Identity Summary

After reading through several of the articles from Part IV: Histories and Identities in the Museum, there are several conclusions that I can draw.

1. The history of any given museum is incredibly wrapped up in its role in society and how the public views the institution. The museum can look at itself via the society it dwells in or through the artists it is representing. Hopefully it can do justice to both.

2. There is a strange phenomenon within museums in which we re-live history, and often human suffering. Reliving human experience in general can become a mind-twisting thing if you think about it too hard, since, for example, the act of watching a video of a historical event is experiencing someone else's experience. Your experience of that person's experience will be different than anyone else's in the world. Museums are stewards of these experiences and this phenomenon.

2. House museums operate differently and have different values than institutional museums and school museums. They are supposed to imitate an experience of actually living and walking in the space, and there is less room for imagination. This is the space where the previous owner of the house actually LIVED and walked, and the patrons who come to the museum want to feel just how that previous owner did when they lived there. Therefore a more precise historical accuracy is to be aimed for.

3. Each cultural group has a different identity, and naturally they want to be represented well. Examples in these articles are of the Mexican culture, culture of museums in Oceania, Aboriginal culture, Southern New Ireland culture, and New South African culture. Some of these are just examples of exhibitions or museums that include the culture, or are run by the culture. I think there are things we can learn from each separate culture about how to value and exhibit artwork.

Identity in the museum is ultimately an inexhaustible subject. Each museum has to decide what kind of identity to portray and how to do justice to the identities of the cultures and artists represented. This makes it so that there are innumerable options for different museums, and obviously no two institutions will ever be the same.