“Sticky” objects, faces and voices in the museum

This chapter argues that the focus on gender in the Love and Sorrow exhibition at Melbourne museum enables a feminist history of World War I to emerge, creating a platform from which the usual masculinist perspectives on the history of World War I can be challenged. This focus on gender enables a deep engagement with the impact of the war on families, an engagement that is achieved through the production of an affective assemblage of emotions based on building a “sticky” (Sarah Ahmed) relationship between objects, images and people across multiple generations of families. In so doing, a place is also built for a productive engagement with the emotional impacts of war on Australian families for contemporary audiences. The result is a critical history of World War I and its impacts on Australian society.