken up the topic of migration following the 2015 European
migration “crisis”, and in relation to issues of racism and anti-Semitism, how
museum work might connect to belonging has not been analyzed. By identifying
patterns in museum professionals’ work to address issues of belonging through
the museum as a public space, the chapter raises questions about the politics
and power inherent within museums. How are dierent political and social ide-
als enacted, reinforced, or disrupted through regimes of control over collective
places? Collective places which “are constructions that disguise the ssures, the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003191698-4
18 Susannah Eckersley
losses, the absences, the borders within them” (Anthias, 2009, p.8). It concludes
that while museum actors navigate a boundary between exercising centralized
power (performative action) and oering dispersed power (transformative action),
ultimately both options highlight the continued signicance of the museum as a
public space of control resting on a paradigm of dierence.
Public space, museums, and belonging in Germany
Benhabib breaks down the problematic philosophy of “public space” into three
main strands, linked to ideas of Arendt’s agonistic and associational delinea-
tions of public space; the liberal and “legalistic model of public space” resting
on a combination of public dialogue and neutrality; and Habermas’ principle of
Öentlichkeit as a discursive public space relying on participation (Benhabib,
1992, pp.90–107). This is helpful in considering the at-times contradictory, multi-
layered dialectic between ideas of “public space” as they occur and are enacted
within a single form of institutional space – the museum. The museum (and the
exhibition, a microcosm of the museum) is understood as a public space in both
the representative physical sense and the discursive sense. Firstly, the museum is
an institution which represents “the public”, as a place invested with authority and
trust (over objects, narratives, and representations of the past), and as a site, which
is open to the public to visit. Secondly, the museum may increasingly be seen as
a space where ideas are discussed, where potentially opposing views of the world
may be aired and tested out discursively and creatively.
The international move to redene museums (Weil, 1999; ICOM, 2018, 2019;
Fraser, 2019; Kreps, 2020) by the International Council of Museums (ICOM)
is particularly contested within German museum circles (see ICOM Germany,
2020). Some German museum professionals see the traditional roles of collect-
ing, researching, and sharing knowledge as being at risk from “new” priorities
of participation, social justice, and activism (Coee, 2008; Lynch, 2013; Lynch
and Alberti, 2010; Sandell, 1998; Janes and Sandell, 2019). Dicult histories
(Macdonald, 2009) of belonging – migration, refugees, colonialism, racism – are
frequent topics within contemporary museum work, indicating their importance
to museum actors and the public. Through exhibitions and activities that pro-
ject inclusive political ideals of belonging and “a culture of welcome”, certain
museums may be perceived as actively aiming to become “collective places con-
structed by imaginings of belonging” (Anthias, 2009, p.8).
Despite dynamism in the perception of museum roles, how and why museums
may act as public spaces of belonging has not been addressed. Critical analysis
has focused mainly on individual aspects – notably migration and colonialism
(Whitehead, Eckersley, and Mason, 2012; Whitehead et al., 2015; Chambers et
al., 2016; Bock and Macdonald, 2019) – without connecting them to wider issues
of belonging or public space. While the uidity and exibility of belonging can be
challenging for research (Lähdesmäki et al., 2016), within everyday use it argu-
ably oers a frame with more “universal” public appeal than individual topics
Museums as a public space of belonging? 19
such as race or refugees. The trend for community participation in museums – the
“participatory turn” aiming to counteract previous hegemonic structures (see
Mygind, Hällmann, and Bentsen, 2015; Lynch and Alberti, 2010; Lynch, 2013),
potentially shifts the “boundaries of belonging” (Yuval-Davis, 2006; Anthias,
2013) presented in or upheld by museums. The ways that museum professionals
use such strategies to empower or educate (see Morse, 2018; Walton et al., 2016)
could lead to a critical rethinking of museums as public spaces of belonging.
Most of the contemporary public discourses of belonging and public space
in Germany focus on migration and the 2015 “refugee crisis”, racial and post-
colonial injustice, and populist and far-right nationalism (particularly following
the 2019 and 2020 attacks in Halle and Hanau). German society accords high
status to museums and education, with particular institutions, including national
and regional museums, positioned as representative of established narratives
(Eckersley, 2007, 2012). However, German museums are not subject to singular
measures of value in relation to social impact, due in part to the regional funding
and support mechanisms for museums in Germany and the absence of widespread
neoliberal instrumental cultural policies (Eckersley, 2007, 2012), where museums
step into the public services provision gap left by funding cuts (as in the UK). As
such, there is a widespread sense in German society that museums are a repre-
sentative public space for the rehearsing of prevailing narratives of culture, his-
tory, and identity, while not formally being expected to act as a dialogical public
space representing the diversity and complexity of its public(s). This potentially
gives German museum actors greater autonomy and power to either exercise or
relinquish control over exhibition content and engagement with communities.
Methods
In order to investigate the ways in which museums might act as democratic public
spaces (Benhabib, 1992) – not only as symbolically representative public spaces
but potentially also as dialogical public spaces – exhibition and display analyses,
interviews, and observations in museums across Germany were conducted.
Museums and exhibitions across Germany addressing topics of migration, rac-
ism, othering, and belonging were identied and selected for analysis on the basis
of their advertised content and due to the coronavirus pandemic (2020–2021)
– the possibility to visit the museum or exhibition. Twenty museums and exhibi-
tions were visited in person to undertake exhibition and display analysis – mostly
between 2019 and 2021, some in 2018 during preliminary research. Following site
visits, semi-structured, qualitative interviews were undertaken with museum sta
from 12 sites. Interviewees were all in positions of responsibility with decision-
making powers for the exhibition analyzed, although in varying roles, according
to the division of responsibilities in each site. The detailed analysis of this chapter
rests on four case study exhibitions, each with a dierent context and relevance to
the wider research question, allowing these cases to speak both in detail for their
own specicity and to the broader issues.
20 Susannah Eckersley
Data from site visits (photographs, observations) provided a comprehensive
record of each exhibition, its visual, material, and textual content, use of space,
layout, and placement of themes and objects, following established analysis meth-
ods (Moser, 2010). Interviews1 provided insights into the aims and motivations of
museum sta, their thoughts on the roles and purposes of museums, and in rela-
tion to issues of belonging. Interviewees also provided insights into the nuances
of the work in their museum, or in relation to issues of particular relevance to
their location or audiences. Online and published documentation on the exhibi-
tions provides a further layer of information on how they present their work to the
public, and which groups they aim to attract.
These methods allow patterns to be identied within a dierentiated body
of data, addressing the research question by highlighting broad similarities and
nuanced dierences in how and why museums may act as public spaces of
belonging. The approach emphasizes the intentions of exhibition producers and
the presentation of the results of their work (the exhibitions in question), as ana-
lyzed by an expert visitor. How these exhibitions may be received and perceived
by other visitors – particularly those with personal interests in and experiences of
the topics of belonging on display – would provide a rich and valuable additional
layer of data. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, such research was not possible;
follow-on research on this area would be highly worthwhile.
The four case study exhibitions include two from city museums in major
German cities with diverse contemporary populations and two from regional
museums with specic historical connections to migration, population change,
and belonging. Two of the exhibitions were temporary displays and two form part
of permanent displays. Elsewhere, I have pointed out the dierent aordances of
temporary exhibitions to explore more emotive and potentially contested issues,
as opposed to permanent exhibitions where there is often a greater expectation
of “neutrality” and factuality (in Whitehead, Eckersley, and Mason, 2012, p.36).
The cases are not intended to be representative of Germany as a nation, of their
individual locations, nor of specic histories or forms of migration. Instead, they
were chosen for their broad approach and to exemplify strategies within museum
practice seen across Europe.
The rst case study is Migration bewegt die Stadt (Migration Moves the City),
at the Stadtmuseum (City Museum) Munich. Founded in the late nineteenth cen-
tury, the City Museum oers a local, yet global, focus on Munich’s develop-
ment since its founding in the twelfth century. It includes a permanent exhibition
Typisch München (Typically Munich) which was developed in the early 2000s.
In 2012 a new intervention planned with the City Archives (Eymold and Heusler,
2018, p.11) was intended to showcase hitherto underrepresented histories and sto-
ries from Munich’s diverse migrant population. Funded by the city council from
2015 onwards (p.11) shortly before the “summer of migration”, the exhibition
modules for Migration bewegt die Stadt opened in September 2018. Although
originally funded on a short-term basis (p.11), the exhibition modules and
associated sta were later made permanent. The exhibition aimed to show that
Museums as a public space of belonging? 21
migration histories are an inalienable part of city histories (Eymold and Heusler,
2018, p.13), rather than something “other” or “beyond” the norm. It expanded
the permanent exhibition Typisch München (Typically Munich) using objects
from the City Museum and Archives collections and sought new contributions
from members of the public and local groups with migrant backgrounds (Fehle
in Eymold and Heusler, 2018, pp.59–63). The exhibition development strategy
followed participatory approaches, workshop activities and community outreach
in order to ensure a broad spectrum of perspectives were included in the new
exhibition modules, which were then inserted into the long-term exhibition as
interventions (ibid.).
The temporary CityLab exhibition at the Historisches (Historical) Museum
Frankfurt Ich sehe was, was Du nicht siehst – Rassismus, Widerstand,
Empowerment (I Spy with My Little Eye – Racism, Resistance, Empowerment)
is the second case. The Historical Museum Frankfurt oers both general and spe-
cialist exhibitions on the city’s history. The top oor of the museum is dedicated
to changing Stadtlabor (CityLab) exhibitions on contemporary topics, co-pro-
duced by a permanent team of museum sta, with community groups and public
participants (Gesser et al., 2021). The exhibition Ich sehe was, was Du nicht siehst
(October 2020–March 2021) addressed historical and contemporary experiences
of race, racism, and othering through three themes: racism, colonialism and the
post-colonial present, and empowerment and resistance. The CityLab gave centre
stage to personal experiences of racialization within German society, historical
racism, and contemporary social justice (Gesser et al., 2021, p.7). The dedicated
exhibition space oered spatial signicance, with co-curated content merging
objects from the existing collections and from community contributions. Historic
collections were presented in a new light, questioning the previous dominant nar-
ratives of colonial history and putting the experiences of people subject to raciali-
zation at the forefront.
The temporary exhibition entKOMMEN (Escape/Arrival) on display from
February to October 2020 at the Kulturhistorisches Museum Zittau (Cultural
History Museum Zittau), part of the Städtische Museen (City Museums), is the
third case. This has a similar focus to Munich and Frankfurt, with collections of
ne and decorative arts and artefacts of regional historical and religious signi-
cance. Zittau sits on the southeastern corner of Germany, bordering both Poland
and the Czech Republic, in a region shaped by histories of trade and cooperation
and of conict, border change, and forced migration. The town suered economic
and population decline following German reunication and is now a regional
“stronghold” of the right-wing AfD and far-right groups.
entKOMMEN was created in collaboration with regional cultural organiza-
tions, bringing together objects from the collection with loans from the public
in Zittau and in neighbouring Bogatynia (Poland). The exhibition addressed the
topic of ight, expulsion, and forced migration in the region, taking a long his-
torical approach, from seventeenth-century exiles to recent refugee arrivals from
Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, with the ight and expulsion of Germans at the
22 Susannah Eckersley
end of the Second World War as a main focal point (Knüvener and Hommel,
2020, p.3).
Fluchtpunkt Friedland, the permanent exhibition at Museum Friedland, is the
nal case study – Fluchtpunkt literally means vanishing point, but also plays on the
word Flucht, meaning ight or escape. Museum Friedland opened in March 2016,
located in Friedland’s former station building, in the centre of the small town, adja-
cent to a major migrant transit camp. The museum manages historic sites connected
to the Grenzdurchgangslager Friedland (border transit camp) and the town’s refu-
gee history. Historically the camp (set up in 1945) predominantly housed German
refugees and migrants from post–Second World War border changes, ethnic
Germans from Eastern Europe, and returning POWs (Holmgren, 2020). During the
later history of Friedland Refugee Transit Camp, international refugees and ethnic
Germans from Eastern Europe were accommodated. Refugees from conict areas
around the globe continue to be housed there on entry to Germany. The exhibition
was developed with a strong focus on the twentieth-century history of refugees
coming into Friedland, and on migration and refugee movements internationally.
The museum is currently developing a new extension building housing interactive
and participatory exhibitions on contemporary refugees and migrants.
Findings and analysis
In this analysis, I argue that the museum is a public space in the dual sense of
being both symbolically representative as an institution of the demos, and in oer-
ing a place where contrasting and varied concepts of belonging may be negotiated
and tried out (Benhabib, 1992). The analysis focuses on the dialectic between
belonging and dierence, and how it plays out in the political and public sphere
of museums (Bock and Macdonald, 2019, p.320). This is structured around three
key elements of how museum professionals address belonging within their work.
Firstly, how museum professionals perceive the role of museums in contempo-
rary society; secondly, the strategies used by museum professionals to display
and communicate topics of belonging; and nally, the understanding by museum
professionals of “the public” to whom they address their exhibitions.
First element: perceptions of the role of the museum in and
for society
Museum professionals in Germany interviewed for this study – all of whom were
(at the time of interview) working on topics of belonging, migration, race, exclu-
sion, etc. highlighted that diverse, and at times polarized, views on the roles
and purposes of museums are held by their peers, particularly regarding the ideal
relationship of museums to the public and to contemporary social debates:
In Germany [museums] focus more on the task of preservation, the task of
collection, the task of conservation … All that is more at the forefront. And
Museums as a public space of belonging? 23
so the museum is a palace, and a state institution still has a very, very strong
role, even though in debates about museums […] many young museum work-
ers prefer to head in the direction of extension of the town square/urban space.
(Anon. Interviewee, Munich, 2021)
Interviewees recognized a disparity between two dierent understandings within
the profession on the role of museums, or “what a museum is”. This disparity
rests on whether the role of museums is seen to be based primarily on xed mate-
rial tasks such as collecting, documenting, and conserving “what a museum
does” – or primarily on open social tasks such as communicating, engaging, con-
necting “what a museum is for”. Several respondents highlighted their desire
to eect change within their own museum, and among museum professionals in
Germany more widely away from “a very conservative picture of the museum”
(Anon. Interviewee, Dresden, 2020), yet there was also reluctance expressed
about becoming “a political museum” (Interviewee U. Bretschneider, 2020).
Although several respondents implied that change was needed in German
museums, only one drew attention to a concern about their social relevance:
I think something has to change for museums to remain relevant. Otherwise
you may as well close them, since they will only remain an archive that
nobody visits. That is the problem, museums need visitors; they are not an
archive where collections are being stored, they are an institution that is
meant to show something and actually one that is meant to host a dialogue. I
think museums have to open up to keep their right to existence.
(Interviewee S. Gesser, 2021)
The perceived need to adapt to changing social realities corresponds to Hooper-
Greenhill’s analysis of museums as “heterotopias” (1990), in relation to museums
in late 1980s Britain. Arguably, following Hooper-Greenhill’s categorizations,
many museums in Germany, even in the early twenty-rst century, continue
to act like nineteenth-century museums, “constituted as a general archive […]
with a double mission to both transform the mob into ‘men’ of taste and dis-
crimination, and to provide a sacred site for contemplation and self-renewal”
(Hooper‐Greenhill, 1990, p.66).
Despite such fundamental dierences in the role and purposes of museums,
all the museum professionals interviewed considered their work to be a form
of public service, not necessarily in relation to outwardly imposed or socially
expected notions of relevance as discussed by Nielsen (2015), but rather based
on an inward sense of duty to represent and present democratic ideals and values.
The aims of the four case study exhibitions were framed in terms of social out-
comes, such as increasing tolerance, inclusion, understanding, and encouraging
active engagement with social issues. This was most evident in places with practi-
cal connections to refugee histories or present-day realities, such as Friedland and
Zittau, or with strong local anti-immigrant or far-right tendencies, as mentioned
24 Susannah Eckersley
by additional interviewees in Dresden and rural Thuringia. However, museum
professionals also felt that there was a ne line to be negotiated between the
museum acting as a forum for dialogue and potentially provoking or platforming
strong opposing or extreme reactions:
defamatory or political contributions are excluded straight away, we do not
want to have those, but at the end of the day, contributions that can be contro-
versial or oppose each other can be presented.
(Interviewee S. Gesser, 2021)
One can also have a discussion with people with dierent or opposing views,
in such an exhibition it happens a lot, I mean if you have someone who only
has their own agenda, then you will not have any progress anyway.
(Interviewee P. Knüvener, 2021)
Such concerns draw out the perceived need of many respondents to retain overall
control over the content of the museum, due to the museum being seen as a rep-
resentative and democratic public space – one in which the boundaries of socially
acceptable discourse and of democratic free speech should not be broached.
This echoes the ways in which museums dier in their roles and purposes.
Conicts over the political and social roles of museums internationally (Sandell,
1998; Weil, 1999) and in Germany (Thiemeyer, 2019; Wenrich, Kirmeier, and
Bäuerlein, 2019) both pregure and respond to current debates within the sector
on the denition of museums (Fraser, 2019; ICOM, 2018, 2019; ICOM Germany,
2020). The development of a new ICOM denition of museums has seen the
issue gaining traction in Germany, highlighting the polarization of professional
perspectives (ICOM Germany, 2020) and that the idea of a “museum” is homo-
geneous neither internationally nor within Europe. Although the ways in which
museum professionals collectively conceptualize the role of the museum in con-
temporary society follows cosmopolitan ideals of democracy (Delanty, 2011),
related to tolerance and empathy, the dierences in their views on the extent to
which the museum should be active in social justice mirror the discourses around
the value or failure of multiculturalism, integration, and assimilation (Vertovec,
2020; Nagel and Hopkins, 2010). Museum work in Germany is still more often
based on a paradigm of dierence – in accordance with the dominant social dis-
courses – than on one of inclusive belonging.
Second element: exhibition and display strategies
The four exhibitions analyzed focused on representing what it means to belong
– or not belong within contemporary society, and how this relates to the past,
the places, the people, and the politics of these societies. The display strategies
chosen all draw connections between dierent scales from relatively abstract
issues to concrete personal examples – to present factual accounts of the global,
Museums as a public space of belonging? 25
international, and national histories, geographies, and politics of belonging, while
also addressing visitors’ immediate understanding of and subjective responses to
local, personal, and contemporary experiences of belonging. These display strate-
gies can be seen as (unconscious) applications of contact and encounter theory
(Standish, 2021; Delanty, 2011), in which the exhibition was designed to facilitate
abstract “encounters” with dierence. Kor describes the museum as facilitating a
brokering service as it regulates the distance between the experience of the
visitors and the displayed objects or documented cultures. (…) Inasmuch as
it presents the unknown and unfamiliar, the alien and what has become alien,
the museum is always also a place for the implicit self-examination of society.
(Kor, Bendix, and Bendix, 1999, p. 269)
Three ways of abstracting “contact” in exhibitions were identied, through the
bringing together of oppositions – similar to the suggestion that museums use
compensation theory to “play with the dialectic of the near and far, of the alien
and familiar” (p.268). The case study exhibitions were not intended to have an
impact on the understanding of the exhibited objects themselves (as in Kor,
Bendix, and Bendix, 1999), but rather, to eect change in visitors’ perceptions of
“others”. Three strategies to achieve this were identied in the case studies: “past-
presencing” (Macdonald, 2009); “distant-proximity” (where the geographically
distant is brought into relation with the locationally close); and “private-public-
ness” (where aspects of the personal, private sphere are brought into the public
sphere). These “brokering” strategies position museums as “spaces of encounter”,
even without direct interpersonal encounters.
Past-presencing
It has been well established that museums deploy techniques of “past-pres-
encing” (Macdonald, 2009), using objects and stories that bring the past into
sharper focus within the present, while simultaneously shaping understanding
of the present through awareness of the past. In Munich, the well-received new
exhibition was deliberately designed to break into the chronology of the long-
term Typisch München exhibition, using “continuities related to our history,
or repetitions with regard to, so to speak, exclusions and inclusions” (Anon.
Interviewee, Munich, 2021).
In the entKOMMEN exhibition in Zittau (see Figure 1.1) an area known
for right-wing populist and extremist support – material from dierent time peri-
ods was juxtaposed to highlight migration and refugees as a human constant
(Interviewee B. Nowak, 2021; Interviewee P. Knüvener, 2021).
However, this was not always well-received:
Criticism was quite active (…) but there are things that come up again and
again, to be a foreigner somewhere, to become accepted somewhere, to make
26 Susannah Eckersley
a new start and things like that. It is the same after 1945 as today, to not be
welcome somewhere, these topics were important. The historical reasons and
why someone got expelled are always dierent, but we were often told that
you cannot compare this, that the Germans had suered more, and things like
that.
(Interviewee P. Knüvener, 2021)
Many museums and exhibitions in Germany relating to issues of migration and
belonging have drawn parallels between the expulsion and ight of Germans
following the post-war border changes and the recent experiences of refugees as
part of the 2015 “migration crisis”. Similarly, in Frankfurt, colonial histories are
placed in conjunction with contemporary racism, and in Friedland, the stories
of refugees from Germany and across the world who arrived in the camp are
presented as part of the same narrative. Those interviewed who used past-pres-
encing in their exhibitions made it clear that their motivation was not to position
dierent histories as “the same” (Interviewee B. Nowak, 2021; Interviewee P.
Knüvener, 2021), but rather as a strategy to provoke empathy and mutual under-
standing (Interviewee A. Kraft, 2021; Interviewee A. Haut, 2021; Interviewee
U. Bretschneider, 2020) between various communities within the visiting pub-
lic. Such a strategy is one of dialectics, positioning what is sometimes seen as a
“completed” past in conjunction with an “incomplete” present in order to create
a new rupture or to unsettle established thought patterns surrounding both the
past and the present.
Figure 1.1 View of part of the entKOMMEN exhibition in Zittau. Photograph by author.
Museums as a public space of belonging? 27
Distant-proximity
Drawing connections between international histories and local stories was par-
ticularly important in the Frankfurt CityLab, where the Black Lives Matter move-
ment provided a global frame for the museum’s presentations and discussions on
local lived experiences of racism and exclusion (Interviewee S. Gesser, 2021).
The ways in which the global and the local scales interlink was also present in the
exhibition development phase in 2020 with the far-right racist attacks in Hanau (a
neighbouring city to Frankfurt), which became national and international news:
we always thought the Rhein-Main area is the most diverse city there is
in Germany. Super-diverse. With people with a large number of dierent
nationalities living here, we thought, well, something like that isn’t going
to happen to us. Everyone was really shocked. And of course we had some
controversial discussions; we discussed these large political questions, which
were also discussed in smaller circles, the political battle became part of it,
which is not unusual for such exhibitions.
(Interviewee S. Gesser, 2021)
In Zittau the geopolitics of the museum’s location in the “Dreiländereck” of
Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic, and the region’s historic cross-border
movements and post-war border changes, could be brought to bear on the global
“migration crisis” of 2015. Using maps both of the local and hyperlocal areas
aected by the post-war border changes and population movements, and of the
global migration movements into Europe, is a common strategy in exhibitions to
put the individual stories into a geographic context and convey a sense of scale
(see Figures 1.2 and 1.3).
At Museum Friedland, situated on the site of a refugee transit camp that has
been in constant use since the mid-twentieth century, local issues and global issues
are inextricably linked, with dierent groups of refugees from around the globe
having been temporarily housed there on arrival in Germany. Origin locations of
refugees who have been housed at Friedland and their distance from Friedland are
painted onto the glass windows in the museum stairwell, which also overlooks the
train line, emphasizing the journey, as well as the distant origin and current loca-
tion in a temporary transit camp.
The museums here used place-based approaches to break down dierences
in scale in order to communicate to the public and to achieve the aims of broad-
ening understanding and tolerance for others. Such fracturing of the dichotomy
between what is “distant” and what is “close” can be described as a strategy of
“distant-proximity”. Similar strategies have been observed in museums focusing
particularly on historical migration, as a way to achieve empathy between con-
temporary visitors and the experiences of migrants in the past (Whitehead et al.,
2015, pp.52–54). However, here – to dierentiate it from the temporal distancing
28 Susannah Eckersley
Figure 1.2 Local map, displayed as part of entKOMMEN exhibition. Photograph by author.
and proximity of past-presencing described earlier – the use of “distant-proxim-
ity” in exhibitions refers to spatial, geographic distance and proximity rather than
temporal.
Private-publicness
A third approach identied in the museums was that objects and stories associated
with the rights and responsibilities of formalized, ocial belonging in the public
sphere were positioned or framed in the exhibitions in relation to very personal
objects and stories, relating more to the “private sphere”. Museums nd it dif-
cult to collect or loan signicant objects from former refugees, as objects likely
to be of interest to museums or to the exhibition-going public are also invested
with personal meaning, or are required by their owners in order to evidence their
right to remain within the society. Several of the exhibitions, including Zittau,
presented smartphones in their displays relating to contemporary refugees, partly
as they had become iconic objects associated with refugees, and partly to engage
with the divisive discourses on the mobile phone as a luxury object, incongruous
Museums as a public space of belonging? 29
Figure 1.3 Distant map showing routes of contemporary migration, displayed as part of
entKOMMEN exhibition. Photograph by author.
with public expectations of refugee status (Interviewee B. Nowak, 2021). Within
the Munich City Museum, one of the interventions is an interactive test for visi-
tors to use, relating to the iconic city gure of the Münch’ner Kindl (a sym-
bolic role oered to one local girl each year to represent Munich): “one could
do a ‘Munich child test’ ‘Do an ironic test’. And at the end you could acquire
30 Susannah Eckersley
a municipal citizenship ID a Munich Kindl Passport” (Anon. Interviewee,
Munich, 2021). The artist’s father had migrated to Munich from Turkey, and the
“test” refers ironically both to the need for formal identity documents and to cul-
tural stereotypes. Museum Friedland exhibits a pair of men’s underpants, previ-
ously owned by a refugee from Syria, who had had them adapted before his ight
to create a concealed pocket at the front for money and documents to keep them
secure during his journey to Europe. Similarly, in Frankfurt, one display area
showed the personal possessions of Matiullah Jabarkhel, a refugee shot dead by
police in 2018, three years after his arrival in Germany (see Figure 1.4). Each
item was displayed and grouped by category, following the list of his possessions
drawn up by the authorities following his death, exposing the small number and
value of the possessions of a refugee, while highlighting the liminal place which
a refugee occupies in public space.
Museum actors use similar exhibitionary strategies for topics of inclusion and
exclusion, regardless of their views on the role of museums within society. Three
ways of abstracting “contact” in exhibitions were identied, through the bringing
together of oppositions in order to change visitors’ perceptions: the well-known
strategy of “past-presencing” (Macdonald, 2009); and newly coined ideas of
“distant-proximity” and “private-publicness”. In all four case studies and other
museums visited, the strategies observed acted as “brokering” techniques oer-
ing visitors opportunities to develop knowledge, broaden understanding while
promoting tolerance and empathy. Such strategies position museums as “spaces
of encounter”, even when there is no direct interpersonal encounter. Museums
exhibiting issues of belonging act as multiscalar and multidirectional public
Figure 1.4 Displays of refugee’s possessions in CityLab exhibition, Frankfurt. Photograph
by author.
Museums as a public space of belonging? 31
spaces where the complexity of belonging and not-belonging is exposed, and
communicated – or brokered through exhibitionary strategies which bring the
public into “contact” with diverse experiences of belonging. In all the museums
analyzed, these strategies can be seen as (unconscious) applications of contact
and encounter theory (Standish, 2021; Delanty, 2011), where the exhibition was
designed to facilitate or broker abstract encounters with dierence.
Third element: performative and transformative actions in
institutional practices
Institutional practices which relate to interpersonal encounters – both for external
audiences, such as visitors and the wider public, as well as for internal audiences,
such as museum sta, volunteers, and community participants provide a fur-
ther layer for analysis. Individual museum sta not only exert control accord-
ing to the aordances of their position – over what is encountered in the “public
space” of museums and exhibitions, but also how it is encountered, and to some
extent who it is encountered by. That museum actors and museum institutions
can undertake either performative actions or transformative actions in relation to
their engagement with social issues has been identied, whether as a “compensa-
tory mechanism” (Anthias, 2013, p.324, as discussed by Mears, this volume) or
as integral to their social purpose (Hooper-Greenhill, 2007; Soren, 2009; Garner,
Kaplan, and Pugh, 2016; Schlosser and Zimmermann, 2017). Here, the impact of
these actions on the issue of belonging is addressed.
Performative actions
In exhibitions where the emphasis lies in presenting factual information about
topics of belonging to the public, with the aim to educate and inform while retain-
ing a sense of distanced impartiality or neutrality, a high level of internal control
is required. Such internal control rests on reinforcing the role of the museum (and
its sta) as experts with knowledge to be imparted.
The intention in these exhibitions was always to spark o a process of change,
reection, and awareness-raising in relation to the idea of belonging today, yet the
means by which this was attempted was often more performative than transforma-
tive. The focus was on potential or abstract positive outcomes of diverse societies
while skimming over some of the more challenging aspects or concrete examples,
where contemporary conicts and contests of belonging emerge. This was particu-
larly marked in those locations where the local population included a high propor-
tion of supporters or high-prole individuals from the far-right scene (Interviewee
U. Bretschneider, 2020) – understandably so, given the dangers that such a situa-
tion brings to the individuals involved. Even in less tense situations, it was clear
that despite good intentions, many museum professionals in fact reinforced their
position of control over the content and message of the exhibition, which then
risked these exhibitions reinforcing existing positions, “re-othering” or ignoring
32 Susannah Eckersley
issues signicant to those they aimed to represent. Some interviewees also reected
on how pre-existing working practices in the museum shaped their work now:
it’s always been conveyed in a dierent way (…) with the story of the Italian
workers who stood up against wage discrimination … the strike is the topic,
the rebellious team, who stood up against discrimination, that was the central
topic […] not the discrimination itself.
(Anon. Interviewee, Munich, 2021)
In examples where public dialogue, debate, or participation is oered in con-
junction with exhibitions, it tends to be carefully managed and controlled, often
with the separation of dierent interest groups or events. For example, in Zittau
public community discussion events were arranged as individual targeted events
for dierent groups, rather than combined events where strong feelings or dier-
ences of opinion might be aired, and where the museum and its sta have less
control. Many interviewees made it clear that retaining strong levels of control
resulted from institutional risk-aversion or local political sensitivities, and the
fear of unintentionally giving a platform to discriminatory or undemocratic views.
Consequently, such museums maintain a veneer of impartiality, neutrality, and
distance on the subjective, emotional, and often challenging responses that topics
of belonging engender. Such avoidance of emotion and the use of distance and
impartiality as a control mechanism by museum institutions can undermine indi-
vidual museum actors’ attempts to oer transformative experiences for diverse
visitors. Instead, the absence of engagement with visitors’ emotional responses
and the disengagement with potential conicts a key component of issues of
belonging or non-belonging may result in performative actions likely to have
less impact on visitors, and on the social issues being addressed.
Transformative actions
Transformative actions in exhibitions go beyond oering expert content to be
absorbed by the public, instead aiming to oer opportunities to those subject to
exclusion, to expose the complexities of their everyday existence, and to become
agents of the museum content rather than subjects of it (Soren, 2009; Lynch,
2011). Such transformative actions can be divided into two groups: rstly, those
aiming to transform the institution from within, for example, through changing its
internal actors or public participation in museum activities; secondly, those which
aim to make the museum a place where transformative experiences can happen,
directed at visitors and potential new audiences who might engage in the museum.
Both forms of transformative action require a purposeful relinquishing of power
and control, by the museum institution and by individual museum actors, in order
to oer power to those more often excluded.
Eorts to diversify the museum sta and integrate anti-racist, anti-discrimina-
tory practices into museum administration and management structures feature in
Museums as a public space of belonging? 33
several interviews, highlighting the awareness among museum professionals of
their own limitations and of the boundaries of their experience within the “major-
ity” community of Germans or of Europeans. In some cases, this followed the
model seen in the Multaka project, where people with a refugee or migrant back-
ground are invited to train as guides (Eckersley, 2020; Macdonald et al., 2021).
Such projects are often short-term interventions, which face criticism for lack of
sustainability; other museums have focused on ensuring that those in long-term,
established museum roles are diverse and trained to address diversity construc-
tively. In Museum Friedland, this point was addressed in interviews with the aca-
demic director:
the topic of intercultural exchange is important for us. Half of our team of
sta have a migration background (…) one might call it something of an
“internal” important value.
(Interviewee A. Haut, 2021)
It was also addressed by the sta member responsible for intercultural mediation:
every section of the museum touches me and my personal story. So, I belong
to the activities I’m conducting and I walk what I talk (…) I was raised by
a refugee and worked with refugees in Syria and work with refugees here in
Germany.
(Interviewee S. Al-Jundi-Pfa, 2021)
In Frankfurt, this has been embedded in institutional practice to the extent that
sta members at all levels from front-of-house to the director were required to
take part in specialist anti-racism workshops and training on how to manage
discriminatory or extreme views, “in order to examine our own position and
become aware of how far-reaching racism is and that racism still exists even if
we don’t experience it ourselves” (Interviewee S. Gesser, 2021). This form of
transformative institutional practice can be carried through into in-depth partici-
patory work and projects, such as co-curated exhibitions, where curatorial control
is relinquished or shared between museum professionals and public participants.
In Frankfurt, this included an open invitation to people aected by all kinds of
racism to participate, as well as ensuring that the “professional museographers
(…) themselves have had these kinds of experiences” (2021). This contrasts with
shallower participatory work where members of the public are seen as subjects
from which information can be gathered, or as providers of objects and stories for
inclusion in displays controlled by museum professionals.
One of the risks of such relinquishing of control by museum professionals
is that conict and dissent may be more openly voiced, both in the exhibition
development phase and in public responses to the nished product. This was
experienced in most of the exhibitions where greater public participation and
involvement were integrated into the development processes; “of course we had
34 Susannah Eckersley
some controversial discussions; (…) the political battle became part of it, which
is not unusual for such exhibitions” (Interviewee S. Gesser, 2021). The ways in
which museum professionals handle such conicts are also dependent on whether
strongly discriminatory perspectives or more “casual” “socially accepted” dis-
criminatory perspectives are being voiced (Interviewee A. Haut, 2021), and the
extent to which a dialogue appears to oer an opportunity to change perspectives.
The case study museum actors aimed to encourage encounters between people
with varying perspectives on topics of belonging. They all had concerns about
the museum’s representative democratic role being undermined either through
“casual” racism embedded with social norms or through far-right opinions
being expressed within the museum. The extent to which museum actors seek to
retain control over this varies. In Zittau, the expectation was that such conicts
would not always be productive “if you have someone who only has their own
agenda, then you will not have any progress” (Interviewee P. Knüvener, 2021).
Participatory decision-making, as in Frankfurt, where “at the end of the day it
is the participants that have the say” (Interviewee S. Gesser, 2021), may reduce
museum actors’ control, but result in more open democratic processes. The role
of exhibitions in facilitating self-representation “creates an empowering moment
for many people (…) and that is a tool, or a method for strengthening the together-
ness, the sense of belonging within the city society” (Interviewee S. Gesser, 2021)
and indicates how such transformative actions may support a sense of belonging
to the museum and to the wider community.
As several interviewees point out, inviting participation and perspectives from
beyond museum or academic expertise is relatively new in German museum work
(Interviewee A. Kraft, 2021; Interviewee S. Gesser, 2021) and can be challenging:
“to give people a feeling of belonging is not always easy (…) It is not only about
saying ‘come join us’, it is really hard work that sometimes pushes one’s bounda-
ries” (Interviewee S. Gesser, 2021). Several added (Interviewee A. Haut, 2021;
Interviewee B. Nowak, 2021; Interviewee P. Knüvener, 2021; Anon. Interviewee,
Munich, 2021) that they had recently or for future projects they would put
greater emphasis on seeking diverse public contributions in order to create a range
of opportunities for transformative experiences: “you should leave the museum a
changed person (…) the aim should really be for you to start thinking dierently
and behaving dierently” (Interviewee A. Haut, 2021).
While both performative and transformative actions may be seen as attempts to
oer recognition and belonging to people with experiences of migration, racism,
discrimination, and exclusion, they are aimed at dierent audiences. Performative
actions are focused on representing dierence to a “host society” public, in order
to encourage this public to accept “others” as belonging, whereas transformative
actions aim to provide and facilitate opportunities for the marginalized public to
enact their right to belong and to self-representation. Identifying these nuances
revealed that a paradigm of dierence is embedded within the boundaries of “who
belongs” to, and who is considered “other” from the public addressed by many
museums. Using the idea of participation to assert a position within the politics
Museums as a public space of belonging? 35
of belonging (Yuval-Davis, 2006), museum actors – much like political actors
often negotiate these concerns by situating their work within a space of commu-
nicative action (Habermas, 1984) for a dialogic encounter between self and other
(Aggarwal, 2015). The extent to which museum actions intended to be transform-
ative can achieve these results could not be assessed; instead, this research has
revealed that much museum work on belonging rests on an unspoken paradigm of
dierence rather than a paradigm of inclusion.
Discussion: the paradigm of difference in the museum as a
public space of belonging
Together the three elements analyzed here highlight how museums and museum
actors replicate dialectics of belonging and dierence that are more often played
out in the political and public sphere (Benhabib, 1992), by acting either as places
of education which promote the tolerance of dierence or as spaces for experi-
mentation where diversity within belonging can be asserted. This brings us back
to the idealized notion of the museum as a public space, one which acts as a proxy
for democratic dialogic processes around belonging, through the representation of
values considered important for “post-multicultural” societies, such as Germany
or the EU.
Despite the similar aims of the museum professionals interviewed and the
familiar exhibitionary strategies deployed, the means by which exhibitions were
created corresponded to dierent ideas of what constitutes a “public space” and
the extent to which museum actors saw social transformation as the role of muse-
ums. Although the museum actors aimed to promote understanding and empathy,
the strategies used in communicating these issues through exhibitions not only
present the problematics of contested belonging, but many also – albeit uninten-
tionally – reproduce these problematics. The three exhibitionary strategies identi-
ed past-presencing, distant-proximity, and public-privateness tended to be
directed towards a “host” society or dominant group audience. The overriding
message, that “they” are not so dierent from “us” – a message rooted in inten-
tions of empathy and tolerance is based on the premise that there is intrinsic
dierence to be “tolerated” within democratic societies.
The ways in which museum actors engage in their work highlight that they
navigate a boundary between holding centralized power (and creating performa-
tive actions) and oering dispersed power (to facilitate potentially transforma-
tive actions). This connects to the idea that public space can be either agonistic,
“a competitive space, in which one competes for recognition, precedence and
acclaim” (Benhabib, 1992, p.94), or associational; “they become the ‘sites’ of
power, of common action coordinated through speech and persuasion” (ibid.).
This reinforces the continued signicance of the museum as a public space of
control, despite the participatory turn (Mygind, Hällmann, and Benstsen, 2015)
and the signicance of museums for belonging: “the feeling of togetherness and
36 Susannah Eckersley
cooperation that a museum radiates is important” (Interviewee B. Nowak, 2021).
Museum actors can adopt dierent approaches to issues of power and control in
their wider work and to their stang, inuencing how they act as a public space
of belonging and whether their work is performative or transformative.
Conclusion
The techniques and strategies of museum work in displaying, exhibiting, and
thereby communicating dicult topics of belonging may follow similar patterns
across dierent types of museum, and the overall aim of the museum profession-
als involved tends to follow similar lines (of tolerance, empathy, understanding,
democracy). Museum actors recently (and those with more “activist” perspectives
on the role of museums) seek to use museums as a means to transform people’s
lives as well as to inuence public discourse on topics connected to belonging.
They also see museums as public spaces which reinforce and perform these
narratives.
Museums can act as public spaces linking belonging as a personal sense of
“home” or dislocation, with belonging as a formalized criterion of citizenship
or exclusion. All the museums explored created displays highlighting liminality
between private and public belonging, between close and distant locations of con-
tested belonging, and between historical and contemporary issues of non-belong-
ing. Many museums focus on communicating to the “majority” public audience
in their exhibitions, seeing “minority” others as sources of material rather than as
further constituent audiences. Their aim is therefore primarily to promote toler-
ance and democratic values of “welcome” or “acceptance” among the majority
public, rather than to provide opportunities to create and reinforce a sense of
belonging among the minority public and between constituent groups. The few
museums where signicant transformative action was integrated or attempted
aimed not only to embed these values within their work but also to make them
commonplace rather than exceptional. Some aimed to oer social justice through
recognition, participation, empowerment, and solidarity. Some aimed to educate
and draw out “neglected” histories. Some aimed to oer diplomacy or promote
dialogue. Some highlighted injustice while inviting participation (by handing
over control); others highlighted injustice while avoiding potential conict (and
retaining control).
But does having control within the museum space create deeper social belong-
ing beyond the museum? The ideal is that the museum acts as a model of pub-
lic space that can be “scaled up”, or as a “generator” for individual or group
empowerment beyond the museum. However, it seems questionable whether this
is achievable, given that the temporary invitation to members of the public to
take control of museum work is neither long-term nor permanent. The hope that
even temporary measures lead to change rests on “if” those museum actors hold-
ing power are willing to share or hand over control of the museum space. The
notion that museums act as “representative” public spaces a place of public
Museums as a public space of belonging? 37
trust holding authority of recognition, authenticity, and value – reinforces a posi-
tion where museum actors hold power over what the institution represents, how,
and for whom. The power dynamic of the museum as a public space of belong-
ing is negotiated between the museum actor, the museum as an institution, and
the public(s), whether through performative or transformative actions. Belonging
(and non-belonging) are therefore embedded within the power structures upheld
by – or shaped by – museums.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of the museum professionals who gave their time to be
interviewed and for their openness and frankness in discussing their work. The
research for this chapter was part of the project en/counter/points: (re)negotiating
belonging through culture and contact in public space and place.
The project en/counter/points: (re)negotiating belonging through culture and
contact in public space and place is nancially supported by the HERA Joint
Research Programme (www.heranet.info), which is co-funded by AHRC, BMBF
via DLR-PT, MIUR, NWO, NCN, and the European Commission through Horizon
2020. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 769478.
Note
1 Interviewees were informed about options for anonymization and use of data as part
of the informed consent process. Some chose to be anonymized and others chose to be
named, and all interviewees were aware that the museums and exhibitions investigated
would be identified.
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