On the move

This chapter is concerned with different usages of the expression ‘on the move’: the physical move of how a temporary museum exhibition that was shown in several institutions ‘migrates’ in time across places, the pragmatics and politics of the continuous activity of meaning making and, lastly, attempts to advance public images through ideological change. This contribution draws on a study of an exhibition produced in French–German cooperation. It was first shown at the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration (Cité) ¹ in Paris with the title ‘To Each Their Own Foreigners? France–Germany from 1871 until today’. Six months later a slightly modified version was presented at the Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM) in Berlin. Here the exhibition was entitled ‘Foreigners? Images of the Other in Germany and France since 1871’. ² An exhibition that was relocated provides the opportunity to discuss different aspects of contextualisation and temporality at play in the institutional construction of knowledge.