Exhibiting Atrocity: Memorial Museums and the Politics of Past ViolenceToday, nearly any group or nation with violence in its past has constructed or is planning a memorial museum as a mechanism for confronting past trauma, often together with truth commissions, trials, and/or other symbolic or material reparations. Exhibiting Atrocity documents the emergence of the memorial museum as a new cultural form of commemoration, and analyzes its use in efforts to come to terms with past political violence and to promote democracy and human rights. Through a global comparative approach, Amy Sodaro uses in-depth case studies of five exemplary memorial museums that commemorate a range of violent pasts and allow for a chronological and global examination of the trend: the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC; the House of Terror in Budapest, Hungary; the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in Rwanda; the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile; and the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York. Together, these case studies illustrate the historical emergence and global spread of the memorial museum and show how this new cultural form of commemoration is intended to be used in contemporary societies around the world. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Memorial Museums The Emergence of a New Form | 12 |
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The Creation of a Living Memorial | 30 |
The House of Terror The Only One of Its Kind | 58 |
The Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre Building a Lasting Peace | 84 |
The Museum of Memory and Human Rights A Living Museum for Chiles Memory | 111 |
The National September 11 Memorial Museum To Bear Solemn Witness | 138 |
Memorial Museums Promises and Limits | 162 |
Notes | 185 |
195 | |
205 | |
About the Author | 215 |
Other editions - View all
Exhibiting Atrocity: Memorial Museums and the Politics of Past Violence Amy Sodaro Limited preview - 2018 |
Exhibiting Atrocity: Memorial Museums and the Politics of Past Violence Amy Sodaro No preview available - 2018 |
Exhibiting Atrocity: Memorial Museums and the Politics of Past Violence Amy Sodaro No preview available - 2018 |
Common terms and phrases
Aegis Trust American argued Arrow Cross artifacts atrocity building camps Chile Chilean collective memory commemoration communism communist confront context create creation deeply democracy democratic dictatorship display documents effort emerged ethnic experience experiential fascism Fidesz focus future violence gacaca geno global goals horrors House of Terror human rights abuses Hungarian Hungary Hungary’s Hutu ideology individuals intended Jewish justice Kagame Kigali Centre memo Memorial Centre memorial museum form memorial museums Memory and Human Michelle Bachelet military MMHR moral Museum of Memory narrative national memorial Nazi negative past Orbán past violence permanent exhibit perpetrators photographs Pinochet political present and future prosthetic memory regime remember Rettig Report rial museums Rwanda Rwandan genocide September 11 social society space story survivors tell testimony tion today’s torture totalitarian tropes truth commissions Tutsi twentieth century USHMM victims Villa Grimaldi visitor wall Yad Vashem