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Memorial Museums that Practicing Temporal Expansion - Connecting the Past with the Present and the Future -

  • Journal of Humanities
  • 2023, (89), pp.319-343
  • DOI : 10.31310/HUM.089.10
  • Publisher : Institute for Humanities
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : April 3, 2023
  • Accepted : April 17, 2023
  • Published : May 31, 2023

Jimin Cha 1

1가톨릭대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Museums have been recognized as the passive spaces for mainly organizing, storing, and displaying the past. For this reason, the studies of museums have not been properly conduced in relation to the present and the future. In particular, despite the existence of a large number of museums, especially memorial museums, the message of “Never Again” only rings hollow inside the museum, and the horrific human rights suppression of the past on display is still repeated outside the museum. Recognizing this gap, this study focuses on the disconnection between the past and the present that exists in these memorial museums, and analyzes the museum by following the experiences of visitors who act as a bridge between the past and the present. Existing research on museums tends to focus mainly on three aspects: the exhibition, the background of planning an exhibition, and the role of practitioners. Thus, current studies neglect discussions on the experience of visitors. The reason why this gap is regrettable is that the experience of visitors does not occur independently within the space of the museum, but is closely linked to the society they will return. In addition, it is because the visitor serves as a key link to practice the lessons advocated by the museum in real life. However, studies so far have analyzed museums separately from society (present) and alienate the voices of visitors. Hence, starting with research of the existing museums, this paper discusses the museum from the visitor's perspective through the visitor interviews conducted by the author. The author expands the case of the museum from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by introducing the cases of new museums that practice an alternative exhibition that connects the museum from the past to the present and the future. Therefore, by introducing the exhibitions of the Legacy Museum in the United States and the War and Women's Human Rights Museum in South Korea, this study examines the missing parts of the existing memorial museum exhibitions and suggests a new direction for the memorial museum.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.