By Pomen
This is part of MSWB L’Été Éternel magazine
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When was the last time you went to a National museum? What do you think the point of a national museum even is? It is simply put, The nation's history and collective stories of the people. This can be from golden ages to hardships, battles to plagues. It is a memory. The memory of the time the British conquered the world, to the time the Finnish fought for independence in a civil war. These museums do have all these artifacts, you can go to a museum and see them. But do you actually see the collective memory? Do you actually see the history? In some museums yes, but in most no. That some fail to tell you the collective memory is the issue with a lot of modern-day museums. Let's explore.
Collective memory is a French idea, created by Maurice Halbwachs in his book La Mémoire collective. Maurice worked together with Émile Durkheim. Durkheim helped Halbwachs to push his study of sociology. The definition of collective memory is: the memories that individuals have as members of the groups to which they belong. This is often in relation to history and events. Where the narrative around an event is at the forefront of history. Think of George Washington crossing the Delaware or Napoleon on his horse across the Alps. In both of these history says otherwise but the group's memory and remembrance of it is more important.
What is important to understand is that Halbwachs was a Marxist and a catholic who converted to Judaism. The reason why this matters is that collective memory was studied more. It became a popular subject within Marxist and Jewish circles, because of the focus on the individual's memory of history. This makes it so one can sideline history to fit the agreed-upon memory of an event. This can be class struggle, material dialectics or to push a point forth like Zionism. While The idea itself is not a political concept it is often used for those reasons. That is why it also becomes important to use and understand collective memory as the tool it is.
You can argue that a museum should not bring forth a collective memory but history. What difference is it that collective memory is focused on a group's shared memory of an event, while history tries to focus only on what is. All the artifacts can be shown to you, and someone can tell you what those objects are. If the story is not presented correctly, you will not understand the importance of those artifacts. They are just pretty historical doodads with no actual meaning to them. It is a simple fix, it is about how something is presented.
A good example of a great presentation: We walked into a room in the Historical Presidential Palace in Kaunas Lithuania. In the room, there was a desk in the middle and pictures and text on the wall. We didn't want to touch anything so we looked around quickly and tried to walk out. An older Lithuanian woman comes up to us and points and says "Pick up the phone, someone is calling you". The phone on the desk was ringing. I was quite hesitant, walked over and picked up the phone. On the other side, there was an angry Russian man screaming at me. I asked what he was saying, They told me. They are demanding that Lithuania become part of the great soviet union. Then she said, "How do you think the president answered". I had to look around at the desk for an answer, and the answer was yes. I had to spare innocent Lithuanian's lives. Then we started reading the text on the walls, it was questions. What did the president do at different moments in his life? I will never forget, and I understand the history.
Here is an example of what can happen when you forget an event's collective memory. You are a book smuggler in Lithuania trying to make sure your language survives. The collective memory of that type of struggle makes people wish to keep fighting occupation and to make sure the Lithuanian state can survive. When that memory is forgotten, resentment can grow. I spoke to a granddaughter of one of these book smugglers. She said what her father did was shameful and a disgrace because he caused trauma to the family. They had to hide in between the walls when the Russians came. I was in shock, I should have told her; Then speak Russian! The issue here is that she sees her grandfather's struggle as pure history, and a horrible history at that, without understanding his struggle. While some might claim that the trauma he caused is enough to completely remove her grandfather's struggle and hate him for it. At that point, I gave her false platitudes to avoid conflict, but what I should have done was force her to speak Russian and "killed" her for speaking a language that is banned. A big extreme, but it is important to remember that Russians imprisoned or killed people trying to keep the Lithuanian language alive. She should not be speaking that language if she hated what her grandfather did.
Collective memory is false, and should not push away actual history. That is correct one should not push away history. The argument here is one of framing. History should be factual, neutral and objective, but the way you tell the story of history can be different. Especially in National museums, because it is where the memory of the nation and history of the nation meet. The Finnish National Art Museum fails to understand this.
A nation's art is often where you find stories remade into paintings. Finland is a nation where art created a nation. They remade simple stories and struggles into artwork that inspired people to fight for an independent Finland. The Finnish art museum had these art pieces and showed them to the public. The art by itself should be enough to tell the story, but this museum decided that was not enough. They took the art pieces, separated them from each other, put them next to art that could be made a hundred years later and told a story. The story they told was not of Finland, but of Love, motherhood and womanhood. They took legendary paintings, put them next to social realist art and put the caption, Struggle in everyday life. They spat on the story of Finland, they spat on all the struggles Finland had faced. Just to tell stories that have no value to the memory of these paintings. This is sadly the struggle facing a lot of modern museums, the issue of modernity. To forget the past to fit the progressive narrative.
A way of fighting modernity and forgetting one's history. Is to do like a Swedish museum does. 100 years ago, they asked people to bring everyday items to the collection. They got over 50,000 objects. This ranging from everyday items, such as lighters and pans, to a few women's wedding dresses that were never used. Then the museum put up these items and made the museum-goers walk through time. This way a person can understand how people lived here a few generations back. This way you can understand the actual history of the area and fully grasp it. There is a lot of memory in these items that is shown to you.
Collective memory strengthens history if done correctly. This is what modern museums forget, and what political activist wishes you to forget. But never forget and never allow someone to remove your people's collective memory. It is important to remember who you are, and for your children to remember who you are.
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