Publication

Simon Knell (work package lead & editor), Bodil Axelsson, Lill Eilertsen, Eleni Myrivili, Ilaria Porciani, Andrew Sawyer and Sheila Watson. 2012. Crossing Borders: Connecting European Identities in Museums and Online, Eunamus Report No. 2, Linköping University Press, Linköping.

About

This is a work package report of the Eunamus project, which was concerned with understanding how national history museums contribute to European social cohesion. Our purpose here was to look beyond these museums and consider more fundamentally the impact of European material culture, the distributed performances of provincial museums and heritage sites, and immaterial, border-crossing, museum-like, online performances. The idea was to understand more fundamentally the ‘museology of Europe’. Part 1 argues that Europe is manifested as a polycentric performance that has derived its own material language that implicitly speaks of Europe. Part 2 looks at four distributed performances that challenge the reductive narratives of nations to be found in national museums. Part 3 looks at online communities and wonders if these spaces contribute democratic museums – museums of the people? Interestingly, these latter examples seem to turn us back towards a need for institutions and professionals; that Europe is not manifested through things but through the discourses we construct for them.

Access

Full free access via the publisher’s website link above. This is a dissemination report. It is fully illustrated, succinct and accessible. You can also download a copy from this site via the download button below.

Outline

Summary

Introduction

The museum unbounded

Part 1 Europe as a language (Simon Knell)

Silent Europe

The silent object

Europe as a material language

Speaking of nation

Saying different things

Categories of object and museum

The soft architecture of national museums

The distribution of words and expressions

An evolving, inclusive, language

Material borderlands

Part 2 The distributed nation

The distributed nation

Norwegian regionalism (Lill Eilertsen)

Bergen and the power of knowledge

Maihaugen and the production of the indigenous

Tromsø and the politics of the North

Bodø and the defence of livelihood

Sverresborg and the cult of the Saint King

Nordvegen and national origins

Swedish studies of contemporary society (Bodil Axelsson)

The geography of belonging

Cooperative rationalism

Studies of domestic life

Studies of Swedish working life

Re-imagining Swedish society

Difficult matters

Rituals and places of Death

Warning

Studying today for today

English manipulations of class (Sheila Watson)

The rise and fall of class distinction

The stately home under attack

The loss of old ways

The new social history

A new love for old houses

Museums of rural and industrial life

From a nation of classes to a classless nation

Unifying Italy (Ilaria Porciani)

Regions and cities

Museum making before unification

Unification and the protection of local identities

Polycentrism

The fragmented national museum

Part 3 Transnational, museum-like, online

Transnational, museum-like, online

Cross-border communications at Lake Prespa (Eleni Myrivili)

A confluence of ethnicities

A national borderland

Prespa Transboundary Park

A culture of online discord

Prespa online and transnational

Transnational possibilities

Cold War connections on Flickr (Andrew Sawyer)

Flickr

Museums and Flickr

Flickr groups

Locating the Cold War

Cold War groups

Flickr – a democratic museum?