ABSTRACT
Pabst takes the reader through the working process of a documentary and exhibition project about poverty in southern Norway. It demonstrates the challenges museum employees can meet when working with taboo-related, sensitive issues and how a museum can represent this to its visitors. Pabst describes how the museum is aiming for both activism and social change by trying to illustrate the severe challenges that 12 per cent of the Norwegian population experience as a result of poverty, and how, in Norway, poor people’s feeling of shame within otherwise well-off Norwegian society prevents them from talking about these challenges. The result of the museum’s work is a higher degree of awareness within the wider public of the problems poverty can cause, and a new role for the museum as advisor for communities who want to improve their actions towards the poor. Yet, Pabst concludes that museums still have a long way to go in terms of the active agency of those marginalised and socially labelled, such as those designated ‘the poor’, in order for the museum to transcend simply generating pity.
