Museums and National Identity

This collection of papers has been brought together to address what has become a highly charged issue for many museums, and of course in particular, for national museums -the representation of national identity.The widening debates on identity have opened up new challenges for the museum profession around such an issue.At the macro level, the transformation of identity has taken place within the backdrop of decolonisation, imperial atrophy, globalization and the decline of the nation-state.At the national level, the challenge becomes one of reconciliation and of promoting national integration within the plurality and diversity of identity.Through the authority vested in them, museums authenticate and present identities through the presentation of heritage.National museums are implicit in the construction of national identities, and the ways in which they voice or silence difference can reflect and influence contemporary perceptions of identities within the national frame.National museums have travelled far from the nationalistic and self-improving goals of the early national museums of the 19 th century.Their response to identity has now entered the public domain, and as the papers in this collection indicate, they are very much implicit in the social and political agendas of the 21 st century.In particular, narrating the nation in the museum increasingly becomes a task of narrating the diversity of the nation and for engaging in a politics of recognition.In an era of multiculturalism, women's movements, movements for recognition of homosexual men and lesbian women, respect for the environment as well as nationalist movements, coupled with large scale movements of populations across the globe for travel, commerce or migration, the identity of the nation becomes increasingly fluid and contingent.As this collection of essays indicates, museums have taken on these challenges in different ways.Some have generated confrontation in their approach, while others have encouraged an increased acceptance of diversity.In each case, the museum has had to address the questions of whose history is being constructed and whose memories are being negotiated by the museum, and ultimately whose voices will be heard and whose will be silenced.By looking at the processes of construction and negotiation and their outcomes, and by recognising the connections, the museum profession will be better able to reconcile these differences.The very recent increase in writing about national identity in museums is a reflection of the recognition of these contemporary shifts, but also has been a response to the burgeoning of new national museums and substantial refurbishments of existing museums.This special issue seeks to add to discussions in a small but growing field of research on museums around these issues.Collections making specific reference to museums and national identity include Boswell and Evans, 1999;