Spacing Times, Telling Times and Narrating the Past

This paper takes one institution, the museum, and suggests how this institution organizes understandings of time. Museums are seen as actively organizing practices that sustain certain views of the world. The paper takes a single case study to illustrate how such practices may be currently organized. It suggests that while analysis of cultural grammar may be illuminating, a narratological perspective is required in order to analyse practices in modern museums. Thus it is suggested that studies of narrativity may shed some light on contemporary understandings of temporality.