Musealization of the Present Age. The Transformation of the Present into History in Collection Strategies of Historical Museums

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Sabrow
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 318876851

History museums as institutions of memory are building cultural tradition by collecting material culture. Thus, they provide the empirical basis of material evidence used in research and presentation. Traditionally, museums have preserved objects of the past and things that are suspected to vanish. Lately a change of perspectives can be observed as museums turn their focus on collecting the material culture of the present age as well. It also becomes apparent that in exhibitions, beyond expectations of the authenticity of objects and of cultural significance, the public is aware of links to their own experience and time. This causes an inevitable change of museum work which corresponds with an increasing orientation towards the present in academic contemporary history in which time perspectives and the influence of the presence as future history is discussed.Through the perception of the present age museums begin to identify current material culture as objects to be collected under the perspective of representing a potential future history. To do so, they develop conceptions that intend to restructure contemporary everyday objects into cultural memory.The project aims to analyse how museums "make history" by collecting contemporary objects as future cultural and historical evidence. In this context a number of questions arise: How do museums meet the challenges of collecting the present? Which topics are addressed and how are they identified? Which interpretations of the historical significance of today´s society are influential? What are the selection criteria of collecting the contemporary? Is a systematic documentation of objects in contemporary society favoured or rather a project-oriented involvement? What can historians of contemporary history expect when they decide to include material culture in their research projects? How can museums help to provide material evidence for an expanded historiography that is interested material culture?The project aims to understand the appropriation of history by collecting contemporary material culture. To do so, the debates on collecting the contemporary and the diverse collection strategies will be analysed, curators interviewed and, to provide an empirical basis and manifest notion, collection catalogues will be evaluated and the collected objects inspected. The research will be conducted in museums devoted to a historical perspective on culture and society. The institutions chosen to analyse fall into three categories: national history museums, local history museums, and specialised museums.The project will cover the development of contemporary collecting from the 1920s until today. The analysis links questions raised in contemporary history and in museum studies by debating the building of material sources within their historical context and the understanding that museums develop about the contemporary as future history. The results of this research will be published in a mongraph.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants