The restorative museum

Witcomb, Andrea; Bounia, Alexandra

doi:10.4324/9780815354260-3

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…In exhibiting stories of the pandemic or offering museums as a place of reflection on experiences of it, audiences and visitors will be drawn back to their own pandemic memories and associated traumas. Witcomb and Bounia (2019) coin the term 'restorative museum' to describe 'a museum that seeks to restore to the souls of the dead their humanity and which does so by asking present-day visitors to empathise' with the subjects of these displays. In the case of the post-COVID role of museums, we are looking not just at the restoration of the humanity of those lost, but also to the restoration of the lives of those who have survived.…”

Section: The Restorative Museum: Narrating and Reflecting On Covid An...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Community resilience and recovery

Friel,

Farrell-Banks,

McDermott

2024

Creative Approaches to Wellbeing

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The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown measures implemented by governments globally are crises that have affected us at individual, community and societal levels. The impact of the disease on citizens and their families and the context of the 'new normal' is likely to have a long-lasting legacy. While museums may not necessarily be the first place that people, or indeed policymakers, might think about in the context of community recovery, the unprecedented nature of COVID-19 has provided a unique opportunity for innovative, unique interdisciplinary approaches to community resilience to emerge in museum practice. If properly funded and supported, museums can utilise new and innovative approaches which emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic to consolidate their role as sites of community wellbeing and renewal in the years ahead.The Museums, Crisis and COVID-19 (MCC) project at Ulster University (2020-22) connected academics, heritage professionals, curators and grassroots representatives to explore how museums in Northern Ireland can contribute to community resilience and wellbeing in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. 1 Discussions during the project indicated that these institutions in Northern Ireland may become important locations for telling the story of COVID-19 in the future. Moreover, museums will become places for commemorating what has been a traumatic event for society and the communities within it, thus meeting important therapeutic needs. The multiple roles played by museums in curating the past and engaging with disparate groups make them a location in which people can reflect on the impact of COVID-19. These roles, we argue, should receive greater attention from policymakers because of their potential importance in the wider context of supporting community 5 Community resilience and recovery: the 'Restorative Museum' and responses to COVID-19

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Section: The Restorative Museum: Narrating and Reflecting On Covid An...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Community resilience and recovery

Friel,

Farrell-Banks,

McDermott

2024

Creative Approaches to Wellbeing

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“…The Kresy-Siberia site is explicitly framed as a museum. This choice of form is perhaps unsurprising, given that diasporic, migrant and refugee communities have long sought to establish museums or organize exhibitions that document the trauma of lost homeland and invite empathy from their potential audiences, while also seeking to communicate a narrative of hope and success in a new home (Loutron et al, 2020). Research on community museums and galleries has shown that the establishment of this type of space is evidence of the vested interests that groups have in claiming and documenting their own history and celebrating their place in society by using the dominant cultural format of the museum (O’Reilly and Parish, 2015).…”

Section: The Characteristics Of the Kresy-siberia Virtual Museum And ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Diasporic memory practice on the Internet: Remembering lost homelands

et al. 2022

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This article examines the work of two diasporic memory organizations, Kresy-Siberia and Houshamadyan, which have both developed Internet platforms to collect and share information about lost homelands: in the former case, the pre-Second World War eastern borderlands of Poland; in the latter, the Armenian communities of the Ottoman Empire that were destroyed by genocide. The article draws on interviews undertaken with participants in order to examine the activism of these two diasporic memory groups and to analyse the relationship between memory practice and the online space. The article asks what difference the creation of an online platform makes to such groups, both for individuals and for the wider diaspora, and seeks to understand how the possibilities offered by these platforms shape diasporic practice. The article shows how, despite the apparent similarities between the online presences of these two organizations, their use of the Internet facilitates diverse forms of memory practice, which are influenced by the historically specific needs of participants in these different diasporic communities.

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The restorative museum

Cited by 2 publications

References 1 publication

Community resilience and recovery

Community resilience and recovery

Diasporic memory practice on the Internet: Remembering lost homelands

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