The Witness at the Exhibition: Testimonies in New Historical Museums Cover Image
  • Price 4.50 €

Świadek na wystawie. Świadectwa w nowych muzeach historycznych
The Witness at the Exhibition: Testimonies in New Historical Museums

Author(s): Maria Kobielska
Subject(s): Museology & Heritage Studies, Semiology, Social history, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, Philosophy of History
Published by: Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: history museum; video testimony; witness; Museum of the Second World War; Warsaw Uprising Museum;

Summary/Abstract: Analysing the functioning of testimonies in current historical museum exhibitions, Kobielska offers examples from the Warsaw Uprising Museum and the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. She takes into account both audio and video media and systematizes the ways in which testimonies are presented. Among the issues explored are the fragmentation of the testimonies, the degree to which the visitor experiences them as optional or obligatory, the physical location of the testimonies in the exhibition space, the way in which they are contextualized and processed, and finally their function in the museum’s memory narrative. All these factors shape the visitor’s experience, which may be called the “an experience of testimony” or “an experience of the witness”. Discussing the strategies for dealing with testimonies at the exhibitions in Poland’s new historical museums leads Kobielska to describe the poetics and to question the ethics of “exhibiting the witness”.

  • Issue Year: 2018
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 295-308
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: Polish