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MeLA* – European Museums in an Age of Migrations European Commission FP7-funded project
Organised by the International Centre for Cultural & Heritage Studies, Newcastle University 3-4 September 2012
Call for Papers
The imperatives surrounding the museum representation of place have shifted from the late eighteenth century to today. This is in part because the political significance of place itself has changed and continues to change at all scales, from local, civic, regional to national and supranational. At the same time, recognition of changes in population flows, migration patterns and demographic movement now underscore both cultural and political practice, be it in the accommodation of ‘diversity’ in cultural and social policy, scholarly explorations of hybridity or in state immigration controls. These issues, taken historically, have particular significance for contemporary understandings of the role of place in individual, collective and state notions of society in the EU, in member states and in other European countries. How do European museums present societies as bound to, or enabled by, place and places? Or as having roots in places and/or taking routes from, to and through places? What cartographical groupings, borders, knowledges (e.g. archaeological, ethnographic etc.) and traversals order and organise populations into societies in the museum? What is the metaphorical ‘place’ of place in European museums now, what does this say about identities?
How Migration Challenges Notions of Society, Education and Culture is a part of the lecture series EUNIC/UNIQUE Thoughts: Public Discussions on European Issues. The lectures will take place in the Goethe-Institut Irland, 37 Merrion Square, Dublin 2 on 9 February, 15 March and 26 April 2012 from 2 to 5 pm.
Ireland is one of just two EU countries that has a majority of migrants from the EU member states. The diversity and scale of EU migration is a recent phenomenon though there is a long tradition of migration to Ireland from some EU-15 states, especially the UK, Germany and France. Ireland has also become home to a range of people from outside the EU including Nigeria, China, India, Philippines and Brazil.
The lectures and panel discussions for each theme will assess how migrants are integrating in Irish society and in other European societies and will address the on-going impact of migration on these societies.
Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration Le Palais de la Port Dorée, Paris Museum of the Immigration temporary exhibition: ‘J’ai deux amours’
Part of the exhibition space, all at the top floor of the Cité building, is also devoted at temporary exhibition: during the visit there was the show ‘J’ai deux amours’ presenting the work of artists dealing with the theme of immigration belonging to the museum collection (406 works by 37 artists). In the institutional words:
‘La Cité présente une exposition centrée sur le regard des artistes contemporains avec une sélection d’œuvres d’art des collections du Musée, récemment acquises et pour certaines jamais exposées.’ [visit the web-site of the exhibition]
Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration Le Palais de la Port Dorée, Paris Museum of the Immigration permanent exhibition: Repères
L’exposition permanente Repères présente, dans une approche croisée des regards et des disciplines, deux siècles d’histoire de l’immigration : témoignages, documents d’archives, photographies et œuvres d’art se répondent dans un espace interactif, au rythme d’un parcours historique et thématique qui relate les temps forts de l’histoire de France depuis le 19e siècle [visit the exhibition website].
As everyone can understand even in the website of this museum/information centre there is no other language than French: and this is already a sign of the all exhibition and curatorial design quality. This is a space (impossible to call it either museum either an information centre) where actually the rhetoric of the French Nation-State is pervasively performing in opposition with what eventually should have been the programme of such a place (namely: the National City of Immigration history).
Museum the Quai Branly, Paris (visit on February 2012)
Using paintings, posters, pictures, computers, movies and a few objects, the exhibition (developed along a circular path) has not really any special features: it would be necessary to visit the show a second time two enter more critically in the exhibition design even it is possible to say that the very dark atmosphere seams to be more linked to the savage exhibition effect than to the one of a new way to approach the subject.
At the opposite, all the texts (not always easy to read due the darkness and the font size) are very carefully and correctly written, paying a meaningful tribute to the cause of the postcolonial studies with a strong critics to French, and more in general Western, world when referring to ‘the Other’, the outsider, always presented as a un-civilized or sub-human entity.
Of a very good quality the catalogue: therefore the need to go back to check the quality of the exhibition design is really strong.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN IDENTITIES: POLICY AND RESEARCH ISSUES.
Insights from European Research supported under the 6th and 7th Framework Programmes
Promoted by European Commission
Main questions
• Is a common European identity or are several diverging European identities
emerging, and if yes, what shape(s) does it, do they, take?
• What (policy and research) implications does the development of a European identity,
European identities have for the European Union?
The meeting was arranged in the following 4 thematic sessions
• Session 1: Dimensions, definitions, problems of European identity/identities
• Session 2: Political Europe
• Session 3: Transnational mobilità
• Session 4: Tendencies toward homogenizing and diversifying Europe
They were articulated in 1 key speach, a roundtable with a panel of invited discussants and 20 min open plenary discussion.
Target participants (between 30 and 50 along the long day)
• representatives from different DGs of the European Commission – BEPA, DG HOME,
DG COMM, DG EAC, DG JUST, DG ELARG, etc.
• MEPs (i.a. from the following Committees: Employment and Social Affairs, Internal
Market and Consumer Protection, Culture and Education, Civil Liberties, Justice and
Home Affairs)
• EP (i.a. Correspondence with Citizens Unit)
• other representatives from different realms
• representatives from different FP6 and 7 research funded projects
Susannah Eckersley of UNEW attended the EUNAMUS conference ‘Great historical narratives in Europe’s National Museums’ in Paris in November 2011. The conference was grouped into four themed sessions: Constructing narratives in the museum; Traditions of national identity construction; Intersecting territories and narratives; Historical revisions and contested heritage. Each session included a number of very interesting and informative presentations by speakers from both universities and museums exploring topics from across the full breadth of Europe. Presentations were given in English, French and Spanish.
On 3rd February 2012 Susannah Eckersley of UNEW attended one of the Zeitgeist seminars organised by the Institute for German Studies at Birmingham University. The topic of the seminar was ‘Multiculturalism and Germanness’, with a paper presented by Dr Birgit zur Nieden of the Institut fuer Sozialwissenschaften’s Diversity and Social Conflict Team at the Humboldt University, Berlin and Simon Green, Professor of Politics at Aston University and Co-Director of the Aston Centre for Europe as discussant. The seminar provided a wide-ranging and thorough exploration of the intellectual discourses and everyday realities of multiculturalism in contemporary Germany, with particular reference to how the question of ‘Germanness’ is, and has been, perceived in the public realm.
The research team at UNEW (Chris Whitehead, Rhiannon Mason and Susannah Eckersley) have developed a conceptual framework for their ongoing case study explorations.
This framework has developed out of a wide-ranging literature review on museums, migration, mobilities and their theories and subthemes (including for example: identity; diversity; multiculturalism; gender; politics; memory; trauma; post-colonialism). It is also based on an extensive review of relevant museums throughout Europe (EU member states, associated states, countries with agreements and countries situated within geographic Europe). A database has been created by UNEW which includes museums not only specifically focussed on migration (both immigration and emigration) as a discrete topic, but also national, regional and local museums which cover themes related to migration and mobility. These include such diverse museum ‘types’ as: history museums; Heimat museums; ecomuseums; ethnology, ethnography and folk museums; open air museums; city museums; museums specifically relating to diasporic and/or indigenous communities (such as Jewish museums, Roma museums, Saami museums); museums with relevance to issues of occupation, resistance, refugees and/or forced migration; transport and travel museums; birthplace museums of significant figures; and memorial museums at or about significant sites and events.
