Curating Difficult Knowledge

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

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2. Introduction: Witnesses to Witnessing

   1. Introduction: Witnesses to Witnessing

      • Erica Lehrer, Cynthia E. Milton

      Pages 1-19

3. Bearing Witness between Museums and Communities

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 21-22

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   2. “We were so far away”: Exhibiting Inuit Oral Histories of Residential Schools

      • Heather Igloliorte

      Pages 23-40

   3. The Past is a Dangerous Place: The Museum as a Safe Haven

      • Vivienne Szekeres

      Pages 41-54

   4. Teaching Tolerance through Objects of Hatred: The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia as “Counter-Museum”

      • Monica Eileen Patterson

      Pages 55-71

   5. Politics of the Past: Remembering the Rwandan Genocide at the Kigali Memorial Centre

      • Amy Sodaro

      Pages 72-88

4. Visualizing the Past

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 89-90

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   2. Living Historically through Photographs in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Reflections on Kliptown Museum, Soweto

      • Darren Newbury

      Pages 91-108

   3. Showing and Telling: Photography Exhibitions in Israeli Discourses of Dissent

      • Tamar Katriel

      Pages 109-127

   4. Visualizing Apartheid: Re-Framing Truth and Reconciliation through Contemporary South African Art

      • Erin Mosely

      Pages 128-143

5. Materiality and Memorial Challenges

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 145-146

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   2. Points of No Return: Cultural Heritage and Counter-Memory in Post-Yugoslavia

      • Andrew Herscher

      Pages 147-160

   3. Defacing Memory: (Un)tying Peru’s Memory Knots

      • Cynthia E. Milton

      Pages 161-178

   4. (Mis)representations of the Jewish Past in Poland’s Memoryscapes: Nationalism, Religion, and Political Economies of Commemoration

      • Sławomir Kapralski

      Pages 179-192

6. Afterword: The Turn to Pedagogy: A Needed Conversation on the Practice of Curating Difficult Knowledge

   1. Afterword: The Turn to Pedagogy: A Needed Conversation on the Practice of Curating Difficult Knowledge

      • Roger I. Simon

      Pages 193-209

7. Back Matter

   Pages 210-219

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This volume inscribes an innovative domain of inquiry, bringing museum and heritage studies to bear on questions of transitional justice, memory and post-conflict reconciliation. As practitioners, artists, curators, activists and academics, the contributors explore the challenges of bearing witness to past conflicts.

• conflicts
• discourse
• genocide
• inquiry
• Inuit
• John Milton
• knowledge
• memory
• Museum
• pedagogy
• photography
• politics
• religion
• tolerance
• Yugoslavia

'How to put difficult knowledge on public display is one of the biggest challenges for curators. It is also of major importance in contemporary civic life: what should be said and shown in museums, and how? This raises fascinating and complex intellectual and political questions. This book exposes and tackles these brilliantly through excellent discussion of a wide range of provocative cases. It should be read by anybody concerned with the dilemmas of curating difficult knowledge.' - Sharon Macdonald, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, UK

• Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

  Erica Lehrer

• Département d’histoire, Université de Montréal, Canada

  Cynthia E. Milton

• History Departments, Concordia University, Canada

  Monica Eileen Patterson

• Université de Montréal, Canada

  Monica Eileen Patterson

ANDREW HERSCHER Teacher, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, USA HEATHER IGLOLIORTE Inuk Curator and art historian from the Nunatsiavut Territory of Labrador, Canada SLAWOMIR KAPRALSKI Faculty member, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland TAMAR KATRIEL Author and Researcher into the Occupied Palestinian Territories ERIN MOSELY Ph.D. Candidate in African Studies and History at Harvard University, USA DARREN NEWBURY Professor of Photography, Birmingham City University, UK ROGER SIMON Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, Canada AMY SODARO Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the New School for Social Research, USA VIV SZEKERES Graduate in History and Education, London, UK.

Policies and ethics