Curatorial Omissions in Virtual War Museum Displays: Uncovering Racial and Gendered Tensions in Canadian WWI Exhibitions

Abstract

This paper investigates how virtual exhibitions curated by the Canadian War Museum (CWM) and the Canadian Centre for the Great War (CCGW) communicate ideas about nationalism and multiculturalism in Canada. Drawing from critical literature on participatory museum spaces, multiculturalism, and hegemony, we examine how virtual war exhibitions, which attempt to create space for marginalized identities, may inadvertently reinforce hegemonic understandings of Canadian identity. Through our analysis of two case studies, we explore how digital curation, while offering visitors a sense of participation, may also sanitize resistant perspectives. This analysis allows us to examine present-day Canadian multiculturalism as it is communicated in digital museum curations, including its practice of including racialized others on a conditional basis, its weaponization of white feminist narratives, and its continued investments in the history of English and French Canada as universal. We thus examine the way Canadian nationalism re-makes itself, and how virtual curatorial techniques, which may seem more inclusive, can serve hegemonic ends. This study should be of interest to curators and designers working in digital contexts, as well as scholars studying multiculturalism as it is pictured in museums, media, and other cultural representations.