“Let the Silent History Be Told”: Museums Turn to Narratives

Abstract

Narratives perform numerous tasks: they are a structure employed to offer contextualization or a stratagem to overcome museum’s communication problems, for example, a way of linking sources, themes, and particularly, heterogeneous temporalities. The new museology concept, says a museum cannot be empirical, from which a universal vision is guaranteed. This crisis, caused by the hegemonic models of old, gave rise to narratives in museums. Secondly, the auto-referential modalities of communication went into crisis. "Place the periphery in the centre," to attract attention to those who would not have been recognised via the history itself, an occurrence which has only deteriorated since the modern storm, i.e. make them speak of individuals, territories and cultures whose own voices and identities had been denied. The RISARCIMENTI exposition [Storie di vita e di attesa], 2011, at the Etnomuseo Monti Lepini Museum, Brigantaggio di Itri Museum and the Brigantaggio di Cellere Museum refer to this perspective. So, we must endeavour to undertake a reflexive dimension, and not produce decisive and monolithic exhibitions but partial ones which can be dissected and criticised.