Radostina Sharenkova
Ethnographic Institute and Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria
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Published in: Comparing: National Museums; Territories; Nation-Building and Change. NaMu IV; Linköping University; Norrköping; Sweden 18-20 February 2008
Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 30:5, p. 71-81
Published: 2008-05-20
ISBN:
ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)
In its lifespan; the national museum as institution has been constantly moving forward in close relation to society; academic disciplines and government politics. The Museum served loyally to nationalism but the totalitarian state transformed it into propaganda tool because the official state ideology needed to be materially proved and visually presented in historical continuity. In this paper I will discuss some possible interpretations of communist ideology in museum environment before and after the fall of the Berlin wall in regard to the social and political context. Subject of research is the construction of the message; its structure; contents and characters.
The text as part of a future research project aims to trace the forms and mechanisms of building the museum representations of communist ideology; the relations between decision-making and concept realization. The research is based on two case studies – the ex-National Museum of Working Class Revolution in Sofia and the Museum of Communism in Prague. They are subject to comparative study; regarding the content; context and authorship of their public presentations.
The study of the narrative structures of both museum exhibitions registers similarities and identifies a possible pattern for their construction. The potential factors influencing the presentation concept and planning could be traced first in curators’ background and political standpoints; in the thematic focus of the museum; in the institutional funding resource and in the social and political climate of the region.
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