ABSTRACT
Placed outside everyday life and afforded with a sense of occasion, museums are spaces where histories and memories can be made, collected, confirmed and perhaps even challenged ( Hooper-Greenhill, 1990). Curators are entrusted with the task of selecting and presenting objects considered worthy of our remembrance. However, as Gaynor Kavanagh reminds us, curators only make up part of the story: visitors also take part in constructing histories in museums ( Kavanagh, 1996). As visitors, we see museum objects in relation to our own life stories or our regional and national identities, as belonging to our own history or that of “others” (Karp and Lavine, 1991).
