European National Museums:
Making Communities
and Negotiating Conflicts

25 January 2012
13.00-18.00
The Royal Museums
of Art and History
Brussels

One of Europe’s most enduring institutions is the museum and today there is an increased interest among social elites as well as citizens to create new museums, especially history museums. At the same time existing museums struggle with how to approach contemporary cultural diversity, claims for restitutions, and economic restraints.

The aim of this event is to discuss the challenges and negotiations in terms of collections, communities and citizenship that arise when polities create new museums. All over Europe, the making of new history museums brings to the fore questions as to which stories and which objects should be put on display, for what audiences and with what results and future possibilities.

The event brings together researchers, museum professionals, students and policy makers to a panel on new history museums and to discuss findings from the research project EuNaMus – European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen.

Please announce your attendance to contacteunamus.eu no later than 15 January 2012. More information on www.eunamus.eu

The event is organised by EuNaMus and the House of European History.

EuNaMus is a three-year research project funded under the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission. The project is dedicated to the histories, actualizations and futures for European national museums. National museums collect, preserve and display nations' most cherished objects to tell about nations' senses of themselves. Today, they are contested institutions, often squeezed between conflicting demands. To produce vital knowledge for researchers, citizens, museum professionals and policy makers, this project integrates historical studies with a wider contextual examination of the role of museums in nations beyond Europe.