ABSTRACT
Determined to make the oral history the central focus for the exhibition, but having no previous experience in museums, I began research with a small team of graduate students, exploring the journals and handbooks on social history in museums. Was it possible to construct an exhibition around oral testimonies presented in audio, not transcript, form? There was virtually nothing to be found on this subject. Stuart Davies’s comment in 1994 that ‘oral history occupies an ambivalent, uncomfortable and vulnerable position in museums’ seemed to be an understatement.1 For example, a handbook for museum professionals, frequently cited in the British and New Zealand literature, contains one short chapter on oral history. Two-thirds of this chapter is devoted to the inherent unreliability and flawed nature of memory, and the author finally concludes that oral history has limited value and may best be presented, heavily contextualised, in a separate ‘library’ space.2
