THE STOREROOM AS PROMISE: The Discovery of the Ethnological Museum Depot as an Exhibition Method in the 1970s

This article concerns an exhibition format that I call the depot exhibition. These exhibitions are museum presentations that turn the depot into their subject matter. (“Visible storage” is the most well‐known variant.) While this approach to museum exhibition has a current appeal, especially in German‐speaking countries, it is not new. Its appearance in North America in the 1970s was connected with postcolonial debates and coincided with a controversial sociopolitical discourse in which the concept of the depot promised to solve the central problems of a particular type of museum: the ethnological museum. I argue that the concept of the depot exhibition had an effect on other types of museums because these kinds of exhibitions made promises that concerned museums in general. The concept is at the root of an influential reflexive museum praxis that is distinguished by self‐criticism and the relinquishment of authority from the museum to visitors.